At a 1998 presentation in London for the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC),
Professor Harry Kroto unexpectedly spent his time elucidating
the merits of meccano instead of discussing his recent Nobel
award winning discovery of Carbon 60. His argument being
that students require tactile experience to know when to
stop tightening a screw and computer use alone doesn’t teach
this. When asked at the end of the lecture, whether he
had read Robert Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance (ZMM), Kroto replied: ‘Yes, and that’s what
it’s all about!’
Conversely, in a 1991 review for Pirsig’s
second book Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (LILA),
Dan Cryer of the New York Newsday remarked:
‘Like he village crank hanging out at the public library, the
guy really believes he has discovered the secret of the
universe’.
Which view is true?
I doubt Pirsig has discovered the secret of the
universe... However, the writer of the so-called cult classic
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM)
has formulated a new metaphysics from the ground-up that
may yet prove to be a useful one. This is the “Metaphysics
of Quality” (MOQ).
How does the MOQ relate to ZMM?
Not too much, actually. ZMM is aimed towards the general
reader of philosophy while the MOQ was not introduced until
Pirsig’s second book LILA. The latter is more academic in
tone. The MOQ stands alone without narrative support and
should be taken as a metaphysics that stands or falls on
its own merits. This website is largely concerned with the
latter not with biographical gossip.
So ZMM is totally irrelevant to the MOQ?
No, that’s not quite accurate either. ZMM can be construed
as Pirsig’s search for an understanding of what is meant
by value (or what he terms “Quality”). This interest originated
from his tenure as an English teacher at Montana State College
in the late 1950s. At Montana, he was under legal contract
to teach “quality” even though it was not defined by the
college authorities. Consequently, with encouragement from
a senior colleague, Pirsig became interested in finding
an explicit definition or understanding of what Quality
is.
In ZMM, therefore, the reader follows Pirsig’s search in
achieving such an understanding. In LILA, this understanding
is developed into principles from which a holistic paradigm
termed the “Metaphysics of Quality” is deduced. His two
works, therefore, fit together as one, though ZMM is more
mystical and LILA more metaphysical.
So how does the MOQ relate to previous philosophy?
The MOQ can be seen as a (not the) completion of Nietzsche’s
project concerning the trans-valuation of values i.e. a
complete re-evaluation of western values on more humanistic
grounds rather than theistic ones. There is no evidence
that Nietzsche would have followed Pirsig’s particular path
though the fact it took Pirsig about thirty years to write
the MOQ does provide some explanation as to why Nietzsche
failed to complete such a project himself.
Within the MOQ, Pirsig incorporates elements of William
James’s pragmatism and radical empiricism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism,
evolutionary theory and the work of F.S.C. Northrop (Sterling
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy & Law at Yale University).
Northrop was mainly concerned with reconciling the different
values of the East and West in the interests of world peace.
This reconciliation of East Asian and Western values is also
a theme running through Pirsig’s two books.
So what do you think is original, if anything,
in the MOQ?
Pirsig builds his metaphysical system on the postulation
that everything is a type of value. In addition, the MOQ
uses cosmological evolution as a basis for a metaphysical
system. Pirsig does this in an attempt to remove the cultural
subjectivity inherent in many social and intellectual values
i.e. he is attempting to place morals on a more rational
and impartial
foundation.
Where did this idea of evolution as a basis in
the MOQ come from?
Though it appears that cosmological evolution was first
postulated in the 19th century, if not earlier, Pirsig’s
explains his particular use of evolution thus:
“I didn’t get the idea that the MOQ is an evolutionary
theory of value patterns from anybody. It just arrived Dynamically
one day the way a good chess move arrives Dynamically. There
was probably some stream of consciousness, a series of intellectual
jigsaw puzzle pieces that didn’t fit anything and were immediately
forgotten, when among them appeared this puzzle piece which
fit everything. It seemed of higher quality than anything
I had thought before on the subject and so became incorporated
into the static pattern of the MOQ.” (Letter to Anthony
McWatt, August 17th 1997.)
So is Pirsig’s philosophy “what it’s all about!”
or is the MOQ the idea of just another “village crank hanging
out at the public library” after all?
One of the purposes of this website is to assist the reader
in making their own judgement concerning the value of Pirsig’s
work. For you to do this, please refer to the menu on the
left which details a number of papers. Many of these were
written specifically for the July 2005 MOQ Conference though
the oldest one (on pragmatism) dates back to 1994. In the
meantime, I leave the last word with Pirsig himself:
“The hardest thing for me to deal with since the
publication of Lila has been the complete disbelief of many
that quality is or can be anything real… The solution to
this cultural resistance to the MOQ may come from the Orient
where quality is a central reality. But there the problem is
reversed. A famous Japanese Zen Master [Dainin Kategiri
Roshi] who read ZMM told me he thought it was a nice book
but he didn’t see anything unusual in it. He was quite
puzzled at its success. Another Japanese tourist to America
said, ‘This book is not interesting to Japanese people
because we already know all of this.’ Schopenhauer said that
truth is that short interval between the time an idea is a
heresy and the time it is a platitude, but the MOQ has
managed to be both a heresy and a platitude simultaneously,
depending on which culture you view it from.”
