[U.S.]Robert·M·Pirsig: “The World of Father and Son” (“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”), translated by Huang Xin, China Friendship Publishing Company, November 1998, 22.8 yuan——☆
I remember that there was a page in A History of Twentieth-Century Thought introducing this strange book. Because the introduction was so brief, apart from its strange title, I still hadn’t realized what was special about it. It was only after seeing Teacher Liu and Teacher Jiang recommend this The World of Father and Son that I learned this strange book had already been translated into Chinese!
The translator was probably a literary translator and likely had little philosophical training; the translation problems are all over the place—for example, Russell is rendered as Mansu, Poincaré (Penggalai) as Chongenl (on the very next page it becomes Pangerl, and in the following paragraph it changes back to Chongenl, which tells you something about the quality of the translation), and so on. What really made me FT, though, was that the Chinese title was inexplicably changed into “The World of Father and Son,” and moreover the blurb on the cover read: “A deeply moving life movement, battered by repeated hardships, yet completely transcendent and free from the ordinary world.” This kind of packaging clearly seeks to downplay the book’s speculative, meditative color and instead market it as a classic literary work. I don’t know whether such a marketing strategy was effective, but in any case, it almost made me miss this strange book.
Although this book runs through the thread of a father and son traveling by motorcycle, more than seventy percent of its pages are devoted to philosophical inquiry. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” is what properly expresses the theme of this book—first, a sense of absurdity, humor tinged with provocation, and postmodern rebellion; then the conflict and fusion between East and West, tradition and modernity, reason and romance, science and life, technology and art—that is the book’s subject.
This book can be said to be a postmodern-style monograph in philosophy of science and philosophy of technology—other postmodern philosophical works one encounters on the market, though they champion postmodern positions, often differ little in style of writing and argument from traditional philosophical treatises, whereas this book can be said to be more thoroughly rebellious—it explores philosophy in a subversive way.
What this book deals with most is the kind of discussions usually found in philosophy of science and philosophy of technology—extremely wonderful, and extremely profound. Those who read this book as if it were a literary classic may not easily enter into its thought, whereas if one has had some exposure to philosophy of technology and philosophy of science, one may well slap the table in exclamation.
I will read this book several more times.
The only reason I did not list this book as a quarterly recommendation is that it does not seem to be the easiest book to find at present. But if you come across it, by all means buy it and read it!
Page 80~81 The night before last, I told Chris that Phaedrus had spent his whole life chasing a ghost; that was true, and the ghost he was chasing was the ghost lurking in technology, in all modern science and Western thought, namely the ghost of reason. I told Chris that after he found that ghost, he gave it a good beating. I think this metaphor is quite apt; on the road ahead I want to explain some of the things he revealed. In our present age, perhaps others can finally recognize the value of these things. Back then, no one could understand the ghost Phaedrus was chasing, but now I think more and more people will understand it, especially in moments of frustration when they can see it—a ghost that calls itself reason but looks so incoherent, so absurd; it makes the most ordinary daily actions seem somehow mad, because they are not related to anything else. This is the ghost assumed by everyday life. It declares that the ultimate goal of life—living forever—is impossible to achieve. But that is also the most basic goal of life, so the great sages devise every possible means to treat disease so that people can live longer, yet only a lunatic would ask why: to live longer in order to live longer, with no other purpose—that is what the ghost says.
Page 111 He believed that the cause of the various crises in our society today was a physiological defect in the body over the years. Unless this physiological defect is removed, the crisis will continue. Our current model of reason does not push society toward a more beautiful world; rather, it drives it farther and farther away from a more beautiful world. Since the Renaissance these models have been at work. As long as the need for food, clothing, housing, and transportation still dominates, they will continue to function. But now, for the vast majority of people, these needs are no longer the master of all activity; thus the entire rational structure handed down to us from antiquity is lacking. People are beginning to see its true face—emotionally numb, aesthetically empty, spiritually hollow and tedious. That is how it is today, and it will remain so for a considerable time to come. A furious, continuous social crisis seemed to unfold before my eyes, and no one truly understood how serious this crisis was, much less offered a solution. I saw many people like John and Sylvia living in bewilderment, far removed from the rational structure of civilized life as a whole, trying to seek release outside that structure, yet finding it hard to discover a lasting and satisfactory solution. Then I saw Phaedrus and his laboratory, alone, immersed in thought. In fact, what he was thinking about was related to this social crisis, but he started from a different point of departure; he approached it from the opposite direction. Now I intend to tie his thought together. Because the system is huge, at times you may feel that I am somewhat off the mark.
