[MD] the sophists

[MarshaV]

Arlo,

The ideas of the sophists pretty much died with Pericles and Socrates.  To 
say the intellectual level could have been different is much like saying 
human being could have evolved with wings and flippers:  Idle speculation.


Marsha
 
 



On May 14, 2010, at 7:55 AM, MarshaV wrote:

> 
> On May 14, 2010, at 7:16 AM, ARLO J BENSINGER JR wrote:
> 
>> "Phædrus reads further and further into pre-Socratic Greek thought to find
>> out, and eventually comes to the view that Plato’s hatred of the rhetoricians
>> was part of a much larger struggle in which the reality of the Good,
>> represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the True, represented by the
>> dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man.
>> Truth won, the Good lost, and that is why today we have so little difficulty
>> accepting the reality of truth and so much difficulty accepting the reality of
>> Quality, even though there is no more agreement in one area than in the other."
>> 
>> "And yet, Phædrus understands, what he is saying about Quality is somehow
>> opposed to all this. It seems to agree much more closely with the Sophists."
>> 
>> ""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." (ZMM)
>> 
>> The intellectual patterns emerging from the Sophists were not SOM. They were
>> clearly something better. And it is HERE that the SOM infestation of Western
>> culture began. And it is HERE that Pirsig begins his treatise on correcting
>> this.
>> 
>> Of course, you are more than welcome to rewrite ZMM and LILA to suit your SOL
>> needs as Bo suggests (its the only way you can make an SOL even come close to
>> making any sort of "sense"). 
> 
> 
> Hi Arlo,
> 
> RMP does not reference SOM in ZMM.  In my interpretation the Sophists see the
> world as relative. Plato&company see the world filled with fixed, concrete , external 
> objects; objects of knowledge, objects of study, SOM.  Experience as relative, 
> dependent of value, is what Phaedrus recognized in the sophists as 'better'.  
> 
> There is no rewriting, there is a difference in interpretation. 
> 
> 
> Marsha
> 
> 
> 
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