Seeking

A bit of a background in Classical philosophy helps. Cornford's Before and After Socrates, Tony Long's Hellenistic Philosophy and Irwin's Classical Thought were all invaluable while I was at university, and beyond.
I'll re-read the chapter and comment later in the week if you want, though I have just started reading In Search of Schrodinger's Cat and my brain is taking a bit of a battering.

OK Em, so I’ve re-read chapter 20. I've re-read the notes I made years ago when I read Zen for the second time, I’ve done some digging on metaphysics, pondered it all in relation to my own favourite theory, Plato's theory of Forms and, well…
the problem I have (or maybe had) with Zen & AMM and the follow up Lila, is that Quality is so fundamental to everything Pirsig has to say yet it remains a woolly concept. You are almost being asked to understand what Quality is without any definition of what it is. (It is anti intellectual (for want of a better phrase) in terms of the way we are all taught today with rigid definitions and 'scientific' proof that X is X.) You recognise quality when you see it, you recognise a lack of it but what is it? It is the same frustration you can get with Plato. In the dialogue with Meno for example, Plato searches for a definition of justice, discounts all Meno’s suggestions as to what justice is (or may be) yet fails to define it himself. Once you can remove yourself from a search for rigid definitions, accept that you have the Platonic 'eidos' and use that I think understanding becomes easier.
I’d like to think (but have doubts) that the gap prior to intellectualization is the period when we all see the ‘romantic’ vision of something prior to the ‘classical’ taking over. We have lost that romantic vision, certainly in the west. We worry to much about what things do, why they do, how they can be used to our advantage – we all do it to an extent and once we do, you can never really be romantic about any object again. Look at a Rubens and see the beauty of the image, but once you look at his brush strokes, how the thing was composed, the way light and shade juxtapose you cannot then go back to “just” seeing the beauty of the art.

I can contemplate no more this morning. Have I made any sense at all??