Anybody read Pirsig’s ‘lila?’
I found it very interesting.
It is stated p.119 that: ‘the world is primarily a moral order’
p.120, ‘the world is composed of nothing but moral value…’
Much discussion of the problems of subject-object metaphysics cum classification of the world - fascinating and very different to traditionally accepted notions of substance, etc…
Any thoughts?
peter
I haven’t read that one. But Im reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, also by Pirsig.
In it he talks alot about classic thinking and romantic thinking and how to combine them. He also uses the phrase “the analytical kinfe” which he says is what we use to divide the world up in to categories and such.
I havent finished it yet so im not sure if he says the same thing, ‘the world is primarily a moral order.’ But he might. Regardless it’s a really good book so far.
Hi Zak
Yeah, I read, ‘Zen and the Art…’ many a long year ago, and was impressed: I think it’s what you might call cult reading, no? It spawned a whole lot of other similarly titled works – or was it itself spawned by some similar sounding work, ‘Zen and the Art of Archery…’ or is that just my confused brain?
I came across, ‘Lila,’ quite by accident in a second-hand bookshop. The complete title of the book is, ‘Lila: An Inquiry into Morals,’ and, according to Pirsig’s own blurb: ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was like a first child. Maybe that will always be the best-loved one. But this second child is the bright one. I think a lot of people will argue with some of the ideas in Lila. There may be controversy. But if people are still reading these two books a hundred years from now, I predict Lila will be the one they consider the more important’.
I can’t recall if Lila discusses classic thinking and romantic thinking: it sounds familiar, but then art generally has been examined, what, since the nineteenth century, under the microscope in terms of its Apollonian and/or Dionysian aspects, even extended as paradigms?
Lila looks into the condition of the modern American psyche, exalting the role of the Native American Indian in the formation of the American identity. There’s a good deal of argument about anthropology and the basis of science, about metaphysics and Quality, with a capital Q, i.e., excellence, as the ultimate reality.
A short quotation, ‘The problems of free will versus determinism, of the relation of mind to matter, of the discontinuity of matter at the sub-atomic level, of the apparent purposelessness of the universe and the life within it are all monster platypi created by the subject-object metaphysics.’
There’s more, much of it. He proposes a whole new epistemology that overcomes all the hitherto insoluble problems encountered in philosophy and the sciences.
Interesting stuff!
peter
It’s sitting in my bookcase somewhere - I’ll dig it out and re-read, I seem to remember I didn’t like it as much as Motorcycle though. Mind you - I was young and crass then… 