Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals Mass Market Paperback – December 1, 1992

What can I say about this book? I may as well recommend Amazon.com to you. If you liked Zen, read this book. It's a similar kind of book. It's not plot-driven. There is something of a plot, but mostly it is the author just thinking about ideas, and they are interesting ideas. If that suits you, you'll love it. If you prefer action books or thrillers or suspense or just any of the typical novel genres, either keep an open mind or probably this book isn't for you.

As a second year economy student, I joint a class introduction to philosophy and was asked about my motivation. Economics is about costs versus benefits but what and when are benefits beneficial? When they have values, I wanted to dig into values..Very interesting was the response, you should go into the library and find information on that subject. This introduction was my last encounter with philosophy teaching. Pirsig dug into it and impressed me with his thoroughly classification of the various stages of moral/quality with as farrest in evolution dynamic intellectual moral. It makes one wonder how long it will take before human kind will consider this as superior in dealing with the world.

Lila is the second of Robert Pirsig's books and was widely considered a disappointment when it came out. Part of the problem with this is that is lacks the character driven narrative of father and son the weaves throughout Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It also lacks a satisfactory ending to the story compared to Zen - and the characters, from Phaedrus and Lila all the way down are far less likeable. In many ways, Lila was a story - as a novel - that could never live up to the impact that ZAAMM has had on so many people. It's much colder and so much more analytical.Having said that, Lila should be approached from a different perspective. It was never meant to be a ZAAMM kind of story and is not a novel that is going to provide a satisfactory summing up. But if you take the time to read and re-read it, and if you agree with Pirsig's philosophical theories...it becomes quite compelling. It provides a framework for better understanding the role that "Quality" - which is not definable via language - can play in a world dominated by scientific reason.If you enjoyed Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but were disappointed with Lila, I encourage you to give this enquiry another chance.

Mr Pirsig's model reconciles Morals and Quality - this book is the final piece making the Metaphysics of Quality a complete, elegant, practical model. Extremely talented, the writer demonstrates how philosophy drives - or may drive - your own life choices without any attempts to lecture the reader. I'm grateful to Mr Pirsig for giving me a solid foundation I feel so safe to build upon.

Only a few times in a lifetime does one find a book that actually means something. In his two novelosophies, he has completely and forever altered the fundamental assertions of science, by showing how flawed the scientific method is. He has undercut 125 years of anthropology by clearly demonstrating that the refusal to allow value judgements even when coming from THAT culture's value system is nonsense. The fact that the metaphysics of value would have been our value system except for an accident of history in ancient Greece is very well detailed.Don't read my junk, but do go read BOTH of Robert Pirsig's books.

I’ve read this book some years ago. I’ve decided to read it again.

Pirsig attempts to advance his brilliant insights on Quality from Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.Unfortunately, he forces his ideas into the same format of a journey but with a new character. He needs this character, Lila, to embody Dynamic Quality to make the book work. Unfortunately, she doesn’t so the book doesn’t.Wish he had simply explained his concepts, might have been more effective. I suppose he considered the title, “Zen and the Art of Hooking up with an Unstable Person and the Disarray they may Cause while you force your Philosophical Concepts on the Situation all while living on a Sailboat”.Lila was not the embodiment of Quality or Dynamic Quality. If you fully embraced the concepts of ZAMM, you’ll find Lila shallow.

I am really enjoying this sequel to "Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance." It's intriguing, educational and entertaining.