[MD] The Edge 2006 Annual Question

[Scott Roberts]

Bo,

Bo asked:
I understand your pointing this out, yet if the 4th level is the S/O
dualism it's committed to them all. The "subject" and "object"
terms are of course rather recent (does anyone know?) the 300
BC Greeks did definitely not know them, but Pirsig used it (in
ZMM) as the common denominator for the new "quality-less"
reality that took over from the old quality-filled one.

Scott:
The words (or Latin equivalents) were used in the Middle Ages, but with a 
different meaning for "subject". "Subject" referred to what "underlies" 
phenomena, so it was pretty much the essence of something. Hence, being good 
Platonists, until modern times, "subjective" was used for "real" truth, and 
"objective" for "apparent" truth. This all got changed, of course, when 
essences were thought to exist only within the human mind, that is, after 
nominalism took over. What modernists call subject and object was not 
unknown to them, though they generally argued the issues involved in terms 
of soul and body.

- Scott