Hi Matt Minor point below.. 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.
DM: Sure democracy and critical thought more generally is key to challenging religion, tradition and authority but the Greeks also give us science via new sort of talk about reason, evidence and experience. Dewey tells this story pretty well. And science is a pretty big player in out history as well as democracy. Also enlightenment protestantism is of course very important in the revival of free thinking and also gives us capitalism and economic individualism which helps democracy and tradition bashing just a touch too. 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/
