[MD] The Sophists as the Last Philosophical Mystics

[david buchanan]

Howdy MOQers and Bodvar:

Bo said:
I have noticed the Matt-DMB dispute from a distance, but due to my own with 
Paul I haven't had a chance to follow it, then Matt suddenly introduced 
DMB's opening post from August.

dmb says:
Firstly I'd like to thank Matt for re-starting the topic with this new 
thread. Mighty nice of you, Matt. Secondly, I'd like to inform Bo that Matt 
has done me this favor at least partly because of my repeated complaints 
about the hijacking of threads. C'mon Bo. What's the name of this thread? 
Isn't it in everyone's interest to either stick to the topic OR start a new 
thread? Sigh. Despite these complaints, I'm gonna go ahead and address some 
of your points, Bodvar...

Bo said:
I have seen DMB's strange mystical turn. Why I don't know, there is nothing 
about Aretê being mystical that I know. What is sure however is that the 
last millennium BC meant some great upheaval in the Mediterranean region and 
that it has been given various explanations by various writers/thinkers. 
Pirsig's, namely the transition from the third to the fourth level of his 
MOQ, is the
most credible one I know.

dmb says:
My strange mystical turn? Nothing about Arete being mystical? Huh? When is 
the last time you read Lila, where it says that when "DQ is identified with 
religious mysticism it produces an avalanche of information as to what DQ 
is." (page377) Or how about the quote from ZAMM. Isn't it clear that Pirsig 
is here equating Quality and Arete?...

"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

Bo continued:
It's only from LILA we can see this level context. ZMM was about Pirsig's 
own Quality becoming associated with the ancient Greek Aretê (Social value) 
and then connecting the Sophists with it because they were said to teach 
Aretê, thereby alienating Socrates and Plato because they were the Sophists' 
antagonists. The thing is however that the latter were contemporaries of 
Socrates, more than a thousand years after social value's heyday.

dmb says:
That makes no sense. You're trying to read ZAMM in terms of the static 
levels, which hadn't yet been concieved. (Not to mention using the 
classic/romantic split to read Lila, which had been dropped by then, but 
more about that later.) Further, the important difference between Plato and 
the Sophists, as Pirsig explains it, is NOT a difference of static levels or 
between subjective SOMers and objective SOMers, but is the difference 
between static and Dynamic Quality. As I already explained back on the 
17th,..

That stikes me as quite incorrect and seems to miss of of ZAMM's central 
points. I mean, philosophically speaking, the climax of the book occurs when 
he can identify his own Quality (DQ) with the Good of the Sophists over 
Plato's "encapsulated" version (sq), which was taken from
them. "And really, the Quality he was talking about WASN'T classic Quality 
OR romantic Quality." (ZAMM P.212) " Their Good and his Quality (DQ) "was 
not an Idea at all. The Good was not a FORM of reality. It was reality 
itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed rigid
way." (ZAMM p.342) My point? The Sophists were mystics, not intellectuals or 
romantics. Or at least it is this mystical understanding of the Good that 
makes them so central in ZAMM.

Bo said:
The Plato vs Sophists conflict is clearly an inter-intellectual one, in fact 
Pirsig calls the Sophists "early humanists", we see the first sign of 
intellect's famous culture vs nature dichotomy.

dmb says:
No. No, it wasn't. The central point of ZAMM and the main reason why 
Phaedrus identifies with the Sophists and not with Plato is because "Their 
Good and his Quality (DQ) "was not an Idea at all. The Good was not a FORM 
of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in 
any kind of fixed rigid way." (ZAMM p.342) Repeat that with me now. It "WAS 
NOT AN IDEA AT ALL". The Good that the sophists were teaching was "NOT A 
FORM OF REALITY" but rather "EVER CHANGING AND ULTIMATELY UNKNOWABLE IN ANY 
KIND OF FIXED RIGID WAY". In other words, the excellence that the Sophists 
were teaching was Dynamic and not static. That's why it is not correct to 
call it and "inter-intellectual" battle. Sorry about all the shouting, but 
you do seem to have trouble hearing this point. Pirsig's complaint that 
Truth won when the Good lost refers to the mistake of putting static 
intellect over DQ.

Bo said:
Maybe as Pirsig saw things in ZMM, but what was at stake in a level context 
was the first flare-up of intellect's internal  S/O conflict. Objectivity's 
"victory" didn't mean that subjectivity was eradicated, rather the two being 
inextricable linked to each other.

dmb says:
No, as Pirsig goes on to explain in Lila, Quality is neither subjective nor 
objective. DQ gives rise to subjects and objects and is neither psychical 
nor physical, but logically preceeds both.

Bo said:
ZMM's Romantic/Classic divide confers to LILA's Social/Intellectual one, 
it's plain as the day. The former appeared as Quality itself to Pheadrus 
because it was (still is) non-dualist.

dmb says:
Plain as the day? Its clear as mud to me. Didn't you just say it was an 
inter-intellectual battle and now you've painted it as a social/intellectual 
conflict. That's just plain, old-fashioned contradiction. Plain as the day. 
Take a good look at this passage, Bo....

"Phaedrus had spent an enormous amout of time following what turned out to 
be lousy openings. A poarticularly large amount of this time had been spent 
trying to lay down a first line of division between the CLASSIC and ROMANTIC 
aspects of the universe he'd emphasized in his first book. In that book his 
purpose had been to show how Quality could unite the two. But the fact that 
Quality  was the best way of uniting the two waws no guarantee that the 
reverse was true - that the classic-romantic split was the best way of 
dividing Quyality. It wasn't. For example, American Indian mysticism is the 
same platypus in a world divided primarily into classic and romanitc 
patterns as under a subject-object division. When an American Indian goes 
into isolation and fasts in order to achieve a vision, the vision he seeks 
in not a romantic understanding of the surface beauty of the world. Neither 
is it a vision of the world's classic intellectual form. It is something 
else. Since this whole metaphysics had started with an attempt to explain 
Indian mysticism Phaedrus finally abandoned this classic-romatic split as a 
choice for the primary division of the MOQ. The division he finally settled 
on was one he didn't really choose in any deliberative way. It was more as 
if IT chose HIM." Lila page 109 (emphasis is Pirsig's)

"After many months of thinking about it, he was left with a reward of two 
terms: Dynamic good and static good, which became the basic division of his 
emerging MOQ." Lila 115

dmb resumes:
You see? Pirsig ABONDONS the classic/romatic split because it a "lousy 
opening". And what makes it so lousy? Because his "whole metaphysics had 
started with an attempt to explain Indian mysticism" and the 
classic/romantic split doesn't work to explain Indian mysticism, nor any 
other kind. That's why I'm insisting that the difference between Plato and 
the Sophists is best understood as a difference between static forms and 
dynamic reality, and not between aspects of intellect or between the top two 
levels of static values. Bo, this thread, originally titled "Rhetoric" was 
supposed to be all about how the Dynamic was buried under centuries of 
static. Ironically, you seem to be trying to put it back in the ground. It 
seems to me that you are missing the central point by a long shot.

"Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is NAMES about reality. Metaphysics 
is a restaurant where they give a a 30,000 page menu and no food." Lila page 
63

"With the identification of static and Dynamic Quality as the fundamental 
division of the world, Phaedrus felt that some kind of goal had been 
reached. This first division of the MOQ now covered the spectrum of 
experience from primitive mysticism to quantum mechanics." Lila page 120

Thanks,
dmb

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