Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle
Maintenance, An Unappreciation.
Introducing the 25th anniversary edition of the American 'new age'
classic Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, its author, Robert
M Pirsig, notes that since its original publication in 1974
some have knowingly claimed that it is the "most widely read philosophy
book ever". Although it is surprising that a work of philosophy could
be popular - of course one of the highest achievements - it's not very
surprising that compared with other works of philosophy it has been so
popular. It has clear virtues: a comparative smoothness of style with a
narrative structure that sweetens the blow of having to think. But the
price for this is a lack of rigour in analysis that leads to facile and
erroneous conclusions reached by way of misleadingly undemanding
foreground. The book's thesis seems to be that the idea of Western
philosophy and science is essentially in error and harmful and needs to
be replaced with a new idea that synthesises it with the idea of
Eastern philosophy thereby creating a new attitude towards life.
Against this
it can be shown that Pirsig's criticisms of philosophy and science are
unfounded, his solution absurd and futile, and consequently that the
popularity of the book has not been beneficial.
Pirsig tells the tale of his character 'Phaedrus', who may or may not
be himself, though it's likely that it is autobiographical so I'll
treat them as one and the same. As the book begins Pirsig speaks of the
nascent social antipathy against the industrial technology developing
in the West at this time, an antipathy now attenuated to a degree by
the development of the Spectacular wonders of digital technology. The
reaction is "still restrained by a thin web of logic that points out
that without the factories there are no jobs or standards of living".
One wonders what this actually has to do with logic, rather than
reasoning in general about means and ends. I raise this because it is
this kind of misunderstanding about what he is telling us about that
reoccurs all the way through the book, ultimately undermining the
author's efforts. As becomes clear the reason that he makes this
misidentification is that he sees a division between cold analysis and
an intuitive sense of rightness about things, blaming the former for
the evils of the West's twentieth century. He is not the first to
realise that an absence of human sentiments in the rational calculation
of the value of means and ends is disastrous, amongst others the
Romantic movement saw it coming, so did Wittgenstein, and Adorno and
Horkheimer identified it in Nazism. However that does
not mean the two are incompatible as they are, without introducing as
Pirsig tries to do, a supposed new way of thinking about things
influenced by Zen and Daoism
The credibility of his own theory partly rests on first undermining
that of science and the tradition of Western philosophy. Given his
statements later in the book it almost seems possible that he quite
deliberately attempts to lure you into committing an obvious error in
reasoning about the subject. He wants to convince you that because
science and philosophy do not work it must be the case that his
alternative is true. However, the fact that one idea may be inadequate
does not mean that an alternative is proven right, it can only be
right if demonstrated to be so. This is the same situation as when
people try to demonstrate the existence of God by disproving evolution.
He begins on the fortieth page with the philosophy of
science as well as the realm of those perennial philosophical
questions about what it is for something to exist and what it is for
something to be real rather than something that exists solely in the
mind. It's complained that the "scientific point of view has wiped out
every other view to a point where they all seem primitive, so that if a
person today talks about ghosts or spirits he is considered ignorant or
maybe nutty". Apparently our confidence in science has resulted in a
blindness to anything that cannot be validated by its methods, but is
there blood on the hands of science? Some yes, but there was an
accomplice: common sense. People in post-religious Britain (at least)
are now often more inclined to believe in spirits and ghosts and
positive vibes than they are in God. Belief in God and gods has
declined because of a repeated failure of them to make an appearance to
most of the population, whilst ghosts are seen or claimed to have been
seen often enough to allow people to at least accept the possibility
that they may exist. This is all despite the fact that science has yet
to demonstrate they do exist, so it is not science that is responsible
and this is despite the fact that the scientific method of empirical
testing is merely an extension of the common sense notion of not
believing things that have no evidence. But apparently what determines
truth is not at all anything to do with what can be demonstrated and
everything to do with simply saying things are true regardless of
evidence:
"...Indians and medieval men were just as
intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was
completely different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and
spirits are quite as real as atoms, particles, photons and quarts are
to a modern man. In that sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his
ghosts and spirits to you know, the laws of physics and logic...the
number system...the principle of algebraic substitution. These are
ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real..."
