[MD] The Sophists as the Last Philosophical Mystics

[Matt Kundert]

This is a reprint of DMB's original "Rhetoric" threadstarter in August, to 
get the ball rolling:

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Ian, Paul, Bo - plus Sam, Matt and all MOQers:

I've been thinking about rhetoric and the Sophists lately and have noticed 
mention of it here too. I extracted some quotes from chapter 29 of ZAMM. 
There are explanations and supporting details between the quotes, but I 
think these four paragraphs sketch out a pretty clear picture of the big 
idea. And what's the big idea? I think nearly everyone basically agrees that 
the intellect was declairing its independence from the social level and that 
rhetoric was one of the evolutionary steps in the West's transition from 
mythological to scientific worldviews. But that's not really what the big 
idea is all about. Its important to understand that something big was 
happening and there's no denying that rhetoric is discussed in that context, 
but I think the big idea is really about the loss of Quality, about how 
mysticism was lost in the West.

"Phaedrus reads further and further into pre-Socratic Greek thought to find 
out (Plato's real purpose), and eventually comes to the view that Plato's 
hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in which the 
reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the 
True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for 
the future mind of man. Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we 
have so little difficulty accepting the reality of truth and so much 
difficulty accepting the reality of Quality, even though there is no more 
agreement in one area than in the other." ZAMM 335

Sam and Matt are hailed at the top because I have repeatedly suggested that 
there is a cultural blind spot with respect to mysticism and that their 
views exhibit that bias. I get the impression that I'm merely insulting them 
as in, "you're so blind". So here I hope to put this blind spot on the 
display in a way that is not connected to anything you said. Its just a 
picture of where this blindspot began.

"Lightening hits!"
"QUALITY! VIRTUE! DHARMA! THAT is what the Sophists were teaching! NOT 
ethical relativism. NOT pristine 'virtue'. But ARETE. 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 had been doing it right all along." ZAMM 340

You know why they chose rhetoric as a medium? Because they hadn't lost touch 
with Quality, they were teaching Quality, which means they were talking 
about the mystical One, which can't be known in any fixed or rigid way and 
which "can only be described allegorically, through the use of analogy, of 
figures of imagination and speech". They chose rhetoric as a medium for the 
same reason that Pirsig presents his philosophy in the form of a novel. Art 
is what it takes to convey the One while dialectic, logic and science tend 
to preclude its discussion.

"Phaedrus remembered a line from Thoreau: "You never gain something but that 
you lose something". And now he began to see for the first time the 
unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and 
rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires 
of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous 
manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth - but for this he had 
exhanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of 
what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it." ZAMM 342

The autobiographical portion of the book that runs along side this 
discussion of rhetoric and occurs just before the climax. He finally 
realizes that his intellectual pursuit of Quality is a fool's errand and he 
gets stuck in a very big way. He can't go back and he can't go forward. Its 
all over. Only when "madness" comes does he finally understand what Quality 
is. That's not a philosophy or an idea, its an experience. See, its not so 
much the rhetoric. Rhetoric is just more appropriate for teaching Quality. I 
think the Sophists that Pirsig relates to were philosophical mystics who 
chose the most appropriate mode of expression. They were artists because 
their subject demanded it.

"And the bones of the Sophists long ago turned to dust and what they said 
turned to dust with them and the dust was buried under the rubble of 
declining Athens through its fall and Macedonia through its decline and 
fall. Through the decline and death of ancient Rome and Byzantium and the 
Ottoman Empire and the modern states - buried so deep and with such 
ceremoniousness and such unction and such evil that only a madman centuries 
later could discover the clues needed to uncover them and see with horror 
what had been done." ZAMM 345

Buried so deep. See, the blindspot was not caused by the Anglican Church or 
by Richard Rorty. I'm just saying they both suffer from it.

Thanks,
dmb

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Now, discuss.

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