Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a multilevelled journey about the author, Robert Pirsig, and his search for himself, while going on a road trip with his son. Although the premise is quite cliche, the story becomes anything but cliche. Pirsig single handedly brings down the entire wall of Western philosophy, that has taken literally millenniums to build. He strips down Western philosophy to it's bare bones, and shows what is at its core. Pirsig's alternative philosophy is quite simple and can be summed up in one word: Quality. This essay will show how Pirsig's philosophy of quality is more valid than traditional Western philosophy and how his philosophy can change everyone's views about themselves and the world around them.

First, to understand Pirsig's philosophy one must fully understand his basis. The basis to which he bases all of his thoughts on is quality. At first, Pirsig refuses to define quality., claiming that once quality is defined, it no longer is quality. Basic Western philosophy will claim that if something can not be defined, it doesn't exist. To combat this, Pirsig claims that existence is based alongside interrelationships. The author claims that x exists if the world can not carry on normally without x. The world wouldn't be the same without quality, thus quality does exist. Pirsig continues to prove that quality does exist but can not be defined, by asking his students to define what quality is. Of course they can't. However, he reckons that we all know what quality is. He reads various essays to his class and asks them which one was the best. The vast majority, including himself all pick the same one. Hence, quality does exist, it just can not be defined.

Much of Western philosophy is based along the Enlightenment Theory, that nature presents itself in laws, and very rational ways. That is, that there is a truth. Hell, even popular television programs claim that "THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE". There is something that can be thought of as being fundamental, all that has to be done is to find it. To find things, we must ask questions. However, such fundamental questions usually lead to other deeper questions. It's a strange paradox, Pirsig ascertains. Why bother asking questions if they are just going to lead to other questions that can't be answered? Pirsig claims that there are many truths, possibly an infinite amount. In fact, quality is the guide to the truth. Thus, by accepting quality as a fundamental basis, one can then truly find the truth or live the good life.

Much of society is based upon dichotomies. Things are either good or bad, left or right. This simplification of all things leads to the Dualistic philosophy. This philosophy claims that all is just a dichotomy, mind and matter. Pirsig uses the dichotomy method to his advantage when he splits all understanding into two parts: Classical and Romantic. The Classical mode deals with the underlying forms of things. Mathematics, science and order are the mainstays. On the other hand, the Romantic mode is concerned with the immediate appearance of things. Music, art and anything creative is romantic. "Feelings rather than facts predominate" (61). This classification is quite easy to understand and goes pretty well with the present day understanding and acceptance of things.Pirsig already points out that it is already silly to separate the two as both are involved in creating things. In fact, the Buddha, THE ONE, exists just as much in a lotus leaf as in a PENTIUM processor chip. But just as reinforcement Pirsig gives a good example of how the two modes would look upon the same thing. Take a romantic and give them a blueprint of an engine. The person would be immediately bored, as there is nothing on the surface. However, the same blueprint in the eyes of a classic person would be quite different. The person would be very fascinated by the blueprint. The classic person would see that there is so much underlying form. This dichotomy (classic and romantic), according to Pirsig, is "the source of the trouble. Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode...(they) tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about...no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it and...no one has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes"(62). It is between these two modes that a huge culture split has occurred. Two worlds alienated from each other. According to Pirsig, there is only one point at which these two polar opposites can be unified. The adhesive is quality. Quality is the cleavage term between romantic and classical understanding. If quality were there, the romantic mode would appreciate quality for what it was. The classical minds would try to turn quality into a set of intellectual building blocks for other purposes. If the above statements are true, then the romantic would look at quality the exact same way that a classic would. Thus, quality is exactly between romantic and classical. As if it were necessary, Pirsig continues to elaborate claiming that there also exists a Romantic Quality that was concerned with the present of things ("The bike is working fine today"). However, there also exists a Classical Quality. This type of quality deals with more than just the present ("Will the bike work well tomorrow?"). This type of quality is very accessible as it deals with time, the fourth dimension. This is brilliant, as the scope of the fourth dimension reaches to relativity with Einstein and the "new-physics"-quantum mechanics. With the assumption of quality, Pirsig has done what many thought would be impossible, the joining of classical and romantic understandings. The barrier that Western philosophy had put up between the "two worlds" had been taken down. Now everything was connected by quality.

Another big topic that Pirsig conquers is that of technology. Technology can be considered to be the child of the classical mode. Once again there is a dichotomy in technology between the technologists and the antitechnologists. In the story, Phaedrus (the name Pirsig gives to his "past" self), has a few travelling companions. They are John and Sylvia, and they just love to "get away from it all". Of course, they are referring to technology. Neither of them ever wants to get involved with technology (John refuses to fix his own motorcycle). Their feelings are echoed today as people feel alienated by their computers, fax machines, modems, fast cars, neon lights, concrete boxes for homes, cell phones and voice mail. There's a huge antitechnology movement, films like the ever popular 2001:A Space Odyssey which has a computer named HAL as the villain, and bands like RADIOHEAD cynically naming albums "OK Computer", and writing lyrics like "Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge". Pirsig looks down on all of this. He claims that if someone were to be born into a world of only grey stones, eventually that person would turn to hate grey stones. Since modern day life consists of plastics and computers, they have developed a hatred to plastics and computers. However, Pirsig realizes that there is much more to this hatred of technology than that. In fact, Pirsig admits and recognizes a real ugliness to technology. There must be something in the technology that makes it ugly. NO, Pirsig would say, the real ugliness of technology is not found in any object, shape or product. Quality doesn't live in any subject or object. "The real ugliness lies in the relationship between the people who produce the technology and the things they produce, which results in a similar relationship between the people that use the technology and the things they use"(261).