Among those who associated with Phaedrus, it seemed that no one truly cared about this phenomenon, which baffled him endlessly. They seemed to be saying: “We all know the scientific method works, so why question it?”
Among those who associated with Phaedrus, it seemed that no one truly cared about this phenomenon, which baffled him endlessly. They seemed to be saying: “We all know the scientific method works, so why question it?”
Page 222 If he accepted the premise that Dharma is objective, then he would be nailed to one horn of the “dilemma”; if he accepted the other premise, namely that Dharma is subjective, then he would be nailed to the other horn.………… Page 223 The third rhetorical rebuttal for resolving this dilemma, which I think is also the best one, is to refuse to enter the bullring. Phaedrus could simply say: “To divide Dharma into subjective or objective is an attempt to define it, and I have already said that it is undefinable.” And end it there. I remember that Dewey advised him exactly in this way at the time. Why he did not heed the advice and chose to confront this dilemma with logic and dialectics instead of easily extricating himself through mysticism, I do not know. But I can speculate. I think, first, he believed that the “church of reason” was in the bullring of logic, and that was unchangeable. If you place yourself outside logical rebuttal, it is equivalent to placing yourself outside all academic thought. Philosophical mysticism, which has accompanied humanity since ancient times, holds that truth is undefinable and can only be grasped through irrational means. It is the forebear of Zen discourse, but it is not an academic subject. The academy, the “church of reason,” studies only what can be defined; if one wants to be a mystic, one should go to a monastery, not a university. A university is a place for clarifying doubts. I think the second reason he decided to enter the bullring was ego. He knew full well that he was a quite outstanding logician and dialectician, and he took pride in it. He regarded the struggle before him as a challenge to his own skill, and now I understand that his egoistic state of mind may well have been the root of all his troubles.
Page 225 Later, he figured it out. He took out a knife and cut away the word that aroused the anger; that word was “merely.” Why should Dharma be merely something you like? Why should “what you like” be “merely”? What exactly does “merely” mean here? When examined after being cut out, it is obvious that “merely” has no meaning whatsoever in this sentence; it is purely a pejorative word, contributing zero logically to the whole sentence. Remove this word, and the sentence becomes “Dharma is what you like,” and the whole meaning changes, becoming a maxim that does not invite resentment.
Page 226 Very soon, he realized that this sentence contained far more than the meaning he had already grasped. When people said: don’t do only what you like, they were not merely saying: please obey authority. There were other meanings in the words. This “other meaning” could be extended to the enormous domain of classical scientific belief, which asserts: “What you like is not important, because they are all constituted by your own irrational emotions.” He spent a long time studying this view, then split it into two smaller pieces, which he called scientific materialism and classical formalism. He said that the two often appear in the same person, are interrelated, yet are logically separate. Scientific materialism holds that whatever is composed of matter or energy and can be measured by scientific instruments is real; otherwise it is not real, or at least not important. This view is more common among laypeople who follow science than among scientists themselves. “What you like” is not readable, and therefore not real. “What you like” may be a fact, or it may be an illusion. Liking or not liking does not distinguish between the two. And the purpose of the scientific method is to distinguish effectively between truth and falsehood in nature, eliminating the subjective, unreal, fictional factors in one’s work, so as to obtain an objective, real impression of reality. If he says that Dharma is subjective, in their view, that is equivalent to saying Dharma is fictional, and therefore, in serious and earnest inquiry into reality, it can be ignored. On the other hand is classical formalism, which firmly believes that what cannot be cognitively known cannot be known at all. Dharma in this case is unimportant, because it is a kind of emotional cognition, accompanied by no rational intellectual factor.
Page 229 Now, there appear to be two Dharmas instead of a single, uniform Dharma: one is the romantic Dharma possessed by students, seen only with the eyes; the other is the classical Dharma possessed by teachers, namely comprehensive cognition. One is flexible and adaptive; the other rigid and conservative. Rigidity does not mean a lack of Dharma, but rather a classical kind of Dharma……. He did not want things to develop in this way. This term was supposed to divide the classical and romantic worldviews and bring the two together, yet it itself was split in two and could no longer bring anything together. It was stuck in the meat grinder of analysis. The sharp blades of subjectivity and objectivity cut Dharma into two pieces, strangling it before it could become a working concept. If he wanted to save it, he could not let this knife succeed. And in fact, the Dharma he spoke of was neither classical nor romantic. It lay beyond both. And, by heaven, it was neither subjective nor objective; it belonged to neither type. In truth, to associate the conflict between subjectivity and objectivity, between mind and matter, with Dharma was itself unfair. For tens of thousands of years, the relation between mind and matter had been an insoluble dead knot in ideology. They were trying to tie that dead knot around Dharma as well, and drag it down with them. If mind and matter had not first been clearly distinguished in logic, how could he answer whether Dharma was mind or matter?
