[MD] the sophists

[X Acto]

Bodvar said:
If Pirsig's presentation of the MOQ is "from a static perspective" because it is conveyed by language, how would a dynamic presentation be carried out? 


Andre replied:
... About the 'dynamic presentation' dmb has already referred you to the relevant (classroom) passages in an earlier post.


dmb says:

Thanks, Andre. In the classroom scenes the students learned that they didn't need a bunch of rules to recognize quality when they saw it. They weren't given a definition of quality and yet almost everyone agreed about which papers were best. Once they learned to trust their own ability to see it, they wanted to know how to get it. Only then did the rules have a meaning and a purpose they could appreciate. They learned to recognize it even if there was no rule or technique attached to it. 

That's why Phaedrus feels that he's finally found his allies when his realizes what the Sophists were up to the same thing. "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." Like I said, not only does he identify with the Sophists because they were teaching Quality, he also identifies with medium they used to teach it. We see this again in Pirsig's choice to present Quality in a philosophical novel, in which he tells John Sutherland...

"Laws of nature are human INVENTIONS, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, AND IN ANTIQUITY WAS SO RECOGNIZED AS A GHOST, the whole blessed world that we live in. It's run by ghosts." (ZAMM:42)

"The difference was that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good was not a FORM of reality. It was reality itself, ever-changing, ultimately unknowable in any sort of fixed, rigid way." (ZAMM:379)

Ron:
I think that is the important part to realize, we return to a point of departure, not only a human
invention, to be more exact, a cultural invention. A culture that came to dominate the known
world. I think it is important to value the works of Plato and make the distinction between
the Pragmatic wrintings of Socrates and the tradtion influenced by the Pathagoreans of
Platonsim which is what I believe Pirsig is reffering to.
I think it is important to make this distinction between the Pragmatic origins of philosophy
and science from the tradition it evolved into.

Dmb:
James was opposed to this Platonic rigidity too. As he saw it, Burkhardt says, "we are on the very brink of misunderstanding if we think that our only access to reality is through conceptual understanding. In addition to conceptual understanding there is also direct acquaintance and experience. ...Conceptual thought, despite its practical or theoretical efficacy, stays only on the surface of things. It is knowledge ABOUT things; it does not penetrate the inner life of things and reality's continuously changing character." (Editor's intro to PU, p.xxiii)

"...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,.." 

Ron:
I would argue that this statement, while somewhat valid, is a gross simplification. I feel I could defend
Plato against this charge. Dialecticians werent after truth, they were after aporia. The Pathagoreans
in the tradition of Parmenides, saw the truth as fixed and immoveable, expressed in number.

There are some writings associated with Plato that try to reconcile this notion with his
theory of forms which Aristotle termed as a theory of ideas. Over the years the instructors
interpretation of these writings distinguished the schools of thought bearing their name.
I would suggest that the more popular interpretations constitute what we know as objective
truth in religeon and science.
I believe Both Plato and Aristotle were concerned with the Pragmatic theory of ideas
their explaination and meaning and we would do well to revisit these works and
read them for ourselves.


If I were to have a discussion with Bob, I think this would be a fun one to pursue.



                        
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