tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post1499777634255180787..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: Quality, Relation, Signskholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-43748969175605702182013-04-22T01:59:20.012-07:002013-04-22T01:59:20.012-07:00Please find some references which in one way or an...Please find some references which in one way or another are relevant to the topics that you covered in this essay and on your site altogether.<br /><br />www.consciousnessitself.org<br />www.dabase.org/Reality_Itself_Is_Not_In_The_Middle.htm<br />http://spiralledlight.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/4068<br />www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/zero_point.html <br />www.beezone.com/whiteandorangeproject/index.html <br />Plus a unique appreciation of The Symposium <br />www.adidamla.org/newsletters/newsletter-aprilmay2006.pdf <br />Frederick Frothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04318304600140946026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-28714219565405589802013-04-04T10:13:18.571-07:002013-04-04T10:13:18.571-07:00I have to admit that I am innocent of Derrida so y...I have to admit that I am innocent of Derrida so you will have to impair my blissful condition to make your stricture clear. <br /><br />Things are not quite as clearcut as Siris makes out. Arguments uttered by philosophers are like statements in parliament, they are adherent seeking devices. Being naturally social animals and not logic machines, humans, especially homo philosophicus, react to arguments by either tending to accept or reject them. That’s a generalisation which probably has exceptions but when a position purports to be established by proof or demonstration then it may be assumed that it is held to be persuasive by its adherents. Another thing about philosophical arguments is that they are ideally stripped of distorting rhetoric. It is the individual auditor that brings the foundation that leads to real assent in Newman’s view. <br /><br />Maybe I’m completely mistaken and like Professor Faust I haven’t done my work as Siris suggests. The dog ate my homework Sir.<br /><br />Did you do a semester or several on Rhetoric? ombhurbhuvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-78517968449455465632013-04-04T07:50:05.615-07:002013-04-04T07:50:05.615-07:00Naturally, some of this comes to mind because in p... Naturally, some of this comes to mind because in part Pirsig's main character champions rhetoric and the ancient sophists against dialectic and in particular Aristotle, though many motifs of ZAMM also come out of Plato, notably the hero Phaedrus' nom-de-guerre. I too was struck by the relevance of rhetoric to the post above, upon reading your <a href="http://ombhurbhuva.blogspot.com/2013/04/professor-jennifer-faust-on-religious.html" rel="nofollow">recent remarks</a> on Jennifer Faust, and the critique to which Brandon subjected her <a href="http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2013/04/begging-doxastic-question.html" rel="nofollow">on Siris</a>. Brandon initially took issue with Faust's claim that arguments are meant to persuade. No, says Brandon, argument is for understanding grounds:<br /><br /><i>"providing support for, or reasons to believe, is not the same as persuading, and if the aim of an argument is to provide support for a conclusion, this is distinct from persuading. Providing support depends on the facts of the case and the logical structure of the argument. Persuading depends, at least in addition, on the psychology of people presented with the argument.... The classical account recognized that persuasion requires the combination of three elements: </i>ethos<i> or character, movement of the </i>pathoi <i>or passions, and </i>logos<i> or rational account. All three are always operative in persuasion, which is why no one in the classical tradition holds that rhetorical arguments work exactly like demonstrative arguments: rhetorical arguments, arguments for the purpose of persuading, are modifications of the primary kinds of arguments (demonstrative and dialectical) in order to express more clearly the good aspects of the character of the persuader and to move more easily the passions of the audience."</i><br /><br />It's been a long while since I have been in academia but these are certainly the auspices under which deconstruction made its entry into the american universities. This was an observation that figured frequently back in the '90s during the Clone -- I mean, Culture -- Wars. If I recall, back when I was first reading Derrida, the resonance between Pirsig's and Derrida's readings of the <i>Phaedrus</i> occasioned a lot of scribbling in my notebooks.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-71854634072812190912013-04-04T02:24:08.949-07:002013-04-04T02:24:08.949-07:00I’ve just been on a slight excursion into the worl...I’ve just been on a slight excursion into the world of rhetoric and the thought strikes me that this subject is peculiar to the American education system under the style and title of ‘Rhetoric and Composition’. Maybe it has been supplanted by ‘Critical Thinking’. ombhurbhuvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-42460221852723026892013-03-27T18:36:53.185-07:002013-03-27T18:36:53.185-07:00Pirsig's first book is really a novel, albeit ...Pirsig's first book <i>is</i> really a novel, albeit one with a strong philosophical argument -- not unlike Goethe's Elective Affinities, for instance. His second book, <i>Lila</i>, is an argument masquerading as a novel, and is less successful (though the philosophy is no less worth attending to). <br /><br />Maritain is a central figure in trying to think through St Thomas now. I've been trying to fathom his <i>Degrees of Knowledge</i>, but, well, he's challenging. Thank you for underscoring the point about connaturality -- it's useful to have these compass points for one's reading. skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-5115865473512311972013-03-27T02:30:03.771-07:002013-03-27T02:30:03.771-07:00I think you are right about ZAAM and its philosoph...I think you are right about ZAAM and its philosophical power but being a novel it has to represent the overweening focus of a man who sees himself as the guardian of quality and who therefore resists all attempts at apodeictic reduction. Quality is a felt relation but not therefore unreal or insubstantial. It is a structure to structure interaction. Powers collide. However in the aesthetic and moral domain powers can be cultivated. This introduces the theme of connaturality which Maritain develops in relation to art and poetry. In Aristotle the good man feels the good because he is in harmony with it. He is his own law and what he declares to be good is accepted as such. The expression <i> I feel you</i> arises out of what Sartre would have called the pre-reflective cogito, the basic cast of one’s life responds to that of another. The relation of cast to colour or a quality that has extension but without a material shape is not accidental. (the blues as a cast in this sense)<br /><br />Looking at the concept of quality it is near to connaturality in its intent and this is brought out in the Zen in the Art of, Zendo, thinking about craft process which the book offers as an example of quality. <br /><br />The other point about relation and phenomena and noumena and their tendency to take us towards correlationism perhaps and the relative end of relation away from our home in quality, is central.<br /><br />Stimulating post.ombhurbhuvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.com