Review: Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance offers an extensive look into the author’s concept of reason in relation to discovering an ultimate truth. Pirsig, the implied narrator of the novel, wrestles with his memories of his past life as Phaedrus and must rediscover who he is and what he truly believes. One of his most recurring issues is his search for an eternal and absolute truth in the conglomeration of logic, philosophy, quality, and classics which he refers to as Reason. Reason, to Pirsig, is the most paramount aspect of his university. Pirsig, however, does not define a university in the most familiar and traditional terms. A university, like a church, is not the bricks and mortar that make up the building. It

When practicing religion, Pirsig notes that it is vital to serve God first and the community and financial incentives second. This can best be seen when he states, “[A preacher’s] primary goal isn’t to serve the members of the community, but always God” (Pirsig 66). Pirsig takes these beliefs and converts them into his Church of Reason when he declares, “The primary goal of the Church of Reason, Phaedrus said, is always Socrates’ old goal of truth, in its ever-changing forms, as it’s revealed by the process of rationality. Everything else is subordinate to that” (Pirsig 66). He is makes Reason the top priority of his existence in ways similar to religious churches when prioritizing their God. In fact, the narrator has left the physical manifestation of the University a couple of times out of loyalty to his intangible Church of Reason. While he was a teenager, Pirsig found a fault in the logic of the Scientific Method that threw his entire outlook on the purpose and progress of Reason into confusion. This dubiety made him unable to complete university work and terminated his drive to continue with it. Pirsig explains

From the narrator’s perspective, Reason includes quality, romanticism, classic mindsets, truth, logic and philosophy. Pirsig takes on the overly ambitious task of attempting to give concrete definitions of all that Reason is. Pirsig’s shortcoming is that he is only human. The human mind can only comprehend so much, and there are certain concepts, such as God and Reason that cannot be fully grasped by a mortal intelligence. Because Pirsig is not an all-knowing being, he has often found himself stumped on his logic and reasoning. When Pirsig speaks of God, he often speaks of Church, which has a Christian affiliation. While it can be debated by different denominations, a generally held view of Christians is that God is never-changing, and free of logical fallacies. Under these standards, Reason would not truly be a God as it changes each time a being adds to it. Furthermore, with the use of the Scientific Method, it has been shown that a permanent, definitive truth cannot be reached as long as hypothesis are infinite. Consequently, Reason could not really be defined as a God with all its flaws and paradoxes. It should be noted, however, that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is recited from the mind of Robert Pirsig. He is creating his very own concepts of God in Reason and is not basing any of his conclusions on the Christian Bible’s definition of truth. In his own