Comment by brandur | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brandur | Hacker News Reader

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For what it's worth, you're not the only one with that reaction. I got onto the book after it was recommended to me as a good way to get an introduction to philosophy.

Not only was it not, but the philosophical content it did have didn't seem particularly interesting — the long deliberations on quality felt like inconsequential hair-splitting that was unlikely to any revelations of value. Afterwards, I read the Wikipedia analysis on its philosophical themes [1] and felt that it's far too charitable in attributing significant insights to Pirsig compared to the literal contents of the book.

My guess is that the novel structure of weaving together a motorcycle trip with inner monologue and personal history combined with a dash of intellectualism was very compelling to a lot of people, and that's why it's taken such an outsized position in popular literature.

(I'd love to be proven wrong on this though, so by all means tell me what I missed.)

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_...

Having both read the book and been on a fair bit of a philosophy kick,[1] criticising a philosophy text for hair-splitting is a bit like criticising water for being wet.

Hair-splitting is what ... well, if not quite all of it, to bifurcate yet another follicle ... much philosophy is about. Not necessarily of the proverbial angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin variety, but damned close.

It's where the, erm, quality is.

(You'll know it when you see it.)

I've had my own issues with ZAMM, having more to do with some of the thinking striking me as excessively fuzzy. I suspect much of the appeal isn't so much as an authority as a bridge -- connecting people with backgrounds in the mechanical (motocycles), and possibly in computers (Pirsig's own field, other than philosophy), to philosophy proper.

And it's got some good bits and observations.

________________________________

Notes:

1. In particular, Peter Adamson's excellent "History of Philsophy Without Any Gaps": https://historyofphilosophy.net

Though also other (and direct) sources.

+1 on the “Fuzzy thinking” bit

I’d caution reading philosophy as all about hair splitting. Hairs are split because language is the tool and precision is necessary, but splitting hairs is not what it’s _about_.

What is it about? That depends on the philosopher. The heavy hitters (Plato, Nietzsche, Kant) often try to answer the oracle’s command to “know thyself,” whim ranging over multiple branches of philosophy, while others focus on anything from language to ethics to aesthetics. (And Nietzsche, for example, does not spend time splitting many hairs at all)

Yes, about hair splitting was a poor word choice, though hair-splitting remains a very frequent activity in philosophy. Fine gradations in distinction and meaning using the blunt tool of language is difficult.

I've been digging into the "what is philosophy about" question on several fronts.

The Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu) has a pretty good outline, as does the Basics of Philosophy ( https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch.html)

I've also been partial to digging through various library classifications and subject headings (LCC / LCSH), particularly CLASS B / Subclass BC, generally metaphysics, epistemology, ontology, cosmology, ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, logic.

Another view is that philosophy consists (as a residual) of disciplines which have resisted formalisation under either mathematics (which has laid claim to much of logic), cosmology (now mostly natural sciences), moral philosophy (largely social sciences), and philosophy of mind (now largely a sub-discipline of psychology). What still survives today as philosophy is mostly the "messy bits".

And a tremendous amount of religion-adjacent concepts.

That's not knocking philosophy, which I'm finding quite useful, but it's a reality of the field.

> Hair-splitting is what [...] much philosophy is about.

To the point that quite a bit of it can be pretty language-specific... I remember reading some stuff by Bertrand Russell thinking "this reasoning doesn't really work in Italian".

> I suspect much of the appeal isn't so much as an authority as a bridge

The book is very much of his time. One could say the early '70s were when the idealistic rubber of '60s counterculture hit the hard asphalt of reality. It wasn't enough to dream of a world with peace & love anymore, one had to translate those ideals into practical ways in order to survive. The boomers went from being university students to actual employment, so a lot of people started caring about things like Pirsig's Quality.

J Vervaeke's channel is good for a historical perspective of cognitive thought/philosphy.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpqDUjTsof-kTNpnyWper_Q

Disclaimer: I haven't read the book.

I think it's also the era it came from. When it was created, it's ideas were not that wide spread and we didn't have the internet, so it was more profound.

It's kind of like the matrix and bullet time. If you never saw the matrix and was born after it was made, bullet time might look like a cliche, even though it invented it. When I first saw it, I thought it was fucking bad ass because there was never anything like it.

Also there a books out there that are good for beginners, but if your are more well versed in a field, you wouldn't find it that compelling. The beginners books although, are often necessary to get past emotional barriers to an issue.

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