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 Eastern 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 objective
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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New! The MOQ Film
Boxset containing the "On The Road with Robert Pirsig",
"The MOQ at Oxford" and the "On The
Road with John Sutherland" DVDs. The set now comes with
the McWatt-Pirsig Letters DVD as a bonus disc which also
includes the Pirsig PhD and MOQ Textbook PDFs.
The Boxset is for sale at $48/£28
for all regions.
(NTSC
Versions for$48 including
postage)
![Robert Pirsig and his bike [click to enlarge]](javascript:PopupPic('images/pirsigintro.gif'))
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