About This Book
Seventeen years after Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig returned with a stranger novel. Where Zen explored Quality through a motorcycle journey, Lila pursues it into questions of anthropology, culture, and moral evolution. The narrator sails down the Hudson River with a troubled woman named Lila, whose life becomes the occasion for sustained philosophical inquiry. The Metaphysics of Quality Pirsig develops — distinguishing static and Dynamic Quality, arguing that value is the primary substance of reality — is ambitious to the point of system-building. Lila lacks its predecessor's narrative propulsion but rewards readers who engage seriously with the philosophy.