Hi Squad
Diana wrote:
> Our program for the month will be:
> Seen in the light of the MOQ, what is it that is described in the last part of
> ZMM (The Greeks). Is it the emergence of SOM, the"coming of age" of the
> Intellectual level, or...?
> I hope Bodvar will give us a lead on this one as he's done more thinking on
> this subject than anyone else. Those of you who voted for Marco's suggestion
> on when and why the intellectual level was born will probably find this is
> quite close to that subject. In answering this question we will have to
> examine both the subject-object metaphysics and the intellectual level and
> find out what they are, and how they relate, and if, indeed, they are the
> same thing, as some have suggested.
Thanks Diana I will be glad to. I agree very much about the Marco
suggestion and this being quite close, and hope it adds to its
versatility..
When I first read "Zen and The art of Motorcycle
Maintenance" (ZAMM hereafter), the part that describes the Greek
experience (which begins in earnest in Part IV page 370 in the
Anniversary edition) looked like an another account of the countless
interpretations of the accomplishment of the ancient Greeks... this
time however in defence of the despited sophists. But it soon took on
a more portentous quality as Phaedrus/Pirsig (P) began to read back
behind Plato to find the reason for his (with Socrates as a
mouthpiece) campaign against the said school.
"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 hughe struggle for the future. Truth
won and the Good lost and that is why we today we
have so little difficulty accepting the reality
of truth and so much difficulty accepting the
reality of Quality, even though there is no
more agreement in one area than in the
other."(ZAMM page 371)
To me, at that time, a struggle between truth and good sounded a
little strange to say the least. They were supposed to be identical,
but P had won me over long before that so I accepted that this was
once a conflict and that P had given a credible account of why/how
Western humankind had become truth-fixated.
This caused no further speculations on my part in 13 years that
passed between my first and second encounter with Pirsig. However,
not long after LILA and its MOQ, I started to wonder about the place
of the said struggle in the greater MOQ picture. My first conclusion
was that the outcome of the sophist/dialectician conflict was the
dawning of the subject/object metaphysics, but then it also could be
seen as the emergence of the Intellectual level. In a letter to
Robert Pirsig (Dec. 1993) I asked:
"As a matter of fact I have always been intrigued by
this level. You pinpoint its breakthrough (In the
Western world at least) to the end of the First
World War, but its emergence has been quite a puzzle
for me."
To which he replied:
"This emergence of the intellectual level is most
closely associated in my mind with the ancient Greek
philosophers and particularly Socrates who
continually pitted truth against social conformity.
This seems why they killed him."
Here truth's opposite is social conformity (Q-Society?), but I did
not put too much into this (either) at that time, though later it
came to be the backbone of my idea that the Intellectual level IS
subject/objectivity itself (SOLAQI). But first of all I would like to
have other peoples' opinions of what MOQ interpretation they give
the said struggle.
Bo
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
