Phaedrus Significance in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

What is Phaedrus in Zen and the Art of Motorbike Maintenance? What part does he play in the story?

In Zen and the Art of Motorbike Maintenance, Phaedrus is the alter ego of the narrator, Pirsig. Phaedrus' story is used to help explain larger philosophical ideas.

Read more about Zen and the Fine art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Phaedrus, and his role in the story.

Zen and the Fine art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Phaedrus and the First Track

When the book begins, Pirsig and Chris have simply left Minneapolis on motorcycles. They are accompanied past John and Sylvia Sutherland, friends of Pirsig, who are riding with the Pirsigs as far every bit Bozeman, Montana. Whereas Pirsig is an editor of technical manuals, John is a drummer, and their differing attitudes toward motorcycle maintenance provide the impetus for Pirsig'due south early Chautauquas on technology.

As the riders make their way west, the Pirsigs' backstory is slowly revealed. The central plot points are as follows:

• Some years before the ride, Pirsig suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized. He was treated with electroshock therapy, which acquired him to forget who he was before the handling. Through occasional fragments of memory and his ain research, he'south been able to get a sense of the person he was before. He calls this person Phaedrus.
  
• In Zen and the Fine art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Phaedrus was a gifted kid who enrolled in college at fifteen to written report science. He found himself haunted by philosophical questions and eventually flunked out. Later on a stint in the ground forces, he returned to college to report philosophy.
  
• After graduating, again consumed by existential questions, Phaedrus spent years in India studying philosophy. He found Eastern philosophy every bit as unsatisfying every bit Western philosophy and returned to the States. He earned a graduate degree in journalism and wound up teaching rhetoric and composition at Montana Land University in Bozeman.
  
• His experience didactics led him to the discovery of "Quality," an indefinable philosophical concept from which (he thought) sprung all of human being experience and endeavor. Both for professional person and intellectual reasons, he decided to continue researching "Quality" in an interdisciplinary graduate programme at the University of Chicago. It was while he was living and studying in Chicago that he suffered his breakdown.
  
• Chris has been causing trouble at home lately. He also suffers from chronic stomach aches, but no doctor has been able to find a physical cause. His caretakers fear he's at risk of a breakdown as well.

In Bozeman, the grouping stays with an erstwhile colleague of Phaedrus named DeWeese. After a few days, the Sutherlands return to Minnesota, and the Pirsigs press on to California. As they about their destination, Pirsig fears that Phaedrus is reviving in his heed and some other breakdown is imminent.

When the Pirsigs achieve California, Chris's mood is at its nadir. Pirsig feels compelled to have a frank talk with him. He tells Chris that he, Pirsig, was once insane, and that the doctors fear Chris will cease upwardly insane as well. (Shortform annotation: The terminology and overall depiction of mental disorders in the book is dated.) In response, Chris descends into a wailing fit. Equally Chris rocks and cries, Phaedrus speaks through Pirsig, and Chris responds favorably. When Chris asks if Pirsig was really insane, Phaedrus, through Pirsig, says no. Chris of a sudden brightens, and the volume ends with the Pirsigs cruising along the Pacific coast, reconciled.

Two Ways of Thinking

Pirsig rises at nine:00 am; it'south already too hot to slumber. Licking his wounds from the hard ride the day before, Pirsig walks amid the surrounding pines lost in thought. He admits that, as he pursued his Chautauquas, he'd hoped he would only have to refer to Phaedrus'south ideas and not the human being himself. It'south clear to him now, however, that he cannot avoid talking near Phaedrus personally any longer. He recalls Chris's American-Indian friend, whose grandmother said ghosts appear just when someone hasn't been cached correctly. And that's the trouble: the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Phaedrus grapheme wasn't buried right.

Presently John and Sylvia ascent, and the adults begin packing upward and cooking breakfast. Pirsig wakes a resistant Chris by yanking his sleeping bag right out from nether him. The adults eat their eggs and salary; Chris takes one bit of food then says his breadbasket hurts.

Breakfast over, the adults cease breaking down camp. As Pirsig loads the last of his gear onto his cycle'south baggage rack, he notices his rear tire is surprisingly worn downwards. In that location's a trouble with the chain as well, and he unpacks his tools to make the necessary adjustment. As John watches Pirsig loosen and tighten the beam, he expresses amazement; he says he wouldn't fifty-fifty know where to start with an adjustment like the one Pirsig is making. Pirsig, exasperatedly, thinks that that is the whole reason for the Chautauquas, only he tells himself to stay patient—that John is worth teaching. Before long enough the grouping is on the road again. It'due south a picturesque twenty-four hour period, and Pirsig has aplenty time to return to the Chautauquas.

Zen and the Art of Motorbike Maintenance: Phaedrus and the Classical/Romantic Dichotomy

Phaedrus, Pirsig finally tells united states, was a misunderstood and now-forgotten philosopher. In an ideal earth, Phaedrus would stay forgotten, but Pirsig believes he must accost Phaedrus caput on to exorcise and bury him forever.

Unlike the Sutherlands—and much like Pirsig himself—Phaedrus viewed the world entirely in terms of its underlying form. To properly illustrate the qualities of this item worldview, Pirsig deploys an admittedly wide but useful dichotomy:

Classical Understanding . A person of classical agreement is rational, scientific, unemotional, cognitive, and technologically savvy. She is more concerned with the underlying class of things than the appearance of things—that is, she cares more than nearly how a thing works than how information technology looks. Motorcycle maintenance, for example, is classical all the way.

Romantic Understanding . A romantic, oppositely, is intuitive, emotional, creative, and artistically inclined. He is more concerned with firsthand appearances than underlying forms—he values aesthetics over utility. Motorcycle riding, for example, is romantic.

Each way of agreement features in the other. For example, a romantic sees the classical style of understanding as boring, robotic, overly deliberative—oppressive. A classic, meanwhile, sees the romantic mode as silly, impetuous, irrational—unsafe.

The ii modes are, by all appearances, irreconcilable; and Pirsig traces the tumult of the Sixties to the deep animosity between the classical ("square") and the romantic ("hip").

Phaedrus'southward ideas concerned this perennial split up, merely he was ignored, so dismissed, and somewhen considered insane. Pirsig opines the insanity was existent but caused by people's stance of Phaedrus and his ideas rather than an disease. Phaedrus'due south finish came in the form of an abort and the permanent removal from society.

The riders stop for gas, and Chris says he's hungry. Pirsig tells him he either eats with anybody else or not at all. Soon enough they're back on their cycles. The road they're traveling is in disrepair and there'due south traffic; the lord's day is bright and the weather sweltering. Pirsig escapes the rough riding past meditating further on the classical world of the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Phaedrus character.

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