Pirsig's metaphysics of quality
Encyclopedia
The Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) is a theory
of reality
introduced in Robert Pirsig
's philosophical
novel
, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
(1974) and expanded in Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
(1991). The MOQ incorporates facets of East Asian philosophy, Pragmatism
, the work of F. S. C. Northrop
, and Indigenous American philosophy. Pirsig argues that the MOQ is a better lens through which to view reality than the traditional dualistic
subjective
/objective
mindset found in the West.
student. However, he dropped out after concluding that the ultimate answers to life were not to be found in science. After spending some time in Korea as a soldier, Pirsig realised that Oriental philosophy
was a better place to search for ultimate answers. On his return home from Korea, Pirsig read F. S. C. Northrop
's book "The Meeting of East and West" which related Western culture to the culture of East Asia in a systematic way. In 1950, Pirsig continued his philosophical studies at Banaras Hindu University
, where he came across the Sanskrit
doctrine of Tat tvam asi
-- in his words, "Thou art that, which asserts that everything you think you are (Subjective), and everything you think you perceive (Objective), are undivided. To fully realize this lack of division is to become enlightened." The nature of mystical experience plays an underlying role throughout his work.
In the late 1950s, Pirsig taught Rhetoric
at Montana State University and, with the encouragement of an older colleague, decided to explore what exactly was meant by the term Quality
. He assigned his students the task of defining the word. This, coupled with a Native American Church
peyote
ceremony he attended with an anthropologist friend, James Verne Dusenberry
, led Pirsig into what he called "a mushroom cloud of thought." Pirsig began developing his ideas about Quality in his first book, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and expanded and codified his ideas into the MOQ in Lila.
precedes any intellectual construction of it. Quality is the "knife-edge" of experience, known to all. "What distinguishes good and bad writing? Do we need to ask this question of Lysias or anyone else who ever did write anything?" (Plato's Phaedrus, 258d). Equating it with the Tao
, Pirsig postulates that Quality is the fundamental force in the universe stimulating everything from atoms to animals to evolve and incorporate ever greater levels of Quality. According to the MOQ, everything (including ideas
, and matter
) is a product and a result of Quality.
s itself differently. Rather than dualism, this manifestation of Quality in terms of Dynamic and static aspects represents a dialectical monism
.
Pirsig describes evolution
as the moral progression of these patterns of value
. For example, a biological pattern overcoming an inorganic pattern (e.g. bird flight which overcomes gravity) is a moral thing because a biological pattern is a higher form of evolution. Likewise, an intellectual pattern of value overcoming a social one (e.g. Civil Rights
) is a moral development because intellect
is a higher form of evolution than society. Therefore, decisions about one's conduct during any given day can be made using the Metaphysics of Quality.
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
of reality
Reality
In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible...
introduced in Robert Pirsig
Robert M. Pirsig
Robert Maynard Pirsig is an American writer and philosopher, and author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals .-Background:...
's philosophical
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is a 1974 philosophical novel, the first of Robert M. Pirsig's texts in which he explores his Metaphysics of Quality.The book sold 5 million copies worldwide...
(1974) and expanded in Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
Lila: An Inquiry into Morals
Lila: An Inquiry into Morals is the second philosophical novel by Robert M. Pirsig, who is best known for his classic text, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Lila: An Inquiry into Morals was a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992...
(1991). The MOQ incorporates facets of East Asian philosophy, Pragmatism
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
, the work of F. S. C. Northrop
F. S. C. Northrop
Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop was an American philosopher. After receiving a B.A. from Beloit College in 1915, and an MA from Yale University in 1919, he went on to Harvard University where he earned another MA in 1922 and a Ph.D...
, and Indigenous American philosophy. Pirsig argues that the MOQ is a better lens through which to view reality than the traditional dualistic
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
subjective
Subject (philosophy)
In philosophy, a subject is a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness or a relationship with another entity . A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed...