But it's not just 'context' that determines what is real, we can know
that atoms are real unlike ghosts because they have been detected with
scientific instruments and some have been split, with an effect that
can be seen with the eye unaided. On the other hand though there are
many reports of ghosts existing there is no widely accepted proof of
their existence - but even if there were it would prove nothing about
science being inadequate as it would then be scientifically acceptable.
Science need
not arbitrarily exclude phenomena, it's not perfect but it is better
than, say, voodoo. It may be true that some phenomena
postulated by science are assumed to exist by inference from the
existence of other phenomena and have in this sense only a nominal
existence, but this is not the majority of cases. Of course we know
science suffers from human caprice, Kuhn and Feyerabend have drawn our
attention to this but this doesn't mean it's unreal or useless just
because we don't expect to find particles and valid deductions happily
grazing along side each other when we go on safari or because
scientist's egos play a role. He is attempting to tell that science has
no ability to judge between what exists and what does not because it's
arbitrary, but it's much less arbitrary than previous forms of
understanding and it's also more reliable and open to change than other
ways of understanding. Unfortunately Pirsig's thinking here is vague
and undisciplined and as elsewhere it leaps fallaciously from arbitrary
premises to unjustified extreme conclusions.
His next move is to voice doubt about whether the things theorised by
the law of gravitation existed prior to the realisation of the theory
of their existence. He asks if it is the case that before Newton
thought of the law, was it the case that the law was "there, having no
mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone’s mind because
there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no space either,
not anywhere - this law of gravity still existed?" He continues that if
the law could be said to have been existing then, "I honestly
don't know what a thing has to do to be nonexistent". There is a simple
and reasonable explanation: these things the law of gravity identifies
did exist, human minds simply hadn't discovered them and named them. He
presages this objection on pages 41-2, where however he misidentifies
and misdescribes the belief, by saying that it is that:
"...We
believe the disembodied words of Sir Isaac Newton were sitting in the
middle of nowhere billions of years before he was born and that
magically he 'discovered' these words. They were always there, even
when they applied to nothing. Gradually the world came into being and
then they applied to it. In fact, those words themselves were what
formed the world. That, John, is ridiculous..."
Indeed it is, though the
idea he caricatures isn't, he has simply presented it in the form of
its least plausible explanation. Again if we talk about the things or
processes the law identifies as existing prior to the awareness of
their existence, rather than imagining the words floating around in the
void, the belief seems, I 'd contend, entirely reasonable. And of
course it would make more sense to imagine these things as being coeval
with the existence of the universe because presumably not all of the
conditions for their existence existed prior to the universe's
existence.
But, apparently, if we don't accept that Pirsig's conclusion is the
"only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion" it is
because we were unknowingly hypnotised at school! The
disbelieving interlocutor in the book says "You mean the teacher is
hypnotising the kid into believing the law of gravity?", "Sure" is the
response, followed by "You've heard of the importance of eye contact in
the classroom? Every educationalist emphasises it. No educationalist
explains it" (page 41). It's so absurd I needn't take the bother to
point out all its problems as an idea though what I will say is that if
this theory is true does it therefore mean we are hypnotised into
rejecting theories too? Or is this where the hypnosis has failed? And
how then are we able to know what actually did happen? And doesn't
university education encourage criticism?
Logic is a ghost too apparently, existing only in the mind (page 42).
The reply remains the same. The rules of logic had to be invented or
discovered by the mind, Pirsig would prefer us to describe the event
with the latter term but ultimately it doesn't matter which because
however it was created it corresponds with processes in the world
around us. If I write down a valid deduction with true premises that
refer to objects around me and the conclusion is true and occurs, then
it must be so in nature, humans have simply named the elements of the
process and explained its functioning. Major premise, 'There are some
apples that are delicious but some that aren't'. Minor premise, 'Ben
eats things if and only if they are delicious'. Conclusion, 'Ben will
only eat the
delicious apples and not those that aren't'. This is deductive logic
and it describes the world around us. But my
protestations are in vain for Pirsig because he concludes, using the
previous ideas as premises, that because these premises are true, it is
true that "The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human
imagination". There is no physical world then? It's just my
imagination? You can believe Pirsig if you like, but he hasn't proven
anything, or even demonstrated their convincing possibility, especially
not that last assertion of faith. Pirsig believes the 'problems' he
identifies show that science and philosophy are arbitrary constructions
with no correspondence with reality and they are therefore inadequate
to their task, this might be so if his attack succeeds but it does not.
