
On the Road with Aristotle: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) - samclemens
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/zen-art-motorcycle-maintenance/
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c141charlie
There's a section in this book that discusses the inability of a narcissist to
fix a motorcycle. As a software engineer with narcissistic tendencies, that
section really struck a nerve, and inspired me to dive way deeper into our
systems and try to understand "what where they thinking" when working in a
legacy code base someone else designed. This curiosity has led to several aha
moments that I would have prematurely dismissed as an idiotic code base
designed by idiots had I not spent the time to try and understand it.

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tsomctl
There's a number of times when I've finished reading a book, reading an
article, listening to an album, or watching a movie, I'm left thinking "What
the fuck was that?" It didn't necessarily bring joy, but it made me think, and
much later I realize how good it was. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance is the best example of this.

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sharkweek
People complain about this book a lot but I enjoyed it for the most part.
Having no philosophy background, I generally struggled through some of his
more academic points though.

But I generally enjoy books that have "quotable wisdom" in the narrative. One
of the quotes that has stuck with me the longest is from this book:

"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and
hands, and then work outward from there."

~~~
digi_owl
"Be the change you desire"?

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aaron-lebo
It should be cautioned that this book gets killed by a lot of people who have
done philosophy for various reasons. But Phil Jackson is apparently a fan, and
anyone who wins 10 NBA championships and got the best out of MJ, Kobe, Shaq,
and the Worm, and is a "Zen Christian" must know something interesting.

And yeah, it's a book worth reading through, if grueling at times. I can't
find the quote, but one of his points is that quality things have quality
because their creators deeply cared about them and put that care into the
product. It seemed very Jobsian (maybe not surprising given his own
interests).

~~~
igk
Interesting, do you have any links to stimulating critiques at hand?

~~~
aaron-lebo
They may not be stimulating and Reddit search is not working at the moment,
but if you'll search there, there's a lot of commentary at different times and
across various subreddits on the book.

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dnquark
Is there a resource in the vein of the linked review, but that explains the
book (and its philosophical content) on a more basic level, for someone with
no background in the subject? I was hoping that Pirsig would help me
understand philosophy by placing it in a familiar and tangible setting --
that's what the title suggests. I was very disappointed.

Take the idea of Quality, for example. Pirsig talks about it for half the
book; this is a concept that drives him insane and is central to his life and
to the narrative. I still haven't the foggiest idea of what he is talking
about, pages of strange analogies notwithstanding.

To me, this was a book about a troubled intellectual and his grappling with
mental illness. About somebody that drives himself insane by obsessing over
abstruse concepts arising from human experience. And it's a well-told story
that made me think, but also made it very hard to relate to the protagonist
simply because I do. not. understand. his intellectual struggle.

~~~
shorttime
But you do! You are saying and itterating exactly how he feels when it comes
to quality. You can't define what he's talking about in his book. He can't
define quality. They're very similar concepts, not exact, but they provide the
same feeling.

How would you define quality?

~~~
dnquark
I would say that quality is an abstract value judgement that requires context
to be meaningful. That's why it escapes precise definition.

Whenever Pirsig talks about quality, it seems that he is heavily overloading
the term. What he is really trying to do is develop a set of guiding
principles that makes him feel like he understands the world and his role in
it. Most people use religion or science for this, but Pirsig explicitly
rejects science as a way of discovering the truth (for his definition of
truth), and I think he implicitly rejects religion as well. I ended up reading
"Quality" as just a label that he attaches to the personal philosophy he
develops instead.

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randcraw
That's a brilliant review, capturing the major threads of the story like no
other I've seen. But it also seems best suited to those who've already read
the book (and can appreciate the relevance of the reviewer's philosophical
argot), and perhaps not as suited to those who are deciding if this story
would be worth their time.

OTOH, maybe anyone not put off by the reviewer's language and willing to read
his entire review will see that s/he indeed does have The Right Stuff to plumb
the rich depths of ZatAoMM.

God speed, Mr Pirsig. Your book meant worlds to me.

~~~
Fezzik
Slight tangent: I have seen a lot of mention of Zen, but not many people bring
up the follow-up book, Lila. I found the second to be a more accessible and
applicable-to-every-day-life sort of book, and more maturely written.

I enjoyed Zen more when I was younger and Lila more as an adult; I have read
both at least 4 or 5 times apiece.

