Matt said to Ron: ...In this rendering of the Platonic/Sophist antithesis, which is often the Platonist/anti-Platonist antithesis, Pirsig being an arch-antiPlatonist, I'm suggesting--just as Plato _knew_ but could not acknowledge--that we need both rhetoric and dialectic. Or, to use Pirsig's revaluation of the dialectic/rhetoric antithesis (whereby _everything_ is birthed from rhetoric), we need both long speeches and cross-examinations.
dmb says: Long speeches are rhetorical and conversations are dialectical. Seriously? I think that's an unfortunate trivialization the difference between rhetoric and dialectic. Isn't more like the difference between art and logic, music and math, dynamic and static? And it seems to me that essays and debates aren't inherently one or the other. I mean, both forms can be artful and both forms can be precise. It all depends on the aims, skills, and attitude of the writer, not the form employed. If there actually is a "principle" that says long-speeches are "bullshit" and cross-examination is "the fountainhead", it certainly is news to me. Matt also said: The point is--writing a good post is (maybe: _can be_) much different than writing a good essay. If a person thinks otherwise--I wonder if we perhaps have different processes for writing. Because in a post, you are responding to a person in real time (for the most part). In an essay, there is no conversation partner--you have to, pretty much, do all of the talking. In the MD, you get to take a pause, bounce off of other's, catch your breath, _breathe_. In an essay, you gotta' deliver it all--on this analogy--in one breath, by yourself: so you better know what you're saying ahead of time. ...And saying everything at once changes everything. dmb says: Writing an essay certainly makes demands on us but not in the same way that other people make demands on us. Conversations aren't easy to plan simply because one never knows what the other person might say and they aren't under our control in the same way. But either way, if you're writing then you're talking to people. Its just that the essay is a form where the writer does all the talking and others do all the listening. Writing an essay presumes you have something to say, to teach. Writing a post merely presumes there is something worth talking about. I suppose, ideally, the best would be a combination where essays are debated. But I really don't think Pirsig sought to rescue rhetoric because he loved long speeches more than dialogue. The idea is simply that excellence in thought and speech is not something we can define in advance or subject to static rules. Writing well and speaking the truth is not a paint-by-numbers affair. _________________________________________________________________ Introducing Live Search cashback . It's search that pays you back! http://search.live.com/cashback/?&pkw=form=MIJAAF/publ=HMTGL/crea=introsrchcashback 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/
