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In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles equally with the ghost of his past and with the so much extremely imperative philosophical questions of the twentieth century--why has technologies alienated us from our world? what are the boundaries of rational prognosis? if we will now not define the reputable, how do we dwell it? Unfortunately, concurrently exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the heart of the nineteenth century. With the exception of Poincar, he ignores the more refreshing philosophers who have tackled his so much urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the finish, the narrator's claims to originality turn into overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His answer to a synthesis of the rational and revolutionary by elevating Quality to a metaphysical degree only repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to so much other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling tale. And he is an precise innovator in his attempt and popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western concern/merchandise dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie now not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the easiest way it raises them. Like a cross amongst The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high america of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of opportunity." --Brian Bruya
Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a offer-aggravating cross-america motorcycle journey with his son each of the easiest way through which the maintenance of the motorcycle turns into a demonstration of how we will unify the chilly, rational realm of technologies with the nice and cozy, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to develop into one with the recreation, to engage in it wholly, to see and recognize all particulars--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorbike.
One of the so much extremely imperative and influential books written ago half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a resounding, moving, and penetrating examination of how we dwell . . . and a large ranging meditation on how to dwell better. Here is the book that modified a generation: an unforgettable narration of a summer motorcycle journey across America's Northwest, undertaken by a father and his young son. A tale of love and fear -- of boom, discovery, and acceptance -- that turns into a profound private and philosophical odyssey into lifestyles's fundamental questions, this uniquely exhilarating up thus a long way normal is equally touching and transcendent, resonant with the myriad confusions of existence . . . and the small, obvious triumphs that propel us forward.
