[MD] Tit's

[skutvik at online.no]

On 2 Aug 2008 at 12:49, Peter Corteen wrote:

> Hi Bo, you said:
 
>  If we read ZAMM by the understand that it describes intellectual
>  value
> > emerging out of its social origin it's clear that the pre-SOM
> > existence  (not limited by SOM) is what Pirsig calls Aretê.
 
> To live an impeccable life, a life of excellence: I am far away from
> that. Even my ability to comment with authority in these emails is
> limited by the knowledge of my personal history that I act
> inconsistently and, even according to my own criteria, immorally. To
> live with Aretê, as I  imagine it, would be to act with spontaneity
> i.e. without consideration - 'you lose your push when you beat around
> the bush'; such a way of being may be possible if the presence of God
> or gods was accepted without question; as soon as you question then
> follows dilemma and hesitation. To question the existence of God is to
> engage in subject/object metaphysics.

Hi Peter. There has been much academical debate over the Greek 
"Aretê" term. As in ZAMM it's usually translated into the English 
"virtue" something Pirsig found too virtuous. In a recent article in 
"Philosophy Now" it was called valor and it certainly is that too, 
also duty, but Pirsig said it was something more than duty to king 
or country, rather toward oneself.  Yet it all coalese into something 
like your above: 

"..... the presence of God or gods accepted without question ...etc. 

which also catches the essence of the social reality.    

> Bo, I doubt you are suggesting that we revert to a wholly social
> mentality ...
 
No, I just try to fathom why Pirsig in ZAMM identified social value 
with VALUE itself *). And why he later shies away from analyzing 
ZAMM in a MOQ backlight and - perhaps connected - makes SOM 
a cuckoo egg in an otherwise "innocent" intellectual nest. 

> .... subject/object logic had an advantage over unquestioning servitude
> to a myth; that is why evolution selected it. 

Yes and yes again, stripped of its metaphysical implications - 
leaving the SOL - it's the very intellectual level, the highest and 
best static value.   

Bo