[MD] [Bulk] Re: Rorty's Relativism

[MarshaV]

Dmb,

Where exactly is the rejection?


Marsha


-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of david buchanan
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 6:35 PM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: [Bulk] Re: [MD] Rorty's Relativism


Marsha said to dmb:
Where exactly does RMP reject relativism is ZMM?  Phædrus seems to identify
strongly with the early sophists and their relativism, and translates their
'relativity of all ethical ideas' to 'duty toward self' and which he, in
turn, translates as dharma. 


dmb says:

I answered that a few days ago but you already rejected it. You said to me,
"You've offered words, and I do 'not' see them as evidence...". At the time
I thought to myself, "Well, if Marsha doesn't accept textual evidence as
legitimate evidence in philosophy then there is nothing I can do". So I just
let it go. I mean, if Pirsig's words don't count as evidence for what Pirsig
thinks, then nothing counts as evidence and nobody can ever assert anything.
Anyway, here's what I quoted last time but with some emphasis added for your
convenience. Near the end of chapter 29 in ZAMM he writes...
" 'Man is the measure of all things.' Yes, that's what he is saying about
Quality. Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists
would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective
idealists and materialists would say. The Quality which creates the world
emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a
participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things...it
fits. And they taught rhetoric...that fits.The one thing that doesn't fit
what he says and what Plato said about the Sophists is their profession of
teaching virtue. All accounts indicate this was absolutely central to their
teaching, but how are you going to teach virtue if you teach the RELATIVITY
of all ethical ideas? Virtue, if it implies anything at all, implies an
ethical absolute. A person whose idea of what is proper varies from day to
day can be admired for his broadmindedness, but not for his virtue. Not, at
least, as Phædrus understands the word. And how could they get virtue out of
rhetoric? This is never explained anywhere. Something is missing.His search
for it takes him through a number of histories of ancient Greece, which as
usual he reads detective style, looking only for facts that may help him and
discarding all those that don't fit. And he is reading H. D. F. Kitto's The
Greeks, a blue and white paperback which he has bought for fifty cents,..
[...] "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."






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