- The page history of metaphysics of quality should be merged with this page's history when the block-compression bug is fixed.
The Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) is a theory of reality put forth by Robert M. Pirsig in his novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and expanded in Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. It incorporates facets of Platonic theory, eastern philosophy, Indigenous American philosophy, Pragmatism, and private mystical revelation. Pirsig claims Quality to be the unity underlying our subjective/objective worlds, shaping the world and our cognizance through value.
Development
Pirsig began college as a science student, and dropped out after discovering the non-objective principles behind the selection of hypotheses and verification of results: for every experiment, there were an infinite number of possible, coherent solutions; yet only one becomes the hypotheses through some method that he felt could not possibly be objective. His faith in objective science was shattered, and he began to ponder metaphysical issues.
While studying at Benares Hindu University , Pirsig 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 realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened. "
He claims the MOQ "crystallized" in his mind while participating in a Native American Church peyote ceremony, and the nature of mystical experience- to Pirsig, an experience of quality itself, rather than our after-the-fact assessment- plays a role throughout the two novels.
Pirsig began developing his ideas about Quality in his first novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He continued his explorations into Quality and first referred to his ideas as the Metaphysics of Quality in his second novel, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, greatly expanding and codifying his ideas.
The MOQ
'Quality,' or 'value' as described by Pirsig, cannot be directly defined. As Quality is what seperates the world into subjects and objects, and is the defining and delineating force in the world, defining it is impossible: it comes before words. Instead, it 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). Likening it with the Tao, Pirsig believes that Quality is a 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 mind, ideas and matter) is a product and a result of Quality.
It is neither subjective or objective, and is instead the immanence beneath them both. He gives the example of sitting on a hot stove: the heat is considered objective, while the pain is subjective; Pirsig claims that that this is an after-the-fact result of the initial quality moment, splitting as it becomes cognized. The pain felt is not a subjective response to an objective fact; rather, they are both the result of the initial quality moment, which is the ultimate reality.
Dynamic and Static Patterns
The MOQ divides Quality into two forms: Static and Dynamic. It is important to note that he is not proposing a duality: quality is one, yet manifests itself in different patterns. As the initial dynamic quality become habituated, it turns static; eventually, the static decays as it begins to lack quality, giving way to new dynamic quality.
Dynamic
Dynamic Quality includes everything not Static, namely, conceptual unknowns. Dynamic Quality is the force of change in the universe; when this quality becomes habitual or customary it becomes Static. Pirsig called dynamic quality "the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality" because one can recognize quality before one can think about it. For example, sitting on a hot stove is a low quality situation; a person does not need to think about getting off of the stove in order to do so.
Static
Pirsig defines Static Quality as everything that can be conceptualized. Pirsig further divides Static Quality into Inorganic, Biological, Social and Intellectual Qualities.
- Inorganic patterns: Universal laws such as gravity, mass, fire etc.
- Biological patterns: Things concerned with living beings. (e.g. examples include sex, food, survival etc.)
- Social patterns: Cultural groupings of people. (e.g. the family, the state, religion, etc.)
- Intellectual patterns: Matters of the mind. (e.g. science, philosophy etc.)
Pirsig described man's evolution as the moral progression of each of these patterns of value. For example a Biological pattern overcoming an Inorganic pattern (i.e. man walking upright) is a moral thing because a Biological pattern is a higher form of evolution. Likewise an Intellectual pattern of value overcoming a social one (i.e. Civil Rights) is a moral thing because intelect is a higher form of evolution than society.
Pirsig claimed that the Subject-Object Based Metaphysics is the darling of the intellectual pattern of value partially because it empirically divides and defines things as objects and dismisses subjects as too non-empirical. The intellectual pattern did not recognize the morality of intellect over society because it distanced the subject from the object, fact from value. Pirsig also claimed that many of the problems of the latter 20th century stemmed from the intellectual pattern's backlash against the social pattern's dominance of the past.
The four patterns of static value as well as dynamic quality account exhaustively for all of reality.
See also
Books
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) ISBN 0060958324
- Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991) ISBN 0553299611
- Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by R DiSanto and T J Steele (1990) ISBN 0688060692
External links
