[MD] Pirsig and Socratic method (a question for Ant)

[X Acto]

'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' was like a first child. Maybe that will always be the best-loved one. But this second child is the bright one. I think a lot of people will argue with some of the ideas in Lila. There may be controversy. But if people are still reading these two books a hundred years from now, I predict Lila will be the one they consider the more important'
 
“This may sound as though a purpose of the Metaphysics of Quality is to trash all subject-object thought but that's not true. Unlike subject-object metaphysics the Metaphysics of Quality does not insist on a single exclusive truth. If subjects and objects are held to be the ultimate reality then we're permitted only one construction of things”
“In any hierarchy of metaphysical classification the most important division is the first one, for this division dominates everything beneath it. If this first division is bad there is no way you can ever build a really good system of classification around it.
In his book Phaedrus had tried to save Quality from metaphysics by refusing to define it, by placing it outside the dialectical chess board. Anything that is undefined is outside metaphysics, since metaphysics can only function with defined terms. If you can't define it you can't argue about it. He had demonstrated that even though you can't define Quality you still must agree that it exists, since a world from which value is subtracted becomes unrecognizable.”
“But he realized that sooner or later he was going to have to stop carping about how bad subject-object metaphysics was and say something positive for a change. Sooner or later he was going to have to come up with a way of dividing Quality that was better than subjects and objects. He would have to do that or get out of metaphysics entirely. It's all right to condemn somebody else's bad metaphysics but you can't replace it with a metaphysics that consists of just one word.”
“By even using the term 'Quality' he had already violated the nothingness of mystic reality. The use of the term 'Quality' sets up a pile of questions of its own that have nothing to do with mystic reality and walks away leaving them unanswered. Even the name, 'Quality,' was a kind of definition since it tended to associate mystic reality with certain fixed and limited understandings. Already he was in trouble.Trying to create a perfect metaphysics is like trying to create a perfect chess strategy, one that will win every time. You can't do it. It's out of the range of human capability. No matter what position you take on a metaphysical question someone will always start masking questions that will lead to more positions that lead to more questions in this endless intellectual chess game. The game is supposed to stop when it is agreed that a particular line of reasoning is illogical. This is supposed to be similar to a checkmate. But conflicting
 positions go on for centuries without any such checkmate being agreed upon.
Phaedrus had spent an enormous amount of time following what turned out to be lousy openings.
A particularly large amount of this time had been spent trying to lay down a first line of division between the classic and romantic aspects of the universe he'd emphasized in his first book. In that book his purpose had been to show how Quality could unite the two. But the fact that Quality was the best way of uniting the two was no guarantee that the reverse was true - that the classic-romantic split was the best way of dividing Quality. It wasn't.”
“He'd been reading Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture without any particular search in mind, when a relatively minor anecdote stopped him. It stayed with him for weeks. He couldn't get it out of his mind.
The anecdote was a case-history in which there was a conflict of morality. It concerned a Pueblo Indian who lived in Zuni, New Mexico, in the nineteenth century. Like a Zen koan (which also originally meant 'case-history') the anecdote didn't have any single right answer but rather a number of possible meanings that kept drawing Phaedrus deeper and deeper into the moral situation that was involved.”
“When Phaedrus first read this passage he felt a kind of eerie feeling - a feeling he might have had if he had passed in front of a strange mirror and suddenly seen a reflection of someone he'd never expected to see. It was the same feeling he got at the peyote meeting. This Zuni Indian was not exactly someone else.
This was not just an isolated tribal incident going on here. This was something of universal importance happening. This was everyman. There is not a person alive who is not in some way or other in the kind of situation this 'witch' was in. It was just that his circumstances were so exotic and so extreme one could now see it, by itself, out in the open.”
“The story was of a struggle between good and evil, but the koan it raised was, 'Which was which?' Was this person really good or was he perhaps also evil?
At first reading he might seem a model of goodness, a lone, virtuous man surrounded by wicked persecutors, but this was too facile. Circumstances of the story argued against it.”
“Sometimes you can see your own society's issues more clearly when they are put in an exotic context like that of the brujo in Zuni. That is a huge reward from the study of anthropology. As Phaedrus thought about this context again and again it became apparent there were two kinds of good and evil involved.”
“To cling to Dynamic Quality alone apart from any static patterns is to cling to chaos. He saw that much can be learned about Dynamic Quality by studying what it is not rather than futilely trying to define what it is.
Static quality patterns are dead when they are exclusive, when they demand blind obedience and suppress Dynamic change. But static patterns, nevertheless, provide a necessary stabilizing force to protect Dynamic progress from degeneration. Although Dynamic Quality, the Quality of freedom, creates this world in which we live, these patterns of static quality, the quality of order, preserve our world. Neither static nor Dynamic Quality can survive without the other.
If one inserts this concept into a case such as that of the brujo in Zuni, one can see the truth of it. Although the Dynamic brujo and the static priests who tortured him appeared to be mortal enemies, they were actually necessary to each other. Both types of people had to exist.”
“Phaedrus' central attention turned away from any further explanation of Dynamic Quality and turned toward the static patterns themselves.”
Ron:
We see how he focused his attention in the remainder of the story in the Koan style which I believe
Is similar to the Socratic method illustrated in Plato’s Phauedrus. I think Pirsig deliberately chose
The symbols of “Phaedrus” the koan in zen and the game of Lila, to reinforce these themes of the MoQ.
 
I think many questions are answered in these statements.