From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Dec 12 2004 - 21:33:52 GMT
Sam, Chin, MSH and all MOQers:
Phaedrus Wolff said:
Socrates is my favorite mystic. The way he defended himself in the Apology,
and the way he faced death in Phaedo by themselves show a man who's fear was
absent from the hear-and-now, prior to any Bibles being written. Throughout
the stories of Socrates we know he hears divine voices, and he goes into
deep trance states, but out of these deep trance states seems to come
nothing to add to the dialogues as to the nature of the current dialogues.
There is no denial that Socrates thoughts came from intuition -- is there?
Would you not describe intuition as Mystic? (I'm not posing this question as
a statement, but a question) Throughout the dialogues, he spoke of
immorality in the form of a soul and reincarnation.
dmb says:
It entirely depends on what you mean by "intuition". If you were refering to
a hunch or a feeling, I'd say no. But since you're talking about mysticism,
divine madness, and being the wisest of all for knowing that he didn't know
anything, then I'd have to say yes....
Chin (PW) continued:
I think some of our problems with the way we look at the ancients is that we
are looking at them in a Western 'intelligence' mastery as opposed to an
Eastern 'spirituality' mastery. If we look at Socrates as a spiritual master
(midwife), and he himself claims this in some of the dialogues, "Theatetus"
being one of the strongest, then he is saying that his students (disciples
or whatever you want to call them) do not learn from him. He says something
to the nature of their concepts are born into their own minds and not from
his, through a spiritual awakening from the silence of the mind.
dmb replies:
Yes! I have been investigating the background of Socrates world for reasons
unrelated to this forum. (I've been looking into the myth of Orpheus for
about four years.) And it seems that the ancient Greeks in that period
leading up to the Sophists and Plato and all that Pirsig discusses were
positively saturated with mystery cults. They had a highly developed
"technology" for spiritual transformation. I learned that the Pythagorians
were actually mystics who were heavily steeped in Orphic literature. Looking
back at them we had only seen numbers and geometry, but music, poetry and
mysticism were just as big in their thinking. If this notion is new to
anyone, you're not alone. Its at least partly based on archeological
discoveries we simply did not have before and there seems to be a shift in
the scholarship, as a result or as a co-incidence I do not know.
Chin said:
I would find it quite difficult not to see Socrates as a mystic, and I could
carry this argument further if needed, but I feel the answer to the idea of
Socrates or other mystics might come from Western or Eastern definition of
'Mystic' -- or maybe even how we define mystic as dependent on each of our
different cultures that make up Western or Eastern thought. I think maybe I
am defining mystic as something other than 'sense' intuition which confuses
intuition as I see it, sense the word 'sense' comes from an already defined
experience, and may be where Pirsig says Western thought confuses intuition.
Raw intuition would appear to me to be a form of mysticism as it holds no
limits to what is taught, or what Socrates called 'Imitative poetry'.
dmb says:
Well, for the sake of clarity and for the sake of MANAGABLE parameters, let
me just ask you to explain Socrates' mysticism as it compares to what Pirsig
has said about it. I think we agree on this, but it would be nice to see
somebody make the case just to see what it might look like. I'm thinking
that Pirsig's lengthy discussion of insanity and mysticism would shed lots
of light on the divine madness Plato wrote about. At least for starters.
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