[MD] The Greeks?

[Mary]

Mary

- The most important thing you will ever make is a realization.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org [mailto:moq_discuss-
> bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of skutvik at online.no
> Sent: Saturday, June 05, 2010 12:36 PM
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] The Greeks?
> 
> Hi Mary
> 
> 5 June:
> 
> > I don't get what all the fuss is about.  Does it matter to the MoQ
> > whether the Intellectual Level existed before or after Socrates?
> 
> If the 4th. intellectual level is the (value) of the subject/object
> distinction it must have occurred in the Western Culture the way
> ZAMM describes SOM.  However it may have arrived in the Orient with
> the UpanishadsUpanishads as Pirsig says.
> 
[Mary Replies] 
Ok.  Went back and re-read ZMM chapter 29 I think.  Hard to tell in an
electronic version.  Lots of quotes here, but think I'm getting somewhere.  

> > Is there some critical point of order I'm missing?
> 
> If the social level was transcended before the said description in
> ZAMM then intellect is something I have no idea what is. Remember
> the quote from ZAMM about Socrates' martyrdom as a milestone for
> the intellect's way to "power" so Phaedrus at least was convinced that
> SOM and the Greeks were identical with intellect.
> 
[Mary Replies]
Ok.  Now I understand why you say, "if the social level was transcended
before the said description in ZAMM then *the Intellectual Level* is
something I have no idea what is." 
ZMM pp 219:
The resolution of the arguments of the Cosmologists came from a new
direction entirely, from a group Phædrus seemed to feel were early
humanists. They were teachers, but what they sought to teach was not
principles, but beliefs of men. Their object was not any single absolute
truth, but the improvement of men. All principles, all truths, are relative,
they said. "Man is the measure of all things." These were the famous
teachers of "wisdom," the Sophists of ancient Greece.
...
Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle
of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth
is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he has. The Sophists
are the enemy.
Now Plato’s hatred of the Sophists makes sense. He and Socrates are
defending the Immortal Principle of the Cosmologists against what they
consider to be the decadence of the Sophists. Truth. Knowledge. That which
is independent of what anyone thinks about it. The ideal that Socrates died
for. The ideal that Greece alone possesses for the first time in the history
of the world.
...
The results of Socrates’ martyrdom and Plato’s unexcelled prose that
followed are nothing less than the whole world of Western man as we know it.
If the idea of truth had been allowed to perish unrediscovered by the
Renaissance it’s unlikely that we would be much beyond the level of
prehistoric man today. The ideas of science and technology and other
systematically organized efforts of man are dead-centered on it. It is the
nucleus of it all.
And yet, Phædrus understands, what he is saying about Quality is somehow
opposed to all this. It seems to agree much more closely with the Sophists.

> > I don't get the significance of the argument about what 'arete' is.
> Is
> > it really necessary for every person to make an intensive study of
> > Greek culture before claiming to have knowledge of the MoQ?
> 
> The interesting thing is how to "translate" ZAMM into MOQ-talk. What
> was it that happened when SOM ousted Aretê? (as ZAMM describes
> it) and why Pirsig refused to address this issue?
> 
[Mary Replies]
Is it my imagination, or are all references to "Dharma" purged from Lila?
DQ no longer is explained as such?  A deceit, perhaps?  Diluting or
'cleansing' DQ? 
ZMM pp 221
"What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism," Kitto comments, "is not
a sense of duty as we understand it...duty towards others: it is rather duty
towards himself. He strives after that which we translate ‘virtue’ but is in
Greek areté, ‘excellence’—we shall have much to say about areté. It runs
through Greek life."
There, Phædrus thinks, is a definition of Quality that had existed a
thousand years before the dialecticians ever thought to put it to
word-traps. Anyone who cannot understand this meaning without logical
definiens and definendum and differentia is either lying or so out of touch
with the common lot of humanity as to be unworthy of receiving any reply
whatsoever. Phædrus is fascinated too by the description of the motive of
"duty toward self " which is an almost exact translation of the Sanskrit
word dharma, sometimes described as the "one" of the Hindus. Can the dharma
of the Hindus and the "virtue" of the ancient Greeks be identical?
Then Phædrus feels a tugging to read the passage again, and he does so and
then—what’s this?! -- "That which we translate ‘virtue ‘ but is in Greek
‘excellence.""
Lightning hits!
Quality! Virtue! Dharma! That is what the Sophists were teaching! Not
ethical relativism. Not pristine "virtue." But areté. Excellence. Dharma!
Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and
matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute. Those first
teachers of the Western world were teaching Quality, and the medium they had
chosen was that of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along.

> > If you say that we used to have the ability to reason without
> subjects
> > and objects, then lost it - so what?  We had it, we didn't have it,
> > only some cultures have it, nobody has it . ok.  I'm fine with any or
> > all of the above.  The argument doesn't seem to have anything to do
> > with the value of the MoQ itself.
> 
> Reason in the sense of thinking or intelligence has of course nothing
> to do with the 4th level and intellect did not mean any loss, rather
> that
> a new and higher level demanded "computer time" or more plainly
> kicked the social level out of the computer (thinking) chair  The MOQ
> is in some sense a new "level" that does the same with intellect, but
> is
> so generous as to give all levels their allotted computer time.
> 
> 
[Mary Replies] 
So what we're really talking about here is a proto-MOQ level being born
above the Intellectual - OR - the Social making a new latch for MOQ that
once was there and then was lost with the demise of the Sophists.  Heresy!
:)  I can see where it'd fit the pattern better for the MoQ to sit atop
Intellectual, but hey, it was latched first with the Buddhists and the
Sophists.  So what to do, Bo?  Guess that's why you let it float.  Frankly,
I'm not sure why the container logic thing even bothers you.  The MoQ that
is known or the Dharma that is known is static by definition, meaning it's
gotta go somewhere.  

You realize we're going to be burned at the stake for this.

Best,
Mary

> Thanks for your always meaningful inputs.
> 
> Bodvar
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org/md/archives.html