His final attempt to support his case is to say that: "The number of
rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomena is infinite",
and that "If true, that law is not a minor flaw in scientific
reasoning. The law is completely nihilistic. It is a catastrophic
logical disproof of the general validity of all scientific method"
(page 115). However these assertions can easily be rejected as false.
The truth of the 'law' can't actually be known in advance of each
individual phenomenon being tested as there may be a limited number or
even just one explanation. Indeed it may even be sensible to suppose
that where explanatory hypotheses do exist without a competitor there
is only one hypothesis since we can't know that there is an infinite
number as this is unknowable - Pirsig certainly offers no demonstration
of the proof of his law. Granted there is always the possibility of a
new hypothesis to explain something but this doesn't especially
undermine scientific method; science has an explanation for boiling
water, it is adequate to our needs, there may be an undiscovered
alternative explanation, but this doesn't mean we should consider our
current explanation false and an alternative possible explanation that
doesn't exist but might do one day, true. It is only if you believe,
contra the history of science and philosophy, that currently existing
knowledge is unsurpassable, that you'd find 'Pirsig's Law' a disaster
for empirical science and proof.
The ambition of the work is now revealed as the attempt to unify the
incomplete and flawed "classical" (philosophical-scientific) and flawed
"romantic" (intuitive sense of rightness) types of thinking thereby
unifying the scientific and artistic 'two cultures', this will allow us
to avoid our emotionally hollow, aesthetically meaningless and
spiritually empty world and proceed to a better one. Whether or not his
ideas allow us to attain that remains to be seen over the course of the
book. The previous assault on science sought to show its failings
thereby preparing us to take his strongly unscientific and irrational
ideas seriously. Pirsig believes he was in possession of "a set of
ideas no one had ever heard before" that will mend our ways (page 159).
These new ideas concern the notion of what quality, or rather,
"Quality" is. Quality is "a characteristic of thought and statement
that is recognised by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a
product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined". So
Quality is identified by an intuition, hunch, mere whim, or a sort of
super-sensory awareness that cannot be explained or justified. Yet is
it not true that often we can explain why something has quality, in the
normal sense of that term, or why in other words it is good? Is
'Quality' different from normal quality? If it is it's not clear how or
indeed what it is he is talking about. And don't we often think
rationally about why we think something is good? In fact isn't it often
the case that some things can't actually be said to have quality unless
there are rational justifications for the judgement? We know what a
quality essay is because to be one it requires certain attributes such
as correspondence with the facts of the matter and conclusions
justified by convincing reasons. If we were to not use these criteria
for judging its quality we would not be able to accurately say what a
quality essay is and judgements about it would be entirely arbitrary.
Additionally we do have the ability to feel intuitions about things
which we may not be able to fully explain but we are already aware of
the existence of this and we don't need to give it a profound name to
know about it, whilst attributing it capacities beyond what it has as
Pirsig tries is folly. In doing so he has not unified the classical and
the romantic, he has cut the classical reasoning out of his idea
altogether replacing intuition and reason solely with intuition and
accordingly has left us weakened because of it. Given this we see that
the bold claim that "when Quality is kept undefined by definition, the
entire field called Aesthetics is wiped out" is untrue (page 213). The
idea of the 18th and 19th century romantic reaction to science that saw
it as a blind because of its focus on underlying details and
thoughtless because of its enrapturement with reflection, sought to
replace reasoning with intuition, an idea that informs Pirisig's view
of Quality. A view of some romantics is the belief that aesthetic
preference - quality preference, cannot be objectively justified,
instead there are just differing points of view about what quality is.
Now although Quality cannot be explained or defined and this
seems to be because it doesn't actually exist, particular instances of
things of quality can be identified and explained. Whether or not they
are capable of objective justification is different and nothing to do
with the possibility of their analysis or attempts through reasoning to
justify why they do have quality, or in more usual philosophical
parlance ‘value’ - Aesthetics remains as it is then.
