[MD] An Open Letter to the MOQ Discussion Group

[X Acto]

Mark:

Ant, tell me what the problem with Plato was.  His "Good"
is the same thing as Pirsig's Quality.

Ant replied:

Not according to Pirsig they're not.  I don't know whether you really
believe this statement of yours or just haven't read the material in
question            but (to paraphrase) Pirsig states that his Quality
is fundamentally Dynamic and indefinable while Plato's Good is a
static Form that (supposedly) can be defined.  Plato's "Republic"
refers to the Good in a couple of places and what he says here does
tend to support Pirsig's view.  In my honest opinion.

Plato:
Socrates to Glaucon on the good of education in "republic vii"
508c
"Let's say, then, that this is what I call the offspring of the good, which the good
begot as its analogue. What the good itself is in the intelligible realm, in relation 
to understanding and intelligible things, the sun is in the visible realm in relation to sight
and visible things."
508d
"Well, understand the soul in the same way: When it focuses on something illumenated 
by truth and what is, it understands, knows, and apparently posesses understanding, but
when when it focuses on what is mixed with obscurity, on what comes to be and passes
away it opines and is dimmed, changes its opinion this way and that, and seems bereft of 
understanding."
 
508e
"So that what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is 
the form of the good. And though it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an 
object(or aim?) of knowledge. both knowledge and truth are beautiful things, but the good 
is other and more beautiful than they. In the visible realm, light and sight are considered
sun-like, but it is wrong to think they are the sun, so, here, it is right to think of knowledge
and truth as good-like but wrong to think that either of them is the good-for the good is
yet more prized."
 
517b
"But this is how I see it: In the knowable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen
, and it is reached only with difficulty. Once one has seen it, however, one must conclude that
it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that it produces both light and its
source in the visible realm, and understanding, so that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or
in public must see it."
 
519d
"It is our task as founders , then, to compel the best natures to reach the study we said
before is the most important , namely to make the ascent and see the good. But when they've made it
they mustn't be allowed to do what they're allowed to do today. to stay there and refuse to go down
to the prisoners in the cave and share in their labors and honors, whether they are of less worth or of 
greater."
 
 
..