[Matt] My revision has one main goal: I think Pirsig, like many philosophers, looked to Greece and saw their own thing happening, rather than the important thing happening. Disciplinary chauvinism happens all the time, but the important thing in Greece wasn't Socrates, but Solon and Pericles--it was democracy, not philosophy. It was the burgeoning of a democratic culture for the first time. My main beef with Pirsig's social/intellectual split is that it is typical of a philosopher--social conventions on one side, life of the mind on the other. It is elitist in the wrong way.
[Krimel] I would argue that the important thing in Greece wasn't Socrates, Solon or Pericles but Pythagoras and Euclid. It was the introduction of formal proofs and a systematic rule based approach to the quest for knowledge. But I would agree that Pirsig has done us no favor by claiming that the Greeks invented intellect. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