A scene is played where Pirsig's 'Phaedrus' character deals with
provocations to define Quality in the form of the question 'is it
subjective or objective'? Pirsig then admonishes Phaedrus for failing
to realise that it was foolish to even engage with the question instead
he should have simply reasserted his belief that it is indefinable and
that nothing else can be said for or against. This insistence that when
you say something is true it must be so, regardless of what anyone else
says, simply insisting they are wrong and not being prepared to offer
any reason other than that they just don't understand - which is
the brutal truth of this situation once you take the
mystic-philosophical wrappings off it - apparently has a fine
historical
pedigree to indirectly justify itself. "Philosophical mysticism, the
idea that truth is indefinable and can be apprehended only by non
rational means, has been with us since the beginning of history. It's
the basis of Zen practice. But it's not an academic subject" (page 230).
It's unclear what he intends here. Does he mean that the concept of
truth in general can't be defined or explained? Or does he mean that
whether or not something like Quality is true depends on super-sensory
awareness instead of demonstrable proof? Or does he mean that
judgements of value, quality, or Quality cannot be rationally explained
and assessed to determine if they are true? It is true that there are
difficulties in defining truth in a way that does not already
presuppose an understanding of what truth is, and there are differing
attempts to solve this problem some of which some people accept whilst
others accept other ideas, but this, contra Pirsig, doesn't entail the
necessary truth of the sceptical idea. Furthermore the sceptical idea
that the idea of truth is indefinable is taught, it's just that it's
just one idea among many, it's not obviously true, and it's not
exclusive
to the Zen religion so Zen doesn't necessarily need to be mentioned.
Despite being unable to obtain an agreed definition of what truth is,
it is however true that we know when something is true even if we can't
define the idea of truth in general and if the Zen idea is only
affirming the idea that truth in general is unknowable then
Pirsig confuses the problem of defining the idea of truth in general
with the problem of how we can know when particular things are true.
The problem of the truth of Quality is how can we know it is true, and
not how can we know what truth is. His claim about the existence of
Quality actually has no connection with problems of defining the idea
of truth in general and he can derive no support for his belief from
any problems there. If instead he means that we can't know that some
things are true on the basis of reason and our senses and has simply
conflated this idea with what he seems to present as the Zen one then
it means that he sees the sole criterion for truth in super-sensory
awareness, and proof, reason, and logic have no jurisdiction here.
Unfortunately as we have seen reasoning does have a role to play in
these things and therefore the 'classical' philosophical-scientific is
lost
again and with it the intuitive sense of rightness of the romantic too
- the idea is counter intuitive and against common sense, a most
unQuality situation. Equally if he means that judgements about quality
and Quality cannot be explained it's clear that this is often false, as
we saw with Aesthetics.
Interestingly, if believers in Zen practice say that it is true that
truth cannot be apprehended by rational means then Zen is actually
self-contradictory and self-refuting as they are saying that what they
say is true and they offer justifications to convince you through
reason so they are using rational means to communicate this truth
to you. Of course they want to show that this paradox proves that
nothing can be said about the world that ultimately makes sense except
the Buddha, but it is true that they are contradicting themselves so
the only thing certainly nonsensical about the world here is what they
say
about it. Zen devotees can't actually claim that what they say is true
because to say there is no truth understood
through logical reasoning means they cannot say that what they
say is itself true as this uses reason to explain a 'truth'.
Furthermore although this general observation may in fact be true
sometimes, this can only be known as each case arises and not in
advance so it is not so much a truth as a presumption. In fact Buddhism
is one amongst many theories of the nature
of the world and reality. It is worth considering and its ideas are
relevant to everyone, however it is an extreme position. It is not for
instance true that all life is suffering, I am not suffering now, even
though I desire to complete this writing this does not make me suffer
in the true sense of that term. Indeed when we desire something like
Justice, Equality, or Liberty, it is not the desire that causes
suffering it is primarily the absence of what we desire. When we have
attained
what we desire we will therefore suffer doubly less. Withdrawing from
the world because it poses difficulties, because it is difficult to use
the intellect to understand it and ourselves need not be necessary when
things can be achieved and need to be achieved regardless of the
difficulties involved. It sometimes seems futile, but it is not always
so and often isn't, as what we have attests.
