dmb quoted Pirsig: In ZAMM he says, "Plato HADN'T tried to destroy ARETE. He had ENCAPSULATED it; made a permanent , fixed Idea out of it; had CONVERTED it to a rigid , immobile Immortal Truth. He made ARETE THE Good, the highest form, the highest Idea of all.
Bo replied: This must mean that you see (ZAMM saying) that Plato's Ideas corresponds to "static" and - consequently - Plato's "transient, fleeting, shadowy" - as corresponding to "dynamic". And because Plato was the chief somist SOM's objective=static and subjective=dynamic. I will not tire you with further details. Just clear this up- dmb says: There would be no need to clear things up except that you chopped off the end of the quote as I originally posted it, as if you were intentionally trying to miss the point. Man, that's frustrating! Here's what it looked like before you changed it... In ZAMM he says, "Plato HADN'T tried to destroy ARETE. He had ENCAPSULATED it; made a permanent , fixed Idea out of it; had CONVERTED it to a rigid , immobile Immortal Truth. He made ARETE THE Good, the highest form, the highest Idea of all. It was subordinate only to Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that had gone before. That was why the Quality Phaedrus had arrived at in the classroom had seemed so close to Plato's Good. Plato's Good was TAKEN from the rhetoricians. ...The difference was that Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good was not a FORM of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way." (You'll find that near the end of ZAMM's chapter 29, the emphasis is Pirsig's.) dmb continues in the present:As the original quote states it, Plato's Good is a fixed and rigid idea but for the rhetoricians (the sophists) "it was not an idea at all". Instead, "it was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way." On the previous page (also in chapter 29) Pirsig writes:"Lightning Hits! QUALITY! VIRTUE! DHARMA! THAT is what the Sophists were teaching! NOT ethical relativism. NOT pristine 'virtue'. But ARETE. Excellence. DHARMA! ...Those first teachers of the Western world were teaching QUALITY, and the medium they had chosen was that of rhetoric. He has been doing it right all along." Sigh. I fully expect you to misread this explanation too, but there it is. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ Contacts: Organize your contact list. http://windowslive.com/connect/post/marcusatmicrosoft.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!503D1D86EBB2B53C!2285.entry?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_UGC_Contacts_032009 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/
