Robert Pirsig

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  • Lila
    by Robert Pirsig
    ISBN 0553299611 (0-553-29961-1)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    The author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance examines life's essential issues as he recounts the journey down the Hudson River in a sailboat of his philosopher-narrator Phaedrus. Reprint. [via]

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  • Lila : An Inquiry into Morals
    by Robert Pirsig
    ISBN 0553077376 (0-553-07737-6)
    Hardcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    This new edition of "Lila: An Inquiry into Morals" is revised and expanded by Robert M. Pirsig, author of "Zen and the Art of the Motorcycle Maintenance". "Zen and the Art of the Motorcycle Maintenance", Robert M. Pirsig's worldwide bestseller, holds a unique and unforgettable place in modern Western literature. Now in "Lila", he brings us a new voyage, a poignant journey and a passionate philosophical exploration. Phaedrus - a character familiar to readers of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" - is sailing down the Hudson River when he meets Lila Blewitt, an unapologetically sexual, psychologically unstable woman whom a mutual friend warns him against. But Phaedrus is drawn to her physically, and interested in her intellectually, finding her "a culture of one" in whom he discerns an unexpected "Quality". Sailing with him to Manhattan, where her mental state deteriorates further, Lila prompts Phaedrus to explore conflicts of values, such as those between Native Americans and Europeans, or between the insane and the normal. Finally, after years of struggling, he formulates his "Metaphysics of Quality", which offer a system of understanding - and evaluating - actions according to a hierarchy of four evolutionary realms (natural, biological, social and intellectual). Lila remains elusive to Phaedrus' penetrating intellect, and her destiny remains a mystery, but Pirsig's wide-ranging philosophical explorations will provoke and engage readers in the memorable experience of pursuing the journey started by Pirsig in the 1970s to its final end. [via]

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  • Zen Art of Motorcycle
    by Robert Pirsig
    ISBN 055325748X (0-553-25748-X)
    Softcover, Bantam Books

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    Book summary:

    In his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig brings us a literary chautauqua, a novel that is meant to both entertain and edify. It scores high on both counts.

    Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a present-tense cross-country motorcycle trip with his son during which the maintenance of the motorcycle becomes an illustration of how we can unify the cold, rational realm of technology with the warm, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to become one with the activity, to engage in it fully, to see and appreciate all details--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorcycle.

    In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with the most important philosophical questions of the 20th century--why has technology alienated us from our world? what are the limits of rational analysis? if we can't define the good, how can we live it? Unfortunately, while exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the middle of the 19th century. With the exception of Poincaré, he ignores the more recent philosophers who have tackled his most urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the end, the narrator's claims to originality turn out to be overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His solution to a synthesis of the rational and creative by elevating Quality to a metaphysical level simply repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling story. And he is a true innovator in his attempt to popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western subject/object dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the way it raises them. Like a cross between The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high country of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of possibility. --Brian Bruya [via]

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