Opinions on this?

read it in highschool and i remember almost none of it besides it being about a guy and his kid going on a motorcycle trip together and then at the end there's some sort of drama where the kid feels like he's losing his dad or something. didn't leave much of an impression i guess because i remember a lot about other books i read around the same period

it's alright but it hasn't dated well

>spiritual not religious
What does that even mean?

Why don't you check a dictionary if you struggle this much with basic terminology?

why not define it, if its so easy. assuming you are the one to make the claims of
>spiritual not religious
remember, one persons hero is another person villain. meaning ones form of spiritual might not mean the same to another.

In high-school, I read it thinking the story of the motorcycle trip was a metaphor for the philosophical questions, and I found it really eye-opening.

After college, I realized that the philosophy is only in there as a literary device to explain the complex emotional relationship between a broken man trying to connect with his son.

When you're young, the first way of reading it very appealing. But, in time, you'll realize the second way of reading it is much better.

>philosophy academics
Kek

>The best part is the narrative on the road with his son
>it's all about the journey maaaan, not the destination, just be in the moment you know
that part was bullshit too

it's ok. it's more about aesthica and social issues than metaphysics. the metaphysics isn't so good

I genuinely enjoyed it as a portrait of obsessive mental illness in the vein of American Psycho or Lolita. The philosophical bits are interesting enough on their own, but it's more fun when you realize the narrator is trying to calmly rationalize his delusions of grandeur.

boring

That isn't the story at all, though

In fact, I really need to build on what I said, because I'm rather surprised that's what you took from it. I'll grant you, Pirsig is extremely pretentious, and I generally dislike most attempts by Westerners to co-opt "exotic Easter wisdom"(tm). That said, the core of the book is that the Aristotelean heirarchy of categories diminishes too much the notion of quality, giving the impression that it is something readily contained and expressed by quantity and kind. Quality, however, must be recognized as The Thing as it Is. Most people tend to assume this even. That is why he goes to such great lengths to explain, but essentially criticize the more beatnik/hippie approach of abandoning quality and other categories in a foolish attempt to experience quality. So, in fact, he almost expressly criticizes the idea of "just enjoy the journey." Rather, what he realized, and what drove him to insanity in realizing, was that it is only in the process of understanding the quantities and kinds and so forth of a thing that you can come to experience The Thing as it Is, even though those steps are never sufficient. The whole book then is wrapped up in the idea that in order to feel presence, most people seek distance, choosing to "try and take it all in at once." But Pirsig's personal discover is that process is presence. By being involved in the mechanisms and working of the bike, which are not the bike nor the riding of it, then you actually come closer to the full experience of the bike as a whole and the experience of riding it is brought into greater clarity. With all that said, the real purpose of the book is not to actually solve or demonstrate any particular metaphysical or ontological or phenomenological theory, but rather as a very long winded, mechanical approach to discuss his fractured relationship with his son. He knows there is an impossible distance between them, so it is only by these slow, tedious, mechanical, step-wise process of study and tinkering that, in never reaching his destination, he is able to experience the relationship with his son at all. With each step down this path, the distance grows, and yet it is only by following this path that he can be present at all.

most Yea Forums posters are bottom tier theists, so they'll rag on it based on their ideological preprograming. the book is worth a read