Both are brilliant though. And the linked review is fantastic.

~~~
skilesare
Yes, Lila is great. I think there is a lot there if you are looking to make
some meaning out of a seemingly random world.

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IgorPartola
I don't know what you all are talking about. Clearly this is a great piece on
how to fix motorcycles! :)

I enjoyed it. The part where he talks about how a stripped screw is suddenly
the most important screw in the world and you should treat it as such really
stuck with me. I have used that attitude many times to get out of jam.

Also, I really enjoyed his description of how he approached fixing his bike vs
his friend's BMW. And also the little talk he gave in putting together the
grill and the instructions manual.

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smcl
The podcast "I don't even own a television" did an episode about the book -
[http://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/2015/05/22/zen-and-
th...](http://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/2015/05/22/zen-and-the-art-of-
motorcycle-maintenance)

The podcast is about "bad books" so that's the angle they approach it from,
but the guys are funny, very nice and aren't super cruel or anything.

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manten75
One of my favorite books about philosophy. And funny enough, a good book about
motivation.

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voidhorse
To interpret Plato as a practitioner of Zen...the other Buddhist sects must be
far different from Mahayana Buddhism--anyone who is familiar with Mahayana,
especially the line stemming from Bodhidharma, and Plato's thought will know
that to compare Plato's philosophy with Zen is patently ridiculous--the one
rejects the existence of objects, the other wants there to be a whole heaven
of conceptual objects--to think there is any similarity in the 'one' of zen
and the 'one' of Plato, or the Neo-platonists for that matter, just shows to
me that you've engaged in very shallow reading. Still perhaps there's
something in it, based on how absurdly incorrect it seems--plus I only know a
bit about Mahayana--no other Zen traditions, so perhaps there are some that
are more akin.

In general I am suspicious of all books and articles that insist on modelling
their titles off of buzzy cliche's:

"Zen and the art of XYZ" "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and XYZ" etc.

It just does not leave a tantalizing impression and stinks of shallow laziness
to me.

I suppose this isn't totally fair to this book, considering it came out in
1974--but still!

That's a shame because skimming through this article, this books sounds as
though it may prove to be somewhat interesting.

Please, you've worked so hard on your book--for the love of god, bless it with
the title it deserves!

I think this is some practical advice for writer's: consider the glittering
titles of Nietzsche's works before you settle on a name for your book--is that
_really_ what you want to call it?--is that _really_ its name?

Sheesh, I may have to read this just because of how vehemently I disagree with
that Plato/Zen analogy--I need to see where the hell this guy could possibly
be coming from other than bad, clumsy reading, and poor conceptual
housekeeping--if not from here he's picked up on a grand connection I've
missed, and has thus created something worthwhile.

(If only the _name_ designated so!)

~~~
scrumper
The book is a monument of literature. Its title is the genesis of your buzzy
cliché, not a lazy user of it. It deserves none of that opprobrium from
someone who hasn't read it.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" Its title is the genesis of your buzzy cliche"_

It's not, actually. The progenitor of such titles is _" Zen in the Art of
Archery"_,[1] which was published 26 years earlier.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery)

~~~
paperpunk
For those unfamiliar with the works, it's a good reference. In 'Zen in the Art
of Archery' Eugen Herrigel uses archery as a metaphor to initially learn, and
then to teach Zen to a western audience because teaching it directly,
intellectually, is indicated to be impossible.

Pirsig's novel references this because large sections of the book deal with
the inability to express something on a purely 'classical' or intellectual
level, the inability to define certain concepts, and the attempt to somehow
bridge that intellectual leap of faith and explain things that cannot be
explained directly.

So he tries to convey his ideas on a more intuitive level, using all the arts
of redeemed sophistry through the means of creative writing, a story about
travelling on a motorcycle with his son and discussing motorcycle maintenance.

It's interesting to me to what extent the huge amount of "Zen and the Art
of.." books that exist these days are references to Pirsig's novel or to
Herrigel's. My feeling is generally a lot of them are unaware of the existence
of Herrigel's novel and the choice of phrasing does suggest Pirsig's. However,
even right at the start Herrigel's title was a template for other books: only
a few years after its publication his wife Gustie also published a book called
'Zen in the Art of Flower Arrangement' with a similar treatment of Zen through
the medium of Ikebana or flower arrangement.

