[MD] Some historical perspective

[mark_maxwell at talktalk.net]

Squonk said:
This is an interesting way of describing a difference 
between Plato and Aristotle’s approaches. It feels right.

I disagree with your suggestion that Aristotle may have 
regarded Wisdom to be Impractical. The Nicomachean 
Ethics spends allot of time on practical Wisdom, which he 
defines in terms of a settled state of emotion driving a 
rationally determined aim. These aims are social and not 
‘hands on’ with the engine oil, so in that regard you may 
be right!

Matt:
With the distinction between Plato and Aristotle, I agree 
with Squonk, it does feel right, but notice what that 
means for Pirsig's claim in ZMM about Aristotle: if we take 
it as pat that Plato wanted to induce apo
 ria, the reason 
must lie in his sense that the path to wisdom (sophia) had 
to exist outside the bounds of rhetoric, which are the 
established lines of (direct) communication.  Rather, he 
established the dialectic as an indirect means towards 
sophia because you had to tear down before you could 
build up--sophia ultimately only can come from the outside.  
In Plato, this is where our sense of his orphic mysticism 
comes from, and fills in the gap--it is a pure 
_apprehension_ of the Form of the Good that tells you the 
Truth, but you cannot convey it directly (to those still in the 
Cave) because all lines of inference (rhetoric) are bound to 
the shadows yet--you break them of it with the dialecti
 c, 
then fill them in with the Good (which they'll intuitively 
sense as correct because they'll "remember" 
them--anamnesis).


squonk: agreed.


Pirsig said that Plato enshrined Dialectic (Truth-making) 
at the expense of the Good (mystically-attained).  This 
has been a contention of DMB's, but while I think that is 
right of Plato, I don't think the genealogical route goes 
through the Sophists, but through the Pythagoreans (who 
were Orphics).  (It's helpful in regards to Pirsig's 
stealing-claim to keep in mind that the Sophists talked a 
lot, apparently, about arete--virtue/excellence--but 
"good" is agathon in greek, though the three terms arete, 
agathon, and kalon (the Beautiful) were all intertwined.)



squonk
 : agreed.

  
The key is to see Plato as _accidentally_, or at least 
half-heartedly, enshrining Dialectic.  And, following Pirsig 
again, Aristotle saw the accident, got a good idea, and 
made good on it--he started _over_, at the bottom, with 
the lines of inference that create our modes of 
knowledge-production.  Hence, arche--greek for principle 
(through the Latin), or (notably) beginning or starting point.


squonk: agreed.


And what this means is that Pirsig, in Lila, is doing what 
Aristotle did, except beginning at what Aristotle did not 
see in Plato.  ZMM is Pirsig's Platonic/dialectical 
destruction of previous assumptions to Lila's Aristotelian 
construction of new assumptions for 
knowledge-production
 .



squonk: I could actually live with that.



So Pirsig improves upon 
Aristotle by going back to Plato's mysticism - where I 
disagree, on this understanding, with DMB is that (as I 
understand the outlines of what he has thought about 
this) Plato got the mysticism from the Sophists.  I don't 
think that's right.



squonk: Plato got his mysticism from the Orphics.



However, Pirsig also improves upon 
Plato by going back to the Sophists in a re-estimation of 
rhetoric: it's "Platonic/dialectical destruction" and 
(previously suppressed) "Aristotelian/rhetorical 
construction."  Aristotle missed the mysticism _and_ the 
reinscribed importance of rhetoric given the importance 
of dialectic.



squonk: I'm=2
 0lost now. Sorry Matt.

What's interestingly brought to light, in this way, is the 
connection, or lack thereof, between mysticism and 
rhetoric.  I'm not sure Pirsig sees one, I'm not sure there 
was one for the Sophists or Plato, and I'm not sure there 
necessarily is one.



squonk: Still lost.



DMB would seem to be 
arguing - certainly following suggestions laid by 
Pirsig - that there is a single correction: back to the 
Sophists ("philosophical mystics," he called them at one 
point).  On this account, Aristotle missed the reinscription 
of rhetoric _because_ he missed the mysticism.  I'm 
coming to think there was a double correction: back to 
the Sophists and back to the Orphics.  That 20means 
Aristotle had two seperate misses from two different 
blindnesses.


squonk: I think i get this, because Plato got his mysticism from the Orphics, such as it is.


With regards to wisdom and practical wisdom, it's helpful 
to remember that there were two words for "wisdom" in 
greek: sophia and phronesis.  As Pierre Hadot emphasizes, 
partly through the machinations of Socrates and Plato, 
sophia became something like an aboslute notion, a 
transcendant way of being.  It fell to phronesis to become 
"practical wisdom" or "prudence."  Plato can be said to 
ignore, largely, phronesis, while it was of tremendous 
importance to Aristotle.  Though, on the other hand, it 
was Aristotle who enshrined the=2
 0distinction between these 
modes of being, between theoria, contemplatio in Latin, 
the discipline of which Aristotle called theology (what was 
later called "metaphysics" after the book the discussion 
was housed in) and regular life.  Plato helped realize the 
importance of something called theoretical life, while 
Aristotle wanted to re-impress us with the still existence 
of the rest of life, where phronesis is paramount.  (I 
should note that Hadot, who I've learned a lot from, 
does _not_ want to call sophia "theoretical wisdom," 
which the previous lends to: he emphasizes the _life_ 
part, and therefore "practical" nature, of sophia--or 
rather, ancient philosophia.)

Matt



squonk: There are indeed two Wisdoms i
 n Aristotle. The 'highest' wisdom is more Platonic, and, it has always seemed to me, Mystical.

It may be going too far to suggest that, in the end, Aristotle did a complete capitualtion and accept mysticism?

But if mysticism is to be found in Aritotle, it is here at the end of his Nicomachean ethics.



Bloody hell, I've actually understood a contribution of your Matt.

All the best,

squonk