Andre said: ...I find it very unsatisfactory to hear that 'Plato's denigration of the feminine was due to repression of his own sexuality or of a crystalization of what was already happening on a large scale' . ...Was it a period of the biological PoV's being so enmeshed with social POV's that the former was still dominant... i.e the (struggling) mental/social PoV dominated by the biological/sexual PoV? This hardly seems possible since Pirsig suggests that it is within this time-span intellect at last freed itself from society. ( to be clear Pirsig argues this. I am not convinced that this [clear] break has taken place ...yet... hence my apprehension). Is Pirsig correct about his analysis? (Personally I suggest not) dmb says:Sexually speaking, I'd say the ancient Greeks were a lot less repressed that we are. They also had very different ideas about it. Men who loved only women, for example, were considered less than manly while homosexuality was considered the more macho way to be. In Plato's case, though, he had a hierarchy similar to the MOQ's. Plato saw eros as the common factor in a ladder of love, with physical love being the lowest kind of eros, the love of honor being roughly equivalent to the social level and the love of wisdom being Plato's version of the intellectual level. In this way, eros leads us to higher and higher realms. Plato worked homosexual relationships into this hierarchy of love, saying that two men can "give birth" to ideas together, unlike those lowly breeders who only give birth to babies. There is definitely a denigration of the flesh in this picture but there is an even more vigorous and sustained attack by Plato against all the social level traditions, Homer and the poets, traditional theology, common opinions and practices, the pursuit of wealth and power, and all that sort of stuff. It's pretty clear me that all of this centers around his distinction between appearance and reality and that is basically a distinction between social and intellectual values. I mean, Pirsig's analysis holds up just fine as far as I can tell.
dmb said previously: You could say intellect was born in this context, when mastery and control were the dominant cultural values. Andre replied: And this is what I am questioning David...mastery and control of whom? Was it mastery of social 'over' biological? dmb says:Well, yes. But as I was trying to suggest with mention of bullfights and monster-slayer myths, it was not just mastery over our own biological appetites but also nature in general. When civilization was young this was about taming the wilderness and the wild beasts, but this same attitude can be seen in Francis Bacon's formulation of empirical science, where he says nature's inorganic secrets must be tortured from her. In a technological culture like ours, the game seems to be mastery and control over the total environment. Maybe it's one of those ironies of history that the impulse the slay monsters has itself become the monster to be slain. Andre said:Plato has shown that he was sensitive to this influence, this part of reality. Was he confused about his own reaction to DQ? Of course we can only surmise, but, given the cultural cristalisation to which you are referring, could it be possible that Plato followed SQ, that which was safe (socially) [an immoral stance for a philosopher!!] thereby denying the DQ (female) principle because HE felt uncomfortable with this part of reality? ( I am not suggesting that all of DQ is female, I am only trying to make my point within this context). dmb says:If all of philosophy since has been a footnote to Plato, then he's a pretty big deal, a world-historical figure. BUT he was just a person. I think he was a profoundly conservative person. In fact, some passages are creepy reminders of fascism. In any case, he put a premium on stability and saw change as more or less synonymous with decay. He was anti-democratic, an elitist, a censor of the arts and a perfectionist in theology such that God was purely good and could never do evil. I sincerely wonder if he invented the problem of evil. Andre said:David, do tell me that Westren civilisation was not left in this mess due to the frailty and weakness of one old man?! dmb says: He's an important figure but he's only one of many, many ghosts. I think the otherworldliness that came later was far worse than Plato's. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® goes with you. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Mobile1_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/