(Letter to Anthony McWatt, December 24th 1995)
=====================================
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A brief
summary of the Metaphysics of Quality
by Robert Pirsig
October 2005
The
Metaphysics of Quality, or MOQ, is simply a philosophic
answer to the question of what is Quality, or worth, or
merit, or value, or betterness or any of the other synonyms
for good. There are many possible answers but the one the
MOQ gives is that you can understand Quality best if you
don't subordinate it to anything else but instead
subordinate everything else to it.
[The
MOQ]
says there are two basic kinds of Quality, an undefined
Quality called Dynamic Quality, and a defined quality called
static quality. Static quality is further divided into four
evolutionary divisions: inorganic, biological, social and
intellectual. Our entire understanding of the world can be
organized within this framework [a graphic interpretation of
this has been kindly provided above by David Thomas]. When you do so things fall
into place that were poorly defined before, and new things
appear that were concealed under previous frameworks of
understanding. The MOQ is not intended to deny previous
modes of understanding as much as to expand them into a more
inclusive picture of what it's all about.
The
“Quality” of the Metaphysics of Quality is not a basic
substance, or anything like it. The Buddhists call it
“nothingness” precisely to avoid that kind of intellectual
characterization. Once you start to define Quality as a
basic substance you are off on a completely different path
from the MOQ.
I'm
not original on this point, except to identify Quality with
the Tao and with Buddha-nature (hence the title of ZMM). The
amount of material on these two would overflow most library
rooms, but it is essential to both that the basic
constituent of the universe is nothingness, and by this is
meant not empty space but “no-thingness.” It is somewhat
incorrect to call “no-thingness” a basic constituent since
it is not really even that, (it is not even an it) but in an
everyday philosophic “finger-pointing-toward-the-moon”
discourse that's about as good as you can get. It is very
incorrect to call it a substance in the way that substance
is usually meant today.
As
to which is more important, Dynamic or static, both are
absolutely essential, even when they are in conflict. As
stated in LILA, without Dynamic Quality an organism cannot
grow. But without static quality an organism cannot last.
Dynamic liberals and radicals need conservatives to keep
them from making a mess of the world through unneeded
change. Conservatives also need liberals and radicals to
keep them from making a mess of the world through unneeded
stagnation. This also holds true for philosophy. My feeling
is that subject-object way of interpreting the world is
stagnant and inadequate for our time, but without that base
of subject-object understanding to build from, the
Metaphysics of Quality, by itself, has no value either.
The
Metaphysics of Quality itself is static and should be
separated from the Dynamic Quality it talks about. Like the
rest of the printed philosophic tradition it doesn't change
from day to day, although the world it talks about does. To
use an Oriental metaphor, it is just another finger pointing
toward the moon. The static language of the Metaphysics of
Quality will never capture the Dynamic reality of the world
but some fingers point better than others and as the world
changes, old pointers and road maps tend to lose their
value. Religious orthodoxy is composed of old pointers.
Classical science is now an old road map, and modern science
keeps looking for new ones. It is this looking for new
pointers, not the pointer itself, that is the essence of
Dynamic philosophy. What is meant by Dynamic philosophy was
explained best in my introduction to “LILA's Child”.*
The
Metaphysics of Quality is not intended to be within any
philosophic tradition, although obviously it was not written
in a vacuum. My first awareness that it resembled James'
work came from a magazine review long after “Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance” was published. The Metaphysics of
Quality's central idea that the world is nothing but value
is not part of any philosophic tradition that I know of. I
have proposed it because it seems to me that when you look
into it carefully it makes more sense than all the other
things the world is supposed to be composed of. One
particular strength lies in its applicability to quantum
physics, where substance has been dismissed but nothing
except arcane mathematical formulae has really replaced it.
During the writing of the MOQ a long search was made through
an encyclopedia of philosophy to see if the MOQ was
repeating what someone else had said. And this was so stated
in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. None of the traditional European philosophers seemed
to match in any close way. The closest finds were Plotinus,
Lao Tsu, and Professor F.S.C. Northrop of Yale University.
These similarities have been acknowledged many times.
If
you follow the development of the Metaphysics of Quality as
it is explained in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance”
you see that it did not start with the question, “What is
the best alternative to subject-object metaphysics?” It
started with the question of “What is quality?” A question
was then asked, “Is quality in the subject or in the
object?” The answer was, “Neither one. It is independent of
the two and is the source of the two.” Given this answer
there was no need to shop around for other alternatives to
subject-object distinction, since that was never the
original question. And in fact the Metaphysics of Quality
actually supports the subject-object distinction as a
subordinate part of its own structure.
