[MD] Plato's Good

[118]

Hi Ron,
I fully understand what you are saying.  However, I am not convinced
that Plato is to blame here.  It is how his words were used by others
later on that distort what he is saying.  The manner in which I read
Plato, is much more spiritual than, say, Aristotle.

I would not put this on Parmenides, I would choose Democritus in terms
of how substance became the binding reality of the West.  Did not
Plato fully embrace the notion of Arête?  Was he not trying to dispel
the hypnotic spell cast with words by the Sophists?  Is this not what
MoQ does?  Did not Plato point towards something beyond mere
appearances?  This is a far cry from some humanoid God coming from
Plato; that came later in the West.

The divinity of numbers that the Pythagoreans believed in, was one of
divine order.  It was an order which we could grasp at least so far as
it related to us.  These people were extremely mystical.  They pointed
towards Quality through its manifestations in numbers.  Using abstract
number in physics to point to a hidden reality is also extremely
mystical.  We say that there is direction to Quality, except that we
are not very good at math to try to describe it metaphorically.
I do agree with you that Pirsig did rail against a conceptual Good.
This was because he was tapping into a reality beyond words.  However,
the Form of the Good cannot be defined.  The words and concepts are
trivial in comparison to what they represent.  However, there are some
words that are more useful than others to do the pointing.  If Plato's
Form of the Good was misinterpreted by others, then that is one thing,
but that is not how I read his Form of the Good.  It has definite
connections to Quality as I have presented.  But perhaps we have
different understandings of Quality.

Regards,
Mark


On 5/8/12, X Acto <xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:
> Ant, Mark, Tuukka, all,
> Plato's Good, as distinct from the Good of the early Socratic dialogs (which
> is more akin to Pirsigs Quality),
> seems to have been drawn from the Parmenidian "one"and the divinty of number
> of the Pythagoreans which
> we begin to see develop in the Republic (on justice) and more fleshed out in
> Timaeus as the central defining
> theme of Plato's later works and Platonism as a whole. Timaeus was a central
> text in Platonism in the middle
> ages the only one available in latin at the time and the subject of many
> controversies.
> When the form of the Good is co-mingled with the concept of the demiurge we
> can see how God, order and
> the fixed eternal good develop into the encapsulation Pirsig rails against.
>
>
> -Ron
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