Pirsig seems to believe along with the Theosophists and the Hare
Krishnas that the problems of the 20th century in the West, the
destruction of the environment, the degradation of everyday life in the
blind pursuit of ever-increasing superfluous material wealth - and the
genocides, could be averted in future if only people stopped seeing
others as external objects and started seeing the oneness of
everything, there being no 'real' divisions between ourselves and the
world - all one under Quality. On page 297 he says that "I think that
if we are going to reform the world and make it a better place to live
in, the way we do it is not with talk about relationships of a
political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and
objects and their relationships to one another...The social values are
right if the individual values are right". Right then, anyone for
Communism? We aren't separate individuals we are all one, so how can I
be telling you what to do? You're not actually being executed as 'you'
don't exist, only 'us'. And so on, it's like he's quoting Mao. He is
also repeating the frequent complaint that the demystification of life
since the European age of 'Enlightenment' has despiritualised us,
taking away the sacredness we had before, making us mere numbers to be
subtracted at the tyrants whim. Unfortunately for Quality, changing the
premises of reasoning in this way will not necessarily make any
difference. If we consider when there
has been this kind of belief in the East has it ever stopped any
massacres or genocides or general impoverishment of life? It might have
done in fact, but of course we'd never be able to know, what we do know
is that there's been plenty of times when it hasn't. No matter how
remarkable or meaningful this journey of the mind is to Pirsig it
doesn't really make any difference to anything. Indeed the Buddha's
omnipresence doesn't seem to have freed Pirsig's early 1970s male
gendered mind from patriarchal misogyny: "He seems to look down on
Phaedrus with womanish peevishness" (page 382).
Continuing, he says "the relationship of Quality to the objective world
could sound mysterious if not carefully explained", thus:
"...He simply meant that at the cutting edge of time,
before an object can be distinguished, there must be a kind of
non-intellectual awareness, which he called awareness of Quality, you
can't be aware that you've seen a tree until after you've seen the
tree...Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past
and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the
intellectualisation takes place. There is no other reality...Quality is
the parent, the source of all subjects and objects..."(page 247).
But why must there be a lag between perception and awareness? They
could be simultaneous, or effectively simultaneous. Even if it is shown
in empirical neuroscience that there is a lag how does it prove that
decisions are made before thought, occurring when we see something and
having no accompanying mental activity? Even if there is a lag don't we
think about choices after they've been made? Once again mere opinion
and conjecture is mistaken for absolute truth. There follows a long
section on Poincare who said that choices of facts are actually
preselected "subliminally, therefore Quality is true because Quality is
what comes first" (page 281). Yet it is a fact that we can compare,
evaluate, and disregard facts after they have been selected,
consciously deciding between them - unless this is also certainly
unconscious preselection, but even if it is does that actually mean
that our minds are unaware of the objects? We may be unconscious of
that awareness. What Poincaire said, as interpreted and presented by
Pirsig, does not prove the existence of Quality or that decisions are
made about things by looking at them without thinking about them, and
even if this were true it would still be insufficient to prove
Quality's existence.
The belief in the significance of the discovery of Quality leads to
greater and greater vainglory. Aristotle is dismissed as a comparative
intellectual weakling by the great man. It's true that he is not
necessarily the most arresting thinker to read at times, though it is
thought that what we have today are merely his lecture notes, but to
condemn something from such an early stage in the history of philosophy
for being 'primitive' as Pirsig does is not impressive especially given
that in many ways Aristotle is actually still the most sophisticated
philosopher there has ever been. Pirsig's certainty in his own ideas,
their truth and brilliance - and the stupidity of anyone who does not
recognise this, is a leitmotif of the book .
"...The reason why, if he were not more than 2'000
years old, he would have gladly rubbed him out [Aristotle] is that he
saw him as a prototype for the many millions of self-satisfied and
truly ignorant teachers throughout history who have smugly and
callously killed the creative spirit of their students with this dumb
rational of analysis..."( page 360).
