Robert Pirsig and the Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM) has sold more than 5 million copies, probably making Pirsig the most widely read living philosopher. Lila, his second book, adds to and expands the MOQ. His other published work is a paper presented at the Einstein Meets Magritte Conference held in Brussels from May 29 to June 3 1995.

At this event, Pirsig presented "Subjects, Objects, Data and Values. It concerns the meeting of art and science. Science is all about subjects and objects and particularly data, but it excludes values. Art is concerned primarily with values but doesn't really pay much attention to scientific data and sometimes excludes objects. My work is concerned with a Metaphysics of Quality that can cross over this division with a single overall rational framework”.

He also said “Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a 30,000 page menu and no food”

Despite this, he’s served a banquet of food for thought. His books are described as philosophical novels. A better description would be ‘biographical treatise’ where a kaleidoscope of topics are addressed in a discursive manner, and in depth. The biographies are those of the author, scientific method, rationality, Greek philosophy, Western philosophy and philosophers, Zen and Zeitgeist, anthropology and, in my opinion, a proto concept of Memes. Like the physicists who seek a ‘unified theory of everything’, Pirsig bridges philosophic traditions with the added bonus of helping quantum physicists to describe reality in non-mathematical terms.

Including studies at Benares Hindu University, time in the armed forces, and writing technical manuals for a living, Pirsig was a teacher of rhetoric at Bozeman University. His contract stated he was to teach quality. He also taught in Chicago where the end of ZAMM occurs.

What is Quality? Pirsig writes “You know what it is, yet you don't know what it is. But that's self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes pouf! There's nothing more to talk about. But if you can't say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist. What else are the grades based on? Why else would people pay fortunes for some things and throw others in the trash pile? Obviously some things are better than others ... but what's the 'betterness'? ... So round and round you go spinning mental wheels and nowhere finding any place to get traction."

ZAMM forensically examines the subject-object, mind-matter dichotomy back to its source. Pirsig establishes that rationality and descriptions of reality in the western tradition are causing a ‘disconnect’ in the way we perceive, think and live. His inquiry into values establishes there is something deeply amiss within our system of thought and Pirsig identifies the chief culprit as Aristotle, aided and abetted by Plato and Socrates!

The Sophist Areté (Excellence) is later translated in Plato as virtue. Consequently we miss the meaning of what the ancient rhetoricians were teaching. “Areté implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life”.

Socrates and Plato corral the Sophist Areté and tether it to ‘Good’ and to ‘Truth’. Socrates is the enemy of rhetoric through the dialectic, which has the power to make the weaker argument. Socrates swears he is telling the truth and through dialogue elicits and establishes a pre-construct. “Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he has. The Sophists are the enemy.

Says Pirsig: “Plato’s hatred of the Sophists makes sense. He and Socrates are defending the Immortal Principle of the Cosmologists against what they consider to be the decadence of the Sophists: Truth... Knowledge. That which is independent of what anyone thinks about it. Plato believed the dialectic was the sole method by which the truth was arrived at. The only one”.

“Aristotle attacked this belief, saying that the dialectic was only suitable for some purposes...to enquire into beliefs, to arrive at truths about eternal forms of things, known as Ideas, which were fixed and unchanging and which constituted Plato’s reality. Aristotle said there is also the method of science, or "physical" method, which observes physical facts and arrives at truths about substances, which undergo change. This duality of form and substance and the scientific method of arriving at facts about substances were central to Aristotle’s philosophy. Thus the dethronement of dialectic from what Socrates and Plato held it to be was absolutely essential for Aristotle”. And Aristotle goes further, making rhetoric the slave of ‘form’.

“Aristotle felt that the mortal horse of Appearance which ate grass and took people places and gave birth to little horses deserved far more attention than Plato was giving it. He said that the horse is not mere Appearance. The Appearances cling to something independent of them and like Ideas, are unchanging. The "something" that Appearances cling to he named "substance." And at that moment, and not until that moment, our modern scientific understanding of reality was born”.

Rhetoric, once "learning" itself, is reduced to the teaching of mannerisms. Aristotelian forms. “Some say the good is found in happiness, but how do we know what happiness is? And how can happiness be defined? Happiness and good are not objective terms. We cannot deal with them scientifically. And since they aren’t objective they just exist in your mind. So if you want to be happy just change your mind. Ha-ha, ha-ha. "Aristotelian ethics, Aristotelian definitions, Aristotelian logic, Aristotelian substances, Aristotelian rhetoric, Aristotelian laughter—ha-ha, ha-ha”.

“Walk into classrooms today and hear the teachers divide and subdivide and interrelate and establish “principles'' and study “methods'' and you will hear the ghost of Aristotle speaking down through the centuries...the desiccating lifeless voice of dualistic reason”.

Pirsig pulls down the church of reason and rebuilds it brick by metaphysical brick, resulting in an edifice where art and science meld. Where Quality is undefined and yet is shown to be the cutting edge of reality. That which creates the world. Imperceptible yet grasped.

Mike Gordon

The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 47 'Open Topic'