/objective
Object (philosophy)
An object in philosophy is a technical term often used in contrast to the term subject. Consciousness is a state of cognition that includes the subject, which can never be doubted as only it can be the one who doubts, and some object or objects that may or may not have real existence without...
mindset found in the West.
Development
The Metaphysics of Quality originated with Pirsig's college studies as a chemistryChemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
student. However, he dropped out after concluding that the ultimate answers to life were not to be found in science. After spending some time in Korea as a soldier, Pirsig realised that Oriental philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
was a better place to search for ultimate answers. On his return home from Korea, Pirsig read F. S. C. Northrop
F. S. C. Northrop
Filmer Stuart Cuckow Northrop was an American philosopher. After receiving a B.A. from Beloit College in 1915, and an MA from Yale University in 1919, he went on to Harvard University where he earned another MA in 1922 and a Ph.D...
's book "The Meeting of East and West" which related Western culture to the culture of East Asia in a systematic way. In 1950, Pirsig continued his philosophical studies at Banaras Hindu University
Banaras Hindu University
Banaras Hindu University is a public university located in Varanasi, India and is one of the Central Universities of India. It is the largest residential university in Asia, with over 24,000 students in its campus. BHU was founded in 1916 by Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya under the Parliamentary...
, where he came across the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
doctrine of Tat tvam asi
Tat Tvam Asi
Tat Tvam Asi , a Sanskrit sentence, translated variously as "That thou are," "Thou are that," "You are that," or "That you are," is one of the Mahāvākyas in Vedantic Sanatana Dharma...
-- in his words, "Thou art that, which asserts that everything you think you are (Subjective), and everything you think you perceive (Objective), are undivided. To fully realize this lack of division is to become enlightened." The nature of mystical experience plays an underlying role throughout his work.
In the late 1950s, Pirsig taught Rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
at Montana State University and, with the encouragement of an older colleague, decided to explore what exactly was meant by the term Quality
Quality (philosophy)
A quality is an attribute or a property. Attributes are ascribable, by a subject, whereas properties are possessible. In contemporary philosophy, the idea of qualities and especially how to distinguish certain kinds of qualities from one another remains controversial.-Background:Aristotle analyzed...
. He assigned his students the task of defining the word. This, coupled with a Native American Church
Native American Church
Native American Church, a religious denomination which practices Peyotism or the Peyote religion, originated in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans in the United States...
peyote
Peyote
Lophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote , is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico...
ceremony he attended with an anthropologist friend, James Verne Dusenberry
James Verne Dusenberry
James Verne Dusenberry was a Montana educator and advocate for Native Americans.He was also known as a colleague of Robert M. Pirsig at Montana State, making appearances in Pirsig’s books Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals...
, led Pirsig into what he called "a mushroom cloud of thought." Pirsig began developing his ideas about Quality in his first book, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and expanded and codified his ideas into the MOQ in Lila.
Quality
"Quality," or "value," as described by Pirsig, cannot be defined because it empiricallyEmpiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
precedes any intellectual construction of it. Quality is the "knife-edge" of experience, known to all. "What distinguishes good and bad writing? Do we need to ask this question of Lysias or anyone else who ever did write anything?" (Plato's Phaedrus, 258d). Equating it with the Tao
Tao
Dao or Tao is a Chinese word meaning 'way', 'path', 'route', or sometimes more loosely, 'doctrine' or 'principle'...
, Pirsig postulates that Quality is the fundamental force in the universe stimulating everything from atoms to animals to evolve and incorporate ever greater levels of Quality. According to the MOQ, everything (including ideas
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
, and matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
) is a product and a result of Quality.
Static quality patterns and Dynamic Quality
The MOQ maintains that Quality itself is undefinable, but to better understand it, Pirsig breaks Quality down into two forms: static quality patterns (patterned) and Dynamic Quality (unpatterned). The four patterns of static value as well as Dynamic Quality account exhaustively for all of reality. As the initial (cutting edge) Dynamic Quality becomes habituated, it turns into static patterns. It is important to note that Pirsig is not proposing a duality: Quality is one, yet manifestManifest
Manifest has different meanings. It may refer to the following:Arts* Manifest , the Melbourne Anime FestivalBusiness* Manifest Limited, the UK marketing companyComputing...
s itself differently. Rather than dualism, this manifestation of Quality in terms of Dynamic and static aspects represents a dialectical monism
Dialectical monism
Dialectical monism, also known as dualistic monism, is an ontological position that holds that reality is ultimately a unified whole, distinguishing itself from monism by asserting that this whole necessarily expresses itself in dualistic terms...