Or despite the inefficiencies and inadequacies of the tradition of
Western academic instruction of philosophy this is the only way that is
known to teach it in anyway successfully and tampering with it may well
be counter-productive, as that most ordinary of people Edmund Burke
might have said and the more exotic and therefore more alluring
Confucius might have also said. In fact one of the reasons people see
that Aristotle has value is because of his typical quality of searching
for truth rather than looking for reasons to support what he already
believes. The result is wide ranging discoveries on many subjects
rigorously and systematically analysed, it's unfortunate that Pirsig
hasn't followed this path himself. The final stages of the book are
just the usual set of complaints by a disgruntled philosophy student
who feels they are learning nothing but irrelevancies, though if
Phaedrus had paid more attention to other people's views he might have
learnt the error of his ways, instead he was "there solely to write a
Great Book of his own" (page 364). In the age of individualism the idea
that things can be learnt from others or that someone who has studied
something for longer may know more than you or may be better practiced
at avoiding mistakes isn't acceptable.
Pirsig goes on to acknowledge that he was unfair to Aristotle (page
364) but he retains the belief that Aristotle is the source of error
and evil in the world. This is because rhetoric is not considered to be
true Quality in Aristotle's systematic philosophising and it is
rhetoric, which is about appearance and effect, that embodies Quality
and not ugly and difficult philosophy concerned with truth. (Similarly,
Nietzsche once wrote that "Existence is only ever justified as an
aesthetic phenomenon" but as we shall see this is not always so). The
rot begins with Plato; Socrates’ analytical interrogation of what
people say turns their persuasive speeches of rhetoric into "an object,
and as an object [it] has parts" (page 368). More accurately, what
people
say has parts, the elements of language can be classified by function,
and the combination of elements can create an overall function, thus
Plato distinguished philosophy or dialectic which seeks truth, from
rhetoric, which seeks to manipulate. The difference is one of function,
in the latter case the intention of the speaker is to achieve something
that they believe is to their advantage: convincing someone of
something regardless of its truth. It's true that it's often difficult
to assess what is an artifice of rhetoric and what a balanced
presentation of an idea but this does not mean it is always impossible.
For example the way the author informs us at the beginning of the book
that Phaedrus scored very high on intelligence tests seems possibly to
be a deliberate use of rhetoric to soften us up to accept his ideas -
why else say it? It doesn't actually have anything to do with the truth
of his ideas. Similarly when he talks of Poincaire he quotes
Bertrand Russell as saying he was more or less the greatest mind he
knew which is again irrelevant to whether or not what is written in
front of you seems convincing, especially seeing as Russell would not
have endorsed Pirsig's ideas. Later he tries to lead the reader to
accept his inference that because some of the Sophists were made
ambassadors they must be right in what they believe and do!(page 370).
Manipulation and sloppy thinking can be distinguished then from
openness, clarity, honesty, and rigour. In fact all of Pirsig's
sophist's tactics would be classed as informal fallacies by a properly
trained philosopher, but Pirsig doesn't care whether a belief is
justified or not - just whether it 'feels' or 'seems' right. Hopefully
at the end of this you will 'feel' that it is right to believe that
Pirsig is wrong but the reason you will have this feeling is because
you have read good reasons to feel that way. Because of the
self-professed vagueness about Quality being recognised by a
"nonthinking process", Pirsig feels he can legitimately use rhetoric to
lead people into believing what he says: they 'feel' he is right but
can't communicate why when questioned. The belief might be sustainable
if were not for the fact that it can be so effectively criticised, and
it's not the same situation where we know what truth is but can't
explain it because truth is something everyone understands whereas
Quality is an idea credible only to those misled by Pirsig's exposition
of this unnecessary idea that is destructive of that aspect of quality
(and Quality) that includes both reason and common sense intuition and
which is known as intelligence.
Aside from the virtues that explain this book's success another reason
might be that people who live in a society where the needs of the state
and of individual psychology lead to a constant reaffirming that the
way society is organised is fundamentally right and functional find
that any problems are to do with the individual, leading them to
concentrate solely on facile philosophies that concern only the self
and its attitude to a purportedly radically unknowable world around it.
You would think I speak of the life of the mind in a totalitarian
society, yet any regime that seeks to sustain itself is likely to
affirm its validity whilst encouraging a preoccupation with
introspection amongst its subjects. Entertainingly, there is an
additional related reason for the book's success, perhaps it is only in
a society that has replaced education centred on philosophy and
rhetoric with the technical training that passes for education that
much of the English speaking world suffers from today that a book of
quasi-philosophy could be mistaken for the 'real' thing.
A B Joicey
The 25th Anniversary edition of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance' is published in the U.K. by Vintage.
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