At the Boundary of Beauty and Truth: The Motorcycle as Aesthetic/Ontologic Vehicle

Steven Burr

motorcycle drawing

I will argue that motorcycling may perhaps be a paradigmatic experience which lends itself to both aesthetic and ontologic realizations: although there are a myriad of ways in which riding potentiates a wide range of experiences of beauty, the act of riding is simultaneously, and fundamentally, a particular way of objectively being in the world; these seemingly distinct and independent experiences are in fact inexorably related, each synergistically amplifying the other. Motorcycling is thus precisely the kind of experience which enables a reconciliation of the aesthetic and the ontologic in a unified, and unifying, experience of harmony.
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Seen from a Motorcycle: Hypomnemata by Robert Pirsig’s from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Guido Borelli

In his less elaborate passages, ZAMM shows us how the act of seeing while riding a motorcycle coincides with a performative act. Seeing things as “pure seeing” is useful for suspending our innate habit of filtering the vision of things through the intellect. Continue reading