In Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, Pirsig (or perhaps one should say Phaedrus, his former self from before he got electroshock therapy) stumbles upon

In Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, Pirsig (or perhaps one should say Phaedrus, his former self from before he got electroshock therapy) stumbles upon arete while trying to define quality. I found his two books very interesting and I had not heard of arete until reading him, even though I had read Homer (in Spanish).