To fully understand the magnitude of this statement, one must look at the way most people look at technology. That is, the idea of a subject and an object(another dichotomy!). Throughout ones education, one learns: here is a motorcycle. If you do this, that will be the result. This cause and effect knowledge is known as "spectator knowledge". There is never a person in the picture. This subject-free state is supposed to be a realistic portrayal of the world. The spectator knowledge is really the facts about the world. These facts are obtained by the scientific method , which is governed by the Church of Reason. However this is not reality. The world is filled with humans, in other words, filled with subjects and these subjects interact with objects all of the time. Pirsig concludes that "at the moment of pure quality, there is no subject and there is no object. There is only a sense of quality that produces a later awareness of subjects and objects. At the moment of pure quality, subject and object are identical" (261). Put quite simply, you must get "into" what you're doing. You must become "one" with the cycle in order to fix it. Why is there no quality in technology? Because no one got into it. No one cared. Caring is directly related to quality, Pirsig claims. If one cares about something, there is quality in it. If there is quality in something, there is care in it also. If someone cares about writing a philosophy paper, the philosophy paper will in fact be of quality. See, if someone hurries to finish a job they obviously want to move onto something else, thus no caring is involved and as a result no quality. So, the problem with technology is that there are people involved with technology in an uncaring way. If someone creates a huge machine without caring, the creator obviously didn't become "one" with the machine. "The creator of it feels no particular identity with it...the user of it feels no identity with it. Hence...it has no quality"(261). The feeling of alienation stems from a lack of perception of quality in technology by both the people that create technology and the users of their products. Pirsig does it again! He unites the computer geeks with the moderns day Luddites, all with Quality. In fat, Pirsig identifies a way to make the perception of quality increase. People need to understood that technology is not an exploitation of nature, but a bonding between nature and the human spirit to create something that transcends both of them. When humanity walked on the moon, the public recognized that technology transcends nature and the human spirit. Pirsig notes that this transcendence does happen on a much smaller scale, on a more personal level with each and every person in the world.

Pirsig also tries to change the education system. The real university has no specific location. "The real university is a state of mind. It's nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself"(132). All school teaches a person to do is to imitate. Swallow what you've been told and vomit it back up come test time. Pirsig rightfully claims that there are no original thoughts anymore. The common sense of today is just the voice of ghosts from the past. That is, all we do is just copy the past. Any first year science student will tell that all they do in a lab is just recreate an experiment where the results are already known and that have been obtained thousands of other times. No creativity, no originality. Pirsig claims that this same scientific method is the downfall of all reason. Hypotheses are always encouraged before an experiment. "The number of rational hypotheses for any given phenomenon is infinite"(100). Since it would take an infinite amount of time to test an infinite amount of hypotheses, any "fact" known about natural phenomenon is not really known for sure. All modern explanations of the world may be wrong! If these facts are not really facts, what is the point of science? As a recent shoe advertisement claims "Gravity is just a theory". Since there are no facts, nothing is really wrong, thus there is no point to any grade given to a student. This is exactly what Pirsig advocates, a university where there are no grades, just quality of thought. Science doesn't exist, and the Church of Reason has been burnt to the ground. Pirsig showed that the biggest threat to reason was reason itself. Quality is what prevails.

The most important of Pirsig's revelations is what he claims about values. He gives an example of a monkey and a trap. The trap has been designed for the monkey's hand to fit into a cage easily, but when the monkey tries to remove its hand with a handful of the bait, it can't, because the handful of food is too large to fit through the opening. The monkey must reevaluate what is important to it's existence at that point. Pirsig suggests that everyone should do this same reevaluation.If people thought about what really mattered, people would soon realize that some problems aren't that important and smaller problems are really much larger. It's possible that the aims of Western philosophy don't really matter. Rather, people should try and live a life of quality by caring about what they do. Quality and caring are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person that can see and feel quality is a caring person. A person that cares what s/he sees and does is a person that has quality. "The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears 'out there' and the person that appears to be 'in here' are not separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together" (293).

As shown Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, ushers in a new epoch in the way we look at our lives and the world around us. Pirsig's philosophies have proven to be more relevant than traditional Western philosophy. To Pirsig, Western philosophy is the only thing hindering mankind. Pirsig deftly, and quite methodically puts Western philosophy to sleep. He uses all of it's assumptions, all of it's techniques to bring it down from the inside out. With assuming that quality is the basis of all things, Pirsig defines what the good life is and how to attain it, something that Western philosophy is still puzzled over. By learning the art of motorcycle maintenance one can go on to live a life where quality and caring is the only factor. "Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think what I have to say has more lasting value"(267). How true.