DMB said: Let me put it this way. I didn't see Pirsig in your story. Didn't really see Plato or Socrates in it either, actually.
Matt: Two things: one you'll recall I said that it wasn't (exactly) about the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Pirsig, or Rorty. I was using their particulars as symbols for larger issues. Which is to say, I used some things I'd picked up on each of them in their context (scholarly facts) to elaborate a story about, roughly, professional philosophy. It's a trick Pirsig does in his books, in fact. And two, to say that if you don't talk about Plato's Form of the Good, you aren't talking about Plato is staggeringly near-sighted, and I find it difficult to find a reply that does justice to the hundreds of scholars and interpreters that have shed light on Plato and Socrates who, say, simply write about Plato's Phaedrus. When you dig into the scholarly literature on Plato, for instance, one thing you learn is that Plato's Republic didn't become what people think of when they hear the name Plato until about the 19th Century (a fact I remember once reading, but that I, ironically given your challenge to my schoarly understanding of Plato, could not track down the source of in the 15 or so minutes I spent quickly scavenging the 40 or so books I have on Greek philosophy--c'est la vie). Not to continually plug a point I was making about myself--why on earth would you demand that every piece about Plato be about one section of one of his 26 or so dialogues? Did he write those other ones for no apparent reason? This might be the silliest argument we've ever had. If you'd just said, "I liked the bit about the parallel between ZMM and the Republic. Though, since my predelictions lie in developing the side of Pirsig aimed at mysticism and systematic metaphysics, I'd wished you'd talked a bit more about mysticism than just the one tidbit about Orphism." But no--you gotta' make it a whole production about my continued complete misapprehension of Pirsig. Can't you just take sunshine shone for what it is and let the rest lie as it's supposed to in a throw-away piece like that? I swear, it's like you'll make hay out of anything. DMB said: Also, if my Professor was right, drawing a line between Socrates and Plato involves many interpretive complexities. Basically, one has to be a Plato scholar, a Classicist of some kind in order to draw such lines. It's way too tricky for me, anyway. Are you relying on anyone in particular there? Just curious. Matt: Yeah, I'm sure you're just curious. Be a man when you're calling me out, would you? First, it was an interpretive piece, not a scholarly splitting of Socrates and Plato, so I don't think my fairly symbolic distinction between the two requires much scholastic backing up, as I wasn't making many controversial claims (though, I suppose, one would need to have a read a bit of the scholarly stuff to perceive a controversial claim--time I usually take to point out, but I've been told it boggs down my writing). Second, where are Pirsig's footnotes and bibliography? Third, as Pirsig was writing for a diffuse audience and as I routinely get made fun of for having about as many footnotes as I do three-line sentences, I was trying my hand at suppressing scholarly apparatus in the hopes of readability. Serves me right. Since you questioned no particular thing I wrote in the piece, either about the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Pirsig or Rorty, I'll just throw out a few books I can remember particular bits having been gleaned from. The bits about the scene in which the Sophists and Socrates came out of is a melange of material I read from Werner Jaeger's Paideia (vol. 1), which in particular has a chapter on Arete and Nobility; W.K.C. Guthrie's still authoritative The Sophists, which gives as unbiased description of them and their context as you'll find; Alexander Nehamas' The Art of Living (which was based on the Sather Lectures he gave--the giving of which is something like the highest honor for a classicist), particularly the first three chapters which go into some argumentative detail about Platonic irony between Plato and his audience and Socratic irony between not only Socrates the character and his interlocutors, but also Socrates the character and Plato the author (Nehamas, in this book--as I remark in another post you wouldn't like for not talking about Plato while talking about Plato, What Happened to Political Philosophy?--is the dude who suggests "success" for arete); Pierre Hadot's What Is Ancient Philosophy?, a remarkablely readable (without skimping on scholarship) intro to that period, in both context and spirit; T.H. Irwin's Classical Thought, along with his entry in The Cambridge Companion to Plato--though Irwin is excessively boring and stiff as an interpreter, he does get most of his facts straight and provides many; I'll stop there. If one had to shake out an interpretive principle for sorting out Socrates from Plato as I did, I think it would have to be between Socrates the Dude Who Only Spoke and Professed Ignorance and Plato the Dude Who Wrote Quite a Bit About What He Knew, or Hoped to Know (Particularly For a Dude Who Loved a Dude Who Professed Ignorance). I take that to be a completely uncontroversial way of splitting them apart. Matt p.s. I have no desire to scare amateur philosophers--of which I not only consider myself one, but plan on remaining for the interim--from saying things about Socrates, Plato, or whomever just because interpretation can get dicey. Not only does Pirsig come to the amateur's defense, but so does Rorty. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_BR_life_in_synch_052009 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/
