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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#11

Post by neutronicus »

alexophile wrote: post #9
prospero wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, how did people who had already studied philosophy find this book? Nothing in it struck me as particularly revelatory, and I'm wondering if maybe I just wasn't the intended audience.

If you come from a solid grounding in (specifically Greek) philosophy, the concepts and questions Pirsig raises are familiar, but for me the way he addressed them seemed much less self-indulgent. Greek philosophers were public intellectuals and, for me at least, reading their texts was somewhat off-putting because of the level of... grandstanding for lack of a better word. ZAMM seems so much more honest. It's framed…

MMV, indeed.

I found ZAMM irritatingly condescending.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#12

Post by steveklabnik »

alexophile wrote: post #9
prospero wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, how did people who had already studied philosophy find this book? Nothing in it struck me as particularly revelatory, and I'm wondering if maybe I just wasn't the intended audience.

If you come from a solid grounding in (specifically Greek) philosophy, the concepts and questions Pirsig raises are familiar, but for me the way he addressed them seemed much less self-indulgent. Greek philosophers were public intellectuals and, for me at least, reading their texts was somewhat off-putting because of the level of... grandstanding for lack of a better word. ZAMM seems so much more honest. It's framed…

> grandstanding for lack of a better word.

This is really interesting to me. I've recently started reading more political philosophy, and a few weeks ago, dug into "On the Genealogy of Morals" by Nietzsche, and when I got to that whole anti-Judiasim bit (the one about hawks and lambs), all I could think was "this sounds like /b/" or "I bet he was just trolling for pageviews, given that he's writing this in 1887 Germany"...

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#13

Post by tibbon »

prospero wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, how did people who had already studied philosophy find this book? Nothing in it struck me as particularly revelatory, and I'm wondering if maybe I just wasn't the intended audience.

There have been a few books like this, that are supposed to be massive and life changing, but when I read they just fell flat. Everything by Ayn Rand I read was like this too.

I could get past the pacing, the circular storytelling, and largely the premise of it just didn't work in my mind. It was not something I could get into and getting past more than a chapter at a time was painful.

Oddly, I like philosophy and I ride motorcycles too.

My only theory is that since these books have been published, the core ideas have worked their way through our culture so throughly that reading it now just seems like 'duh'. This is the way I felt reading Ayn Rand and not a single interesting thing there popped out at me as new or novel.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#14

Post by kalak451 »

I had to read this as part of my Rhetoric class my freshman year of college. I hated just about every minute of it, very hard to absorb, more than a big long winded in places. It also didn't help that my TA for the class was convinced that the book was written about him (not really, but every other class was a discussion about how what was happening in the book was related to his life.) However, attempting to deal with, understand, classify, define "quality" is one of the few explicit activities I did for a college class that I spend any time reflecting on today.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#15

Post by alexophile »

steveklabnik wrote: post #12
alexophile wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you come from a solid grounding in (specifically Greek) philosophy, the concepts and questions Pirsig raises are familiar, but for me the way he addressed them seemed much less self-indulgent. Greek philosophers were public intellectuals and, for me at least, reading their texts was somewhat off-putting because of the level of... grandstanding for lack of a better word. ZAMM seems so much more honest. It's framed…

> grandstanding for lack of a better word. This is really interesting to me. I've recently started reading more political philosophy, and a few weeks ago, dug into "On the Genealogy of Morals" by Nietzsche, and when I got to that whole anti-Judiasim bit (the one about hawks and lambs), all I could think was "this sounds like /b/" or "I bet he was just trolling for pageviews, given that he's writing this in 1887 Germa…

I like that comparison, he is kind of the troll of philosophical history. The interesting thing about Nietzsche, though (esepecially in Geneaology) is that he takes on so many different voices to address different existing philosophies such that you can't really say (although many have) that he's anti-semitic (In fact, IIRC he seemed to dig the old testament Jews' style) or anti-christianity.

The difference between his adolescent jabs at Christianity, Judaism, the English, etc. and an ironic motivational poster is that he had a sort of overarching point to make. Among other things, he wanted to demonstrate that existing philosophy was essentially a really deep catalog of the personal biases of a bunch of well-spoken white dudes.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#16

Post by neutronicus »

tibbon wrote: post #13
prospero wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, how did people who had already studied philosophy find this book? Nothing in it struck me as particularly revelatory, and I'm wondering if maybe I just wasn't the intended audience.

There have been a few books like this, that are supposed to be massive and life changing, but when I read they just fell flat. Everything by Ayn Rand I read was like this too. I could get past the pacing, the circular storytelling, and largely the premise of it just didn't work in my mind. It was not something I could get into and getting past more than a chapter at a time was painful. Oddly, I like philosophy and I…

> My only theory is that since these books have been published, the core ideas have worked their way through our culture so throughly that reading it now just seems like 'duh'. This is the way I felt reading Ayn Rand and not a single interesting thing there popped out at me as new or novel.

Either that, or the ideas are presented within the pages as interesting and novel, but they're actually simple takes on simple questions. You get all the aesthetic of intellectual challenge and none of the challenge, and then you get to congratulate yourself for understanding something so highbrow. Kind of like literary video games.

I put a lot of hacker-culture sacred cows (Vonnegut, Twain, Huxley, Orwell) in this category.

An alternate hypothesis is that being raised by two professors of literature turned me into an insufferably snobby twat.

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#17

Post by Gilpo »

tibbon wrote: post #13
prospero wrote: post #3

Out of curiosity, how did people who had already studied philosophy find this book? Nothing in it struck me as particularly revelatory, and I'm wondering if maybe I just wasn't the intended audience.

There have been a few books like this, that are supposed to be massive and life changing, but when I read they just fell flat. Everything by Ayn Rand I read was like this too. I could get past the pacing, the circular storytelling, and largely the premise of it just didn't work in my mind. It was not something I could get into and getting past more than a chapter at a time was painful. Oddly, I like philosophy and I…

Pirsig and Rand both embed their philosophy within fiction, thus leaving you befuddled and oddly unsatisfied: "Did I just read a philosophical treatise or fiction?"

Re: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

#19

Post by sfphotoarts »

Gilpo wrote: post #17
tibbon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a few books like this, that are supposed to be massive and life changing, but when I read they just fell flat. Everything by Ayn Rand I read was like this too. I could get past the pacing, the circular storytelling, and largely the premise of it just didn't work in my mind. It was not something I could get into and getting past more than a chapter at a time was painful. Oddly, I like philosophy and I…

Pirsig and Rand both embed their philosophy within fiction, thus leaving you befuddled and oddly unsatisfied: "Did I just read a philosophical treatise or fiction?"

Does it matter? Isn't the point to read these ideas and to as with all good ideas they get told in many forms. As with art movements, perspective shifts and whole genres of the arts move in unison, from performing arts to fine art. Unless as is the case with some ideas, the medium is the message, then the format used, be it a nice comfortable paperback or a think hardcover text is of no importance.
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