Here’s an interesting series of new essays about the MOQ by the writer/editor,
Caryl Johnston:
http://meta-q.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-search-of-quality.html
Her initial essay starts:
Thirty-three years ago Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance took the American publishing world by storm in 1974. It was an
immediate critical and commercial success, sold millions of copies in
twenty-three languages, and was described by the London Telegraph as "the most
widely read philosophy book, ever." To aging baby boomers who may have missed
the book when it first came out, and wearied by neoliberalism and
neoconservatism and all the perversions known to man in between the two, it may
come as a surprise to know that the book is not much about either Zen or
motorcycles. Zen and its 1991 sequel, Lila, are actually novels about a quest
to establish the purpose and value of philosophy. Or rather, they are attempts
to raid the encampment of philosophy, which has become entrenched in the
subject-object dualism of modern rationalism and fortified by the spoils
dispensed by universities, government, and economics, to capture its real
prize: an orientation that makes sense of the world, makes a difference in how
one lives, and does justice to all levels of human nature. These “raids” are
carried out as true stories related in a novelistic fashion. Their “quality,”
aside from the philosophical meaning this term will have for Pirsig, is
therefore at the outset personal, participant, embodied in real people –
autobiographical, and in a certain sense also, historical. Both books, but
especially the second one, contain striking and thoughtful insights into the
nature of the modern project, especially in its American incarnation. I want to
focus in particular on how these insights help us to understand our society and
why it seems to have such difficulty with the affirmation of moral truths.
But first a general comment. Aside from the business craze for “Total Quality
Management” which swept America in the 80’s, and then embarked to Japanese
corporations – a craze which may or may not have owed something to Pirsig’s
discoveries – I see little evidence in the United States that Pirsig’s
Metaphysics of Quality has penetrated into any crevasse of American thinking.
His books were immensely popular here, but American literary and professional
elites still continue to churn out reams of sociological and
“philosophological” (a Pirsig word for something that is not exactly
philosophy) commentary that contain the same old eviscerated Cartesian and
post-Protestant presumptions which, despite all their varying and even
conflicting forms, have basically nothing new to offer. When Americans find
themselves in the mood for debate, they can tune in to the same argument that
crops up decade after decade: science vs. religion, or evolution vs. creation
(or more recently Intelligent Design). The characters retire; the arguments
never do...
_________________________________________________________________
Fancy some celeb spotting?
https://www.celebmashup.com
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