Word: lila
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Lila is Pirsig's first book in 17 years, and in order to appreciate it, one should have read Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. A motorcycle trip from Montana to California frames the narrator's flashbacks and philosophical musings in Zen. The narrator, Phaedrus, undertakes a psychological quest to restore the part of his personality that shock therapy obliterated. He claims that philosophizing about unresolvable issues drove him crazy...
...Although Lila is not billed as a sequal to Zen, it builds upon the argument in Zen. The narrator, still Phaedrus, is a little bit older, a little bit wiser. Now he is sailing his one-person yacht down the Hudson River to New York City. He is joined by Lila, a woman he picked up in a bar one night...
...Lila is good, Phaedrus argues, because she has Quality. A friend, Richard Rigel, forces him to justify that assertion, which spurs him to develop a Metaphysics of Quality, his explanation of the "Meaning of Life...
...argument in Lila is more comprehensive than that in Zen. It is satisfying as a work of pop philosophy because it raises big questions and provides unusual answers to them. Also, in Lila, Pirsig presents the musings of both the narrator and Lila, giving the plot a sense of depth which is lacking in the monologue of Zen. Lila's thoughts offer an alternative perspective on the "actual" events of the novel...
...same, Lila fails as a serious philosophical argument. Phaedrus argues against other philosophers without presenting their ideas fairly. He attacks Darwinians for not defining "fittest" when they refer to the "survival of the fittest...