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Summary: A Metaphysics of Lila
Review: Readers of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance may be somewhat disappointed.This is another attempt at defining quality,yet it is still very thought provoking and insightful though at times it also contains a very humorous aspect.All in all this is a entertaining book with a few philosophical ideas tossed in the mix,I liked it.
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Summary: Interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking.
Review: I really enjoyed this book the first time I read it and the second and third time too. I love Pirsig's writing style. I love how he weaves so much interesting information and new points of view into a story, giving your brain a break once in awhile. There is a lot of food for thought here. I still have a lot of digesting to do. I'm the author of the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works, and although Pirsig's book isn't directly self-help, it isn't merely philosophical either. He's got a new way to look at the same things we've been looking at all along, and the new perspective would naturally lead to new actions. Will those new actions improve the quality of your own life or the lives of others? I don't know. The organization of levels of quality: biological, social, etc., and the distinction of static vs. dynamic quality are very fundamental concepts and any benefit that might come out of it might not be as apparent as you'd think. But whatever you can say about this book, it is thought-provoking. The reviews below are very much FOR the book or AGAINST it. To me that's a sign of a book that has the potential to shake things up, in this case, I think for the better.
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Summary: brilliant and please... stop comparing it to ZAMM
Review: there is is this tendency to compare the works of an author. these are two diferrent books. one is about morals and the other about values.lila is fantastic book. the build up is nice and the instrospective phaderus clears up a lot of confusion about quality and its dimensions. strong moral questions regarding destruction of sepcies at lowers levels of evolution are addressed and the purpose is that the metaphysics of quality can be used ti explain and sort out many questions about anthropology, sex, communism , capitalism, hippie culture, growth/development. etc its a different experience then ZAMM and comparing the two would be like saying that flying is better than a cruise. read the book.. its brilliant and impressive
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Summary: Do not touch!
Review: 'Lila' simply serves to demonstrate that Pirsig has now taken himself far too seriously and fallen hook line and sinker for his own muddled morality. How anyone can so completely misrepresent western philosophy with (seemingly) a straight face is beyond me. Like Linford Christie at the Olympic games thinking, to the detriment of everyone else, that he is above being disqualified for two false starts; like scary spice who thinks she can forge a solo career despite being tone deaf; like so many other pretentious 'stars' who get ideas above their station; Pirsig has flicked two fingers up at 2000 years of philosophy, totally ignored what they actually say, preferring to invent arguments for his own ends, and put forward a so called Metaphysics of Quality, which is so unoriginal, boring and misguided that one wonders what his motivation is. If these ideas were presented as an academic paper, any professor worth his salt would throw them in the trash can and quite right too.
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Summary: What a pill!
Review: "Zen and the Art" is one of my favorite books of all time -- exquisitely focused and balanced, a fascinating exploration of intellectual high ground with compelling human interest. Pirsig should have left it at that. "Lila" is a rambling, shapeless polemic. Page after page, chapter after chapter of navel-staring diatribe, it is the work of a person who has spent far too much time in his own head. After about page 300, I found myself losing patience with it and skimming over the "Metaphysics of Quality" spew, in search of something resembling a plot line. (The only thing that keeps this review at two stars rather than one is that a plot line does indeed exist, if you're willing to sift through a mountain of repetitious opining.) Pirsig should have heeded the final lesson on Quality from his first book and never written his 11,000 index cards. Or "Lila."
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Summary: Philosophical Novels
Review: In earning my philosophy degree, i never heard Persig's works discussed, to my dismay. My primary interest is in philosophy of mind, and i found Persig's description of mind as patterns in matter, analagous to programs in computers ("computer thoery"), to be quite understandable. This understandability is possible due to the fact that Persig does not write dry, acedemic texts, but Novels. I found Lila much more enjoyable and interesting than Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance. If you are interested in current (as opposed to historical) philosophy, this text is a must.
