4 Robert M. Pirsig Quotes on Plato

Robert M. Pirsig quotes on plato

41. Plato is the essential Buddha-seeker who appears again and again in each generation, moving onward and upward toward the 'one.' Aristotle is the eternal motorcycle mechanic who prefers the 'many.'

43. When it is known that Plato put his own words in Socrates' mouth (Aristotle says this) there should be no reason to doubt that he could have put his own words into other mouths too.

55. Why destroy arete? And no sooner had he asked the question than the answer came to him. 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.

58. In his attempt to unite the Good and the True by making the Good the highest Idea of all, Plato is nevertheless usurping arete's place with dialectically determined truth. Once the Good has been contained as a dialectical idea it is no trouble for another philosopher to come along and show by dialectical methods that arete, the Good, can be more advantageously demoted to a lower position within a 'true' order of things, more compatible with the inner workings of dialectic. Such a philosopher was not long in coming. His name was Aristotle.