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Motorcycle Book Store > Motorcycle books beginning with L
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Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals |
Author: Robert Pirsig
Published: 1992-12-01 |
List price: $7.99
Our price: $7.99
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As of: August 30th, 2008 11:28:33 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Metaphysics of Quality
Review of "Lila" by Robert Pirsig.
I loved this thought provoking story.
It is an impressive and engrossing book.
This book surpasses the intensity of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" in scope and in the development of the author's concepts of quality and value. It is a daring exposition on objective valuation and it offers a broad appeal. Pirsig shows his metaphysics of quality works in real situations and for life changing decisions.
Open up, expand your consciousness, read and enjoy this book.
I recommend this book.
 Great ideas, but don' t lose your head....
I loved this book. I found its analysis of societal values and modern history to be positively brilliant, and I have incorporated one of is main points, coined Dynamic vs. Static Quality as played out in various tensions of opposing values (in pirsigs taxonomy they are the intellectual, the social, and the intellectual), in my religious theory. His elaboration of the concept of value as the central reality echoes religious mystical traditions that I was aware of previously but did not takes seriously until Pirsig showed it to be relevant to practical reality.
However, upon rereading this book, I am disturbed by a number of points:
Foremost; I am disturbed by the narcissm of the author. While this his character might seem incidental to his philosophy, it is not. It allows him to take credit, with no attribution, for all ideas expressed as his own, when in fact many of them are rephrasings of ideas expressed by earlier individuals, and their brilliance lies not in the ideas themselves, but by the weaving together of multiple disparate ideas into a coherent tapestry.
On reread, I am also disturbed by the fictional format of the book; this format allows him to dispense with attribution, and absolves him of the responsibility of backing up his contentions with solid evidence. This does not mean they are right or wrong; what it does mean is that a layperson such as myself will have difficulty spotting an argument based on faulty evidence. It also allows him to misrepresent opposing viewpoints, such as his analysis of the practice of psychiatry. Perhaps this plays into his narcissm- in a fictional/memoir format he may play the expert to a lay readership in a way he could not do in a more scholarly format.
However, I must admit, that not being a scholar, it is unlikely that I would have encountered these ideas in a more scholarly format, so ultimately I am grateful for the semi-fictional format despite its faults.
And I was disturbed by one last thing, which I guess is marginal to the premise of the book, but I feel compelled to include: And that is the authors sexual practices and mores. Throughout the book he insists on categorizing sex as biological quality and nothing more, and his behavior reflects that. The idea that sex includes social, intellectual, and spiritual quality, and that our sexual choices include all these realms, never occurs to him. But I guess to me that says less about the quality of his thesis, than about the apparently poor quality of his sex life.
A great book, but don't expect "Motorcycle Maint - Part 2".
Of course it would be nearly impossible for him to live up to the first book, so I'll try not to compare it, but unfortunately I only bought this one because I liked "Zen" so much. It was a bit harder to get into, but Pirsig manages to bring up a very interesting topic for discussion, and analyzes it as only he can. It's not the same thing, but it's great work on it's own.
Lila
This book was ordered for my son. He is in the process of reading it.
Thank you for sending it so quickly!!
Creates a useful framework for thinking about one's life
Like Persig's earlier book 'Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance' this book uses the same technique as Plato's dialogues to discuss philosophical ideas.
The basic idea in all three works is to use an actual event (like fixing a motorcycle) as an example to discuss a general principle of philosophy. I always found Plato strange because he argued that specific cases should be deduced from abstract principles, not the other way around (idealism) but used the opposite technique (nominalism) in his writings. At least Persig uses nominalist techniques to argue for a nominalist position. I interpret one of the previous reviews as saying that Persig should have used idealist techniques..............
'Zen...' asked deep questions, and sometimes said there was no definite answer. Seventeen years later, Persig thinks he has some new answers. I agree. I often find myself using the ideas he taught me, to understand myself and the world. What more could I ask?
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