[MD] Plato's Good

[Ham Priday]

Ant, Mark, Andre, Tuukka, Dmb and All  --

> Tuukka said:Pirsig definitely says Plato says Good is a fixed idea.
> But is he right?
>
> dmb replied:
> Yes, according to the very first sentence of the opening paragraph
> of Stanford's article on Plato, Pirsig is right.  ...If we made a list of
> debatable assertions, this one would be at the very bottom.
> Pirsig is only saying what everyone already acknowledges about
> Plato's work and anyone who doubts it can easily look it up.
> It's about as reasonable and realistic as doubting the blueness
> of the sky. It's silly.

The Oxford Dictionary defines 'idée fixé' (the French root of the English 
term 'fixed idea') as "an idea or a desire which is so strong that you 
cannot think about anything else."  It is exemplified in music as a repeated 
theme, and in psychology as an obsessive thought.  In that sense, Pirsig's 
Quality is indeed a fixed idea.

But this gives me an opportunity to comment on Plato's Good.vs. the MoQ. 
The following statements are extracted from an Edinboro U. of PA philosophy 
undergraduate's essay on the Summum Bonum, or "highest good", which I 
believe is Pirsig's model for DQ as a moral principle.

"Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle continues the tradition of virtue ethics. 
However, unlike Plato, Aristotle is less concerned with the constant 
dialogue and "upward struggle" over a 'life worth living'.  ...For Aristotle 
there seems to be an end, rather than this constant struggle.  What is also 
of concern to Aristotle is the concept of happiness and how that relates to 
the overall virtue of a person.  Aristotle seeks to expand Plato's 
definition of eudaimonia by making these virtues necessary for happiness. 
Aristotle believes, contrary to Plato, that the moral virtues are defined by 
their attainable qualities because they are things in themselves, rather 
than only ideals that regulate the soul based the form of the good.

"Aristotle stays in agreement with Plato on the definition of what is arête. 
The Good is seen to be that for which a thing strives, and as such becomes 
the 'thinghood' of the object in question.  Thus, the Good for a human being 
is that which makes a human being excellent or virtuous.  According to 
Aristotle, excellence is predicated upon happiness and moral virtue.

"However, this concept of happiness is very far from what the Ancient Greeks 
would define as happiness.  It was not seen to be an emotional state of 
being, but rather the overall state of one's life, that is to say, the 
action of living and doing well.  ...'For Aristotle happiness is to be 
identified above all with the fulfillment of one's distinctively human 
potentialities.  These are located in the exercise of reason, in both its 
practical and its theoretical form' (Honderich 333).  It is only through 
this exercise of reason that one can achieve the highest good of human 
excellence."

Mark to Andre [Moving on]:
> The use of words such as "the undifferentiated aesthetic flux" is 
> misleading,
> in my opinion, for that is not what Quality is.  We could call DQ that.
> The Tao may be more accurate, but the Tao is more fundamental than
> Quality.  The Tao means "the Reason", or "the Way". From the Tao
> comes the one, which is Quality.

Andre responds:
> Sorry Mark but I find this confusing. My reading of ZMM is that both terms
> refer/point to the same idea. Remember Phaedrus going over to his 
> bookshelf
> and picked out the Tao Te Ching and where he substituted Tao for Quality?
> 'He read: 'The quality that can be named is not the Absolute Quality...
> The names that can be given it are not Absolute names'

Mark's point voices my opinion that Pirsig's positioning of moral virtue 
above fundamental reality is what prevents the MoQ from achieving 
metaphysical status.  We can talk about happiness, morality, virtue, or 
excellence only in a relational system, whereas ultimate reality is absolute 
and unconditional.  Which means that Quality (Value), although descriptive 
of human emotions and judgments, does not relate experientially to the 
fundamental source.

It is one thing to say that the ineffable source is indefinable, but quite 
another to identify it as Dynamic Quality and claim that it evolves by four 
levels to "betterness".  With all due respect to the author, that is not my 
idea of a fundamental postulate.

Essentially speaking,
Ham