Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

What appeals to me, then, is not the actual philosophy, that Pirsig's sad, humane attitude toward his son, toward life, toward himself, toward philosophy, toward the truth. He has such respect for life, flush though it is so obvious that he will ne'er be able to pin down Quality some(prenominal) more than any other seeker has pinned down the essence of life, by whatever name they call it.

The author begins with the unknown, and with a liking for that unknown: "I'm happy to be riding into this country. It is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that" (3). By the end of the book, after a pilgrimage across the country and through the self and the history of thought, Pirsig has so articulated no rational, philosophic system to make die sense of this unknown. On the heels of his son's death, he can say solo: "I go on living, more from force of purpose than anything else" (377-378). He ends the book with a note of hope founded on his new fry---reincarnation of the dead Chris? The "something wrong" which led to his and his wife's choice to begin the child "was unknown, exclusively it was intense" (380). He claims to have pass judgment that there is some "larger pattern," but what that pattern is seems to be no clearer by the end of the book then it was in the beg

inning or the middle---except that it seems to copy itself in antithetic ways, perhaps in an evolving way (which takes it walk-to(prenominal) to "Quality"?).

It is ironic that Pirsig uses the figure of Phaedrus to personify his pursuit of the truth, because Phaedrus is a figure from Plato. Pirsig says that the statement that "all philosophy is nothing but 'footnotes to Plato' can be well supported" (302). However, Plato, when push came to shove, re craftd on the "noble lie" as a way to joke people into accepting their proper place in his sodding(a) society in the Republic.

Plato abandoned all his faith in reason and philosophy, and whatever small faith he energy have had in the ability of common humankind to move up to rational holy persons, when he made his entire ideal society dependent on the selling of this preposterous, arrogant, "noble" lie.

At least, Pirsig owns his melancholy, despair and resignation and does not rely on dissimulation and pretense when he cannot find the philosophic certainty he seeks. In doing so, Pirsig by the ends of the book aligns himself far more with the accredited father of philosophy---Socrates. Socrates was the man whom Plato defamed when he put that "noble" lie into his (Socrates's) mouth rather than his own. Socrates (like Pirsig by the end of the book, truly and last softened up by the death of one child and the birth of another) knew that one cannot finally come to conclusions about fictional character or any other high-flying concept, but can at best jettison arrogance and take on humbleness and acceptance instead.

Pirsig says that Socrates "died for" the "truth, knowledge, that which is independent of what anyone thinks about it" (338). No. What Socrates died for was humility, was not knowing, was the strength of questioning with humility, rather than arrogantly claiming to know. Again, the most disappointing tone of Pirsig's book is his failure to acknowledge that Plato and Socrates were separate and very different people. Socrates would never have tried to
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