Please ignore my last post (August 16, 2009 1:49 AM) on this subject, I neglected to include an all-important 'not'.
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of MarshaV Sent: Sunday, August 16, 2009 1:49 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MD] [Bulk] Re: Rorty's Relativism -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of david buchanan Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2009 5:42 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Bulk] Re: [MD] Rorty's Relativism Marsha quoted from Wiki on the Sophists: Sophists are considered the founding fathers of relativism in the Western World. Elements of relativism emerged among the Sophists in the 5th century BC. Notably, it was Protagoras who coined the phrase, "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not." The thinking of the Sophists is mainly known through their opponents, Plato and Socrates. dmb says: Yes, that's how Plato saw them and that bit of slander has pretty well stuck ever since. But Pirsig disagrees. Near the end of chapter 29 in ZAMM he writes... " 'Man is the measure of all things.' Yes, that's what he is saying about Quality. Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists and materialists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things...it fits. And they taught rhetoric...that fits. ... See? Marsha: See what? You've offered words, and I do not see them as evidence that Protagoras and RMP were not relativists. To me 'Man is the measure of all things.' means that Protagoras, and the early Sophists, were relativists and RMP agrees with them. Not the "source" of all things, but the measurer of all things, meaning measured relative to their experience of them, participators. From Wiki: 'The term (relativism) often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture.' And not an ethical relativism where anything goes, but one where man should participate using intelligence to determine the best course of action, arête. 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/ 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/