Using a starting line of reasoning to determine
what questions are ultimately asked can be described
as, “sticking to the subject.” Ultimate questions
and ultimate alternatives are never found. Questions
and alternatives go on and on, and one can wander
endlessly among them. Even if it were possible to
know what they all are it would certainly be impossible
to include them in a single book. The moq.org
website has been quite exhaustive in searching
for these questions and alternatives. Anyone who
has a new question or alternative has a standing
invitation to place it there.
I
also have a concern of my own. This is the concern that
philosophers, instead of coming to grips with the philosophy
at hand, sometimes dismiss it by saying, “Oh he is saying
the same as someone else,” or “someone else has said it much
better.” This is the latter half of the well known
conservative argument that some new idea is (a) no good
because it hasn't been heard before or (b) it is no good
because it has been heard before. If, as has been noted by
R.C. Zaehner, once the Oxford University Professor of
Eastern Religions and Ethics, I am saying the same thing as
Aristotle; and if, as has been noted in the Harvard
Educational Review, I am saying the same thing as William
James; and if as has been noted now that I may be saying the
same thing as Spinoza: then why has no one ever noticed that
Aristotle and Spinoza and William James are all saying the
same thing?
This
kind of commentary has a parallel in literary criticism
where various authors are compared to one another in an easy
way without any serious attempt to fathom what any of them
are really saying. So, if Hemingway says death is a terrible
thing, why then Hemingway is saying the same thing as
Shakespeare! What a discovery! And Shakespeare has said it
so much better. Who needs to read Hemingway?
The
division between authors and literary critics throws light
on this subject. The author is a creator and the critic is a
judge. Literary critics normally do not pretend they are
authors when they judge a book, but philosophologists do
pretend they are philosophers when they judge someone else's
philosophy. The best of literary critics know that an author
has to work alone and not go around showing his manuscript
to everybody, because his source is not what everyone else
has said. He has to be out there finding things where nobody
has gone before. Because philosophologists think of
themselves as philosophers they do not understand that a
real philosopher is not doing the same thing they are, and
should not be doing the same thing they are if he wants to
come up with genuine philosophy, and not just more of the
usual repetition and dissection of old ideas.
While “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” is a
skeleton of a philosophy enclosed within a full-bodied
novel, LILA is a skeleton of a novel enclosed within a
full-bodied philosophy. Since many more people read novels
than philosophy books, this also explains the lower sales.
But you can't really call a book that has had six weeks on
the New York Times best seller list, rave reviews in the New
York Times and Washington Post along others, and sold more
than six hundred thousand copies with royalties to match, to
be a much of a failure, especially for a book that is
primarily about philosophy.
Still it does bother me that LILA is not as successful as it
should be among academic philosophers. In my opinion it's a
much more important book than “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance.” My feeling is like that of someone trying to
sell five-dollar bills for two dollars apiece and hardly
making a sale. Readers of LILA are naturally leery because
they're not used to the idea of a Metaphysics of Quality,
but I think that if they eventually understand what is being
offered, there will be a change of mind.
*
This term, philosophology,
is one I find myself using all the time to make a point that
most academic philosophers seem unaware of: that when they
speak of the ideas of such famous philosophers as Plato or
Hegel they are giving us a history of philosophy, an ‘ology'
of philosophy, not philosophy itself. Philosophy itself is
opinions of the speaker himself about the general nature of
the world, not just a classification someone else's
opinions.
This may seem a minor point
but I remember hearing many years ago how a professor of
art, Jerry Liebling, was outraged when he heard that an Art
Historian told one of his students that he should give up
painting because it was obvious the student would never
equal the great masters. At the time I didn't see what
Liebling was so upset about but as the years have gone by I
understand it better. Liebling loathed this attitude of Art
Historians because, while they thought they were preserving
the standards of art, they were in fact destroying them. Art
is not just the static achievements of the masters of the
past. Art is the creative Dynamic Quality of the artist of
the present. Neither is philosophy just the static
achievements of the masters of the past. Philosophy is the
creative Dynamic Quality of the philosopher of the present.
There are similarities to
chess. Both are highly intellectual pursuits in which one
tries to manipulate symbols within a set of rules to improve
a given situation. In chess one can benefit greatly by
studying the games of the masters. In philosophy one can
also benefit greatly by studying the writings of the great
philosophers. But the important point here is that studying
chess masters is not chess itself and studying philosophy
masters is not philosophy itself.
The real chess is the game
you play with your neighbor. Real chess is 'muddling
through.' Real chess is the triumph of mental organization
over complex experience. And so is real philosophy.
----------------------------------
To read the very first Ph.D. thesis on the Metaphysics
of Quality!, please press on the following link:
![Robert Pirsig and his bike [click to enlarge]](javascript:PopupPic('images/pirsigintro.gif'))
