[MD] the sophists

[skutvik at online.no]

Marsha, Arlo, All:

Marsha to 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'.  

Marsha you may be right about ZAMM not coining the SOM 
abbreviation but it speaks about the subject/object constellation as a 
metaphysics. However it did NOT reach the final MOQ, its proto-moq 
only had one static fall-out, namely the very S/O and that event is what 
the Aretê - Plato transition describes. 

However, we have the final MOQ at our disposal and from there the 
said ZAMM event looks like this: Plato represents intellect's objective 
side and the Sophists its subjective side ..... Nota Bene ... the way 
SOM came to evolve up through the centuries and millennias, at the 
actual time however it was perceived by Plato as a deadly struggle for 
something of outmost importance, namely TRUTH against the 
dangerous "man" and his fleeting and capricious whims", while the 
Sophists just wanted to throw spanners into Plato's machinery    

Look to this quote from ZAMM: (My brackets and caps).

    To Phædrus, this backlight from the conflict between the 
    Sophists and the Cosmologists adds an entirely new 
    dimension to the Dialogues of Plato [The "cosmologists" were 
    the materialists faction of the eralier first quest for eternal 
    principles in contrast to Parmenides who claimed that the most 
    eternal principle was "nous" (something that can be called 
    mind] Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a 
    vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think 
    truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. He is 
    fighting that war with everything he has. The Sophists are the 
    enemy. Now Plato's hatred of the Sophists makes sense. He 
    and Socrates are defending the Immortal Principle of the 
    Cosmologists against what they consider to be the decadence 
    of the Sophists. Truth. Knowledge. That which is independent 
    of what anyone thinks about it. The ideal that Socrates died 
    for. The ideal that Greece alone possesses for the first time in 
    the history of the world. It is still a very fragile thing. It can 
    disappear completely. Plato abhors and damns the Sophists 
    without restraint, not because they are low and immoral 
    people...there are obviously much lower and more immoral 
    people in Greece he completely ignores. HE DAMNS THEM 
    BECAUSE THEY THREATEN MANKIND'S FIRST 
    BEGINNING GRASP OF THE IDEA OF TRUTH. THAT'S 
    WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT. The results of Socrates' martyrdom 
    and Plato's unexcelled prose that followed are nothing less 
    than the whole world of Western man as we know it. If the idea 
    of truth had been allowed to perish unrediscovered by the 
    Renaissance it's unlikely that we would be much beyond the 
    level of prehistoric man today. The ideas of science and 
    technology and other systematically organized efforts of man 
    are dead-centered on it. It is the nucleus of it all.    


See, this is the objective part of what the MOQ calls the  intellectual 
level, but like up needs down, objectivity - Truth - needed a subjective 
illusory scapegoat, therefore the negatives belongs to intellect's 
repertoire, yet as time went by it came to be used against everything 
belonging to the past i.e. what we know as the social level.     

Marsha:

> There is no rewriting, there is a difference in interpretation. 

Spot on!

Bodvar