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Summary: On the surface profound, but deep down very superficial
Review: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a very well written book - if you take your philosophy with a bucket of salt. This book, by contrast, is not only philosophical nonsense, but also very badly written. I first read 'Lila' as an attempt to understand how the Metaphysics of Quality might be applied to practical moral dilemmas. I thought that the best way of testing it as a theory would be to look at its practical consequences for mankind. After all this is the system which for one acolyte is a "profound discovery" which "I see world legal structures eventually adopting." Such a grandiose claim needed looking into and so look into it I did. It soon became clear that this was simply Emotivism in disguise. Pirsig cleverly picks and chooses which level of evolution to apply in which context and in doing so exposes the complete futility of his quest for a new ethic. There is nothing here beyond the 'boo/hurrah' of his own feelings, the discarding of a dualist metaphysics, a position that was abandoned long ago by modern scientific philosophy. To focus on the heart of the matter, Pirsig sees his philosophy as throwing some brilliant new light upon the field of ethics. In this he is surely wrong and I extract just one example to demonstrate why. In the context of the American civil war Pirsig claims that, "an evolutionary morality argues the North was right in pursuing that war because a nation is a higher form of evolution than a human body," and so the hundreds of thousands of lives were justifiably lost because the higher level of evolution (society) prevailed over the lower level (biology). In the next paragraph and in the context of capital punishment, Pirsig goes on to claim that in the case of a criminal who does not threaten the, "established social structure," it is plain that, "what makes killing him immoral is that a criminal is not just a biological organism. He is not even just a defective unit in society. Whenever you kill a human being you are killing a source of thought too." What seems to utterly evade Pirsig is the fact that the hundreds of thousands who died in that civil war were also a, "source of thought too," and that therefore by his own criteria the war was morally wrong because the ideas lost through these deaths were at a higher evolutionary plane than the nation they were sacrificed for. And here the philosophy becomes even more muddled because it would be possible to argue (as Pirsig hints at) that the ideas of equality which drove the war on were morally superior to the nation and the ideas of those who defended it. But by what criteria do we decide which ideas take precedence? The MoQ has nothing to say on this matter and yet this is the whole basis of discussing ethics. The conflict between ideas is the very essence of morality and the MoQ has nothing to say about it. This is why, 'real philosophers,' have little to say about the MoQ and it simply boils down to the fact that the MoQ has little to say about them or their subject. Far from being in a position where it is possible to say that, "I see world legal structures eventually adopting this ethical system," we are looking at a structureless mish mash of nonsense. In practical terms, how could we possibly advocate a system which would allow the killing of a mental retard to provide organs for a genius who would die without them, simply because the genius appears to be on a higher evolutionary level? Or the destruction of millions of Jews by the Nazi party because their biological bodies and possibly even their (static) society and traditions were dominated by the dynamic intellectual idea of a super race. This is utterly bizarre and surely no system of ethics can work on such an arbitrary criteria. The fact is that Persia is using an ethical system based upon pure Emotivism to pick and choose which value layers he chooses to read into any given context, in a vain attempt to give rational credibility to his emotional urges and it is by this method that he is able to fit, "all the moral conflicts of the world . . . . . (into) this kind of framework". The objections raised here (and they are by no means exhaustive) are thus two fold. First, the MoQ seeks its credibility by trying to be at least as credible as a determinist theory of nature and in doing so measures itself against a discredited world view. It succeeds but only in the sense that it becomes equally incredible. Second, the MoQ utterly ignores the relationship of ideas in ethics, to the extent that it has almost nothing to say about morality. If person A kills person B then the MoQ might say that person A was justified in killing person B because person A did it to protect his nation state which is of more value that the biological entity of person B. Alternatively it might say that person A was wrong to kill person B because the source of ideas that constitutes person B was of more value than the nation state person A was defending. I'm sure we could all come up with a whole host of other scenarios within this context and we can have no way of choosing one over the other. For these reasons alone the Metaphysics of Quality is of no concern to anyone seeking an ethical framework. If you want to be bored silly by a dull narrative, while at the same time indulging in the worst type of new-age nonsense, then buy 'Lila.' If you seek serious moral philosophy then look elsewhere.
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Summary: SKIP IT - READ ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE...
Review: ...INSTEAD. This is a poor attempt to capitalize on the success of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," and considering how highly I think of said book, I found this to be a real disappointment. I thought Lila was a contrived archetype designed to drive home some rather pedestrian points of morality; overall, I was just plain DISAPPOINTED, and would have been all too happy to let the saga end with "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."
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Summary: Max reading delight
Review: All I can say is that every person should read this book. One of the best books available. Even better then Zen.
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Summary: Good ideas but less readable
Review: Pirsig is the author of the cult classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In that volume, written in 1974, he used his knowledge of classical philosophy to propose an explanation for the disconnect between the emerging humanist values of the hippie generation and the more traditional, black-and-white views of their parents. ZAMM is a ripping good read and a pretty good introduction to some of the philosophy at the core of Western civilization. Lila is the long-awaited sequel to ZAMM. In it, the author continues to mine philosophies of the past and apply them to current questions and problems. In particular, Lila is concerned with ethics and morals. These fields are traditionally linked to philosophy. They are primarily concerned with the difference between good and evil and determination of how one ought to act in different circumstances. Lila is not, frankly, as good a read as ZAMM. (Few books are.) But the ideas it presents are just as important and maybe more applicable to daily life. This book is a fitting sequel, and every fan of ZAMM should read it. But they shouldn't expect to enjoy it quite as much.
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