New reading material for fans of Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

[value]

I recently discovered a topic that appears to have been started by Robert M. Pirsig (IQ 170), the author of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974), the most sold philosophy book ever (5m copies).

The user introduced the website for Metaphysics of Quality www.moq.org on this forum and asked for feedback on the website, which provided a hint: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4285

Metaphysics of Quality

The Seventies bestseller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values was the biggest-selling philosophy book ever. The book appears in Guinness Book of Records as the bestselling book rejected by the largest number of publishers (121). Sold 5m copies worldwide.

The Guardian mentions the following about the website of Robert Pirsig: www.moq.org.

"Though a website dedicated to his ideas boasts 50,000 posts, and there have been outposts of academic interest, he (Robert Pirsig) is disappointed that his books have not had more mainstream attention. 'Most academic philosophers ignore it, or badmouth it quietly, and I wondered why that was. I suspect it may have something to do with my insistence that "quality" can not be defined,' he says."

One of his more recent topics on this forum:

Logic is it's own fallacy.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4253

Has anyone here read Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance? Or, Lila? By Pirsig.

While his account on onlinephilosophyclub.com is deleted, his posts are still accessible.

User: ChaoticMindSays
search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&author_id=35658

Two of his books:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/629 ... aintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31093.Lila

Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals

---

New books by Robert Pirsig through onlinephilosophyclub.com

The following tool makes it possible to print his topics and post archive into a real ebook (.epub) so that it is easy to read and preserve.

https://github.com/optimalisatie/forum- ... epub-ebook

You can create an easy to use browser button or you can simply copy and paste the following Javascript code into the browser console (F12) to instantly print a forum topic into a real ebook.

Code: Select all

(function(b,c,a,d){
   a=b.createElement("script");a.async=1;a.src="https://psyreporter.com/epub/epub.js";b.head.appendChild(a);d=setInterval(function(){window.epubExport&&(clearInterval(d),c&&window.epubExport(c),console.info("ebook epub export widget ready",window.epubExport))},10)
})(document,{
   "author": "Robert M. Pirsig",
   "publisher": "OnlinePhilosophyClub.com"
});

You can add this code to the browser bookmarks to create a bookmark bar style 'print button' by prefixing the code with javascript: as the URL of the bookmark. When you then visit a topic and click the bookmark button it will print an ebook of the topic.

Example result:

A new book by Robert M. Pirsig (2023)

The ebook print widget was originally created for this forum and was used to publish an ebook: Free eBook: one of the most popular philosophy discussion topics in recent history

In my experience, reading a forum topic as an ebook is a totally different experience. It adds a level of relaxedness and detached perspective to the reading of posts that provides many different insights, both with regard the perspective and interaction of users and the content of a topic.

The free ebook example is a great example to try it out. The subject is "On the absurd hegemony of science".

This topic is nothing if not popular.