Word: phaedrus
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...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...
...Phaedrus argues that the relationship between subjects and objects can be understood by examining the nature of "Quality." Everyone knows which objects have Quality, but no one can define Quality. The narrator resolves the dilemma by claiming that Quality is neither objective nor subjective--rather, it is a relationship in which subject and object are defined by the value of their relationship...
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...
...Phaedrus argues that the forces of intellect, society, and biology try to maintain their current position and preserve their own survival. However, survival of a higher level takes precedence over that of a lower level...