.
Dynamic Quality
Dynamic Quality cannot be defined. It can only be understood intellectually through the use of analogy. It can be described as the force of change in the universe; when an aspect of Quality becomes habitual or customary, it becomes static. Pirsig calls Dynamic Quality "the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality" because it can be recognized before it can be conceptualised. This is why the Dynamic beauty of a piece of music can be recognized before a static analysis explaining why the music is beautiful can be constructed.Static quality patterns
Pirsig defines static quality as everything which can be defined. Everything found in a dictionary, for instance, is static quality. These static forms, if they have enough good or bad quality, are given names and are interchanged with other people, building the base of knowledge for a culture. So some cultures divide between things other cultures perceive as equal (Pirsig gave as example the sounds of the Indian syllables "dha" and "da," which are absolutely equal to western ears), and some cultures haven't any words for a specific meaning at all (the exact meaning of the German word "verklemmt" cannot be translated into English). Pirsig further divides static quality into inorganic, biological, social, and intellectual patterns, in ascending order of morality.- Inorganic patterns: non-living things
- BiologicalBiologyBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
patterns: living things - SocialSocietyA society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
patterns: behaviours, habits, rituals, institutions. - IntellectualIntellectIntellect is a term used in studies of the human mind, and refers to the ability of the mind to come to correct conclusions about what is true or real, and about how to solve problems...
patterns: ideas
Pirsig describes evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
as the moral progression of these patterns of value
Value theory
Value theory encompasses a range of approaches to understanding how, why and to what degree people should value things; whether the thing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. This investigation began in ancient philosophy, where it is called axiology or ethics. Early philosophical...
. For example, a biological pattern overcoming an inorganic pattern (e.g. bird flight which overcomes gravity) is a moral thing because a biological pattern is a higher form of evolution. Likewise, an intellectual pattern of value overcoming a social one (e.g. Civil Rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
) is a moral development because intellect
Intellect
Intellect is a term used in studies of the human mind, and refers to the ability of the mind to come to correct conclusions about what is true or real, and about how to solve problems...
is a higher form of evolution than society. Therefore, decisions about one's conduct during any given day can be made using the Metaphysics of Quality.
See also
- Charles Sanders Peirce
- PlatonismPlatonismPlatonism is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. In a narrower sense the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism...
, PlatoPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the... - PragmatismPragmatismPragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
- TaoismTaoismTaoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...
, TaoTaoDao or Tao is a Chinese word meaning 'way', 'path', 'route', or sometimes more loosely, 'doctrine' or 'principle'... - William JamesWilliam JamesWilliam James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
- Energy qualityEnergy qualityEnergy quality is the contrast between different forms of energy, the different trophic levels in ecological systems and the propensity of energy to convert from one form to another. The concept refers to the empirical experience of the characteristics, or qualia, of different energy forms as they...
- Flow (psychology)Flow (psychology)Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of...
- C. S. LewisC. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
(esp. The Abolition of ManThe Abolition of ManThe Abolition of Man is a 1943 book by C. S. Lewis. It is subtitled "Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools," and uses that as a starting point for a defense of objective value and natural law, and a warning of the consequences of...
) - John DeweyJohn DeweyJohn Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
Books
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) ISBN 0-06-095832-4
- Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991) ISBN 0-553-29961-1
- Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by R. DiSanto and T. J. Steele (1990) ISBN 0-688-06069-2
- "Lila's Child: An Inquiry into Quality (2002)
- Granger, David A.: John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, and the Art of Living: Revisioning Aesthetic Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.