Phaedrus rides again!
"Lila" is the follow up work to the cult classic "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", which I read -- and loved -- a few years back. It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I approached this one: the reviews I've read are a little mixed, and the general consensus seems to be that it didn't really measure up to ZAMM. But finally I decided that the original was so good that even if this one were only half as good it would still be well worth a read.
I needn't have worried though. While purists and fans may argue that ZAMM is, strictly speaking, the better of the two, there is no doubt that this book is a worthy continuation and deserves to be read by everyone who enjoyed ZAMM.
The narrative approach taken broadly resembles that of ZAMM: the character Phaedrus (a.k.a. The Captain, a thinly disguised representation of Pirsig himself) undertakes a journey, this time by boat rather than motorcycle, accompanied by a troubled female companion (the eponymous Lila) that he has picked up in a dive bar along the way.
The events of the story provide the backdrop for an ongoing discussion/exploration of his ambitious, all-encompassing philosophy (already fleshed out in ZAMM), which he calls "The Metaphysics of Quality". Its basic premise is that everything in the universe can be classified according to different types (or levels) of Quality. This framework permits a natural and general definition of morality as those processes/actions which best serve the highest level of Quality in a given system. Thus, morality is served whenever "intellectual" Quality prevails over "social" Quality, which in turn should take precedence over "biological" Quality, and so on.
As I said, it's an ambitious undertaking, and at times it can be quite hard (though rewarding) to follow. It's also the type of work that is inevitably subject to scorn (or outright dismissal) from within traditional academic/intellectual circles, partly because of it's ambitious scope, and partly because Pirsig quite deliberately sets himself apart from more mainstream writers. You get the feeling that works like this are destined to either languish as cult relics or else achieve widespread recognition long after the author's demise.
On that note, a couple of other authors that I'm reminded of are Nassim Taleb ("Fooled by Randomness", "The Black Swan") and Stephen Wolfram ("A New Kind of Science"). What Pirsig shares with both these guys is that (a) he's clearly a very intelligent, original thinker; (b) he has the courage/audacity to publish his ideas as a kind of manifesto that eschews conventions of the mainstream; and (c) as a result of (b), his work has been received with a mixture of derision and cult-worship. (Of the three, Taleb's ideas seem to be the first to achieve vindication --- thanks to the GFC.)
At the end of the day, I don't really have the academic chops to offer a detailed critique of Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality or how much it really contributes to our philosophical outlook on the world. What I can say is that I found many of his arguments to be very compelling, and I'm left with the feeling that there's a lot of wisdom in what he says. And, unlike much of the academic literature, his ideas are presented in a way that's very accessible and enjoyable to read. There are some weak points --- his comments relating to biological evolution and quantum mechanics, in particular, seemed a little dodgy -- but these don't seem deep enough to seriously weaken his argument.
BOTTOM LINE: I seriously recommend "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" to those who haven't yet read it. And if you like it, I'd suggest you won't be disappointed by "Lila".
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