Page 231 I do not know how long he wrestled with this before reaching this conclusion. But at last he understood: Dharma cannot be linked separately to either subject or object; it can only be found in the relation between the two. It is the point where subject and object intersect. He was excited. Dharma is not a thing, but a process. He was even more excited. It is a process by which a subject begins to recognize an object.
60; And since there can be no subject without an object, that is, since the object creatively causes the subject to recognize himself, Dharma is the process that makes subject-object cognition possible. He was beside himself with joy. He knew that, at this point, things were almost in view. This meant that Dharma is not the product of the collision between subject and object. The existence of subject and object themselves is precisely deduced from the moral process. The moral process is the cause of subject and object, at a time when people mistakenly took it to be the cause of morality!
60; And since there can be no subject without an object, that is, since the object creatively causes the subject to recognize himself, Dharma is the process that makes subject-object cognition possible. He was beside himself with joy. He knew that, at this point, things were almost in view. This meant that Dharma is not the product of the collision between subject and object. The existence of subject and object themselves is precisely deduced from the moral process. The moral process is the cause of subject and object, at a time when people mistakenly took it to be the cause of morality!
Page 270 But for now, we still have several concepts that greatly change how we know things. Dharma is the Buddha, Dharma is scientific reality, Dharma is the goal of art. Next we should apply these concepts to practical, concrete situations. For this, there is no more concrete or apt example than the motorcycle maintenance and repair I have been talking about all along.
Page 277 Thus, one’s rational understanding of a motorcycle is constantly corrected and improved as one diagnoses and repairs its faults, and as one comes to recognize that a new and different rational understanding possesses more Dharma.
Page 278 More specifically, if you want to build a factory, or repair a motorcycle, or lead a nation without falling into deadlock, then classical, structured, subject-object dualistic knowledge, though indispensable, is not enough. You must feel the Dharmic quality of this work; you must have the capacity to appreciate the true, the good, and the beautiful in things. That is the driving force that propels you forward. This capacity is not something you are born with, although you are born bearing this capacity; it is something you can cultivate and develop, and not merely “intuition,” not merely ineffable “skill” or “talent.” It is the direct result of linking up with the basic reality hidden by the old dualistic ideas—Dharma.
Page 283 The technological ugliness the Sutherland couple tried so hard to avoid is not a property of technology itself. It only seems ugly to them, because it is hard for us to separate out such an ugly side within technology; but technology is only the composition of things, and the composition of things cannot be ugly in essence, otherwise there could be no beauty in works of art, because they are precisely the composition of things; in fact, the root of the word “techne” originally means “art.”
Page 284 The way to resolve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to avoid technology; doing so is useless. The way to eliminate the contradiction should be to break through the obstruction of dualistic thinking, because it prevents us from recognizing what technology is. Rather than developing nature, we should dissolve both nature and the human spirit into a new creative process, one that can allow both nature and the human spirit to be sublimated.
Page 318 The real motorcycle you need to repair is yourself. The motorcycle there and the person standing here are not two independent beings. Either they seek Dharma together, or they fall together.
Page 343~344 ……How can I be so in love with all this and still have my mind go astray? I don’t believe it! Myth—that’s myth gone mad. That’s what he thought. Myth says that the forms of this world are real, but the Dharma of this world is false. Now that is madness! He believed he had found in Aristotle and the ancient Greeks how to weave myths so that we take this madness as reality—the villains.
Page 365 But Phaedrus understood that his moral discourse somehow diverged from all this, and came much closer to the sophists. “Man is the measure of all things.” Yes, that is the Dharma he was talking about. Man is not, as subjective idealism thinks, the foundation of all things. Nor is man, as objective idealists and materialists think, a passive observer of all things. The Dharma that creates the world appears as the relation between human beings and their experience. He participates in the process of creating all things, and it is fitting to say that he is the measure of all things. Their teaching of rhetoric also makes sense.
Page 367 Dharma! Virtue!Dharma! That’s what the sophists taught! Not ethical relativism, nor primitive “virtue.” Rather arefe, excellence,Dharma! Before the church of reason. Before essence. Before form. Before spirit and matter. Before dialectic itself. Dharma is absolute. The earliest teachers of the Western world were teaching Dharma, and the medium they chose was rhetoric. He himself had always been doing exactly that.
////—I jotted down these passages at random simply because I thought they were interesting. There are places where I resonate with the author, but there are many others where I do not support him. I have not yet written any commentary, because my current thinking is still too rough and shallow.
July 23, 2007
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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