One of the fundamental questions for the ancient Greek philosophers, was the nature of ‘the good’ or ‘arete’ (meaning virtue). With his Metaphysics of Quality, Robert Pirsig addresses this question in his own way, equating ‘goodness’ with his favoured term ‘Quality’, along with its sister term: ‘value’.

The Metaphysics of Quality is Pirsig’s attempt to build a new and modern practical philosophy for living, based on the primacy of Quality. He believes it is a superior model than that on which our current Western societies are based.

This essay will discuss the main influences on Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality, particularly the influence and adaptation of concepts from the Enlightenment era or the ‘Age of Reason’, which still dominate our modern social paradigms, as defined by Capra: ‘shared . . . concepts, values, perceptions and practices, which form a particular vision of reality that is the basis of community organization’ (5-6).


Robert Pirsig is best known as  the author of  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991).

While writing Zen, Pirsig was a technical writer of computer manuals, however his academic background reveals a wide ranging interest in scientific and philosophical or spiritual disciplines. He was a precocious child having entered the University of Minnesota at age 14, studying chemistry and philosophy (B.A. 1950), and later oriental philosophy at the Benares Hindu University (India). He then taught English composition  and rhetoric at the State University of Montana (Bozeman), before graduate study of ancient philosophy at the University of Chicago (Basalla 248).

With the addition of over fifty years of private study and over the course of the two novels, Pirsig has developed a philosophy which he calls ‘The Metaphysics of Quality’ (MOQ).

The MOQ has reached many people through Zen and Lila. Beasley notes: Pirsig’s MOQ seems to have ‘struck a chord with many people who are searching for an intellectually credible way of understanding our existence, that can encompass values as well as 'facts'’. Discussion on the topic is active on a forum style web site: MOQ.org.

Unfortunately, Pirsig's MOQ has attracted little attention from professional philosophers, and although the books are based on real events, its ‘fictional’ status probably contributes to this situation. Though professional academics tend to  question the validity of philosophy presented in the novel form, I believe it is valuable for social philosophy of this kind to be widely available for consideration by the public.

Basalla expresses similar sentiments in a review of Zen in Science  magazine: ‘some of the most original and imaginative books on technology and society are being written by authors who do not claim a professional expertise’ (249). Although, from the resume outlined above, I would think Pirsig has a highly legitimate claim to professional expertise.

Distinct similarities also exist between the MOQ and the ideas of some influential scientific thinkers who would not normally assume or be assigned the label - ‘philosopher’. Some of these  concepts, which serve to add credibility to Pirsig’s theories, I will discuss as their relevance  arises.

Zen, is the story of a motorcycle trip in the USA in which Pirsig pieces together his scattered memories of a former life (Phaedrus’ life) and the philosophical ideas that resulted in insanity and subsequent electric shock treatment.

The main themes are ‘quality’ and ‘values’. By ‘values’, Pirsig means those personal and social ideas or practices, especially moral ones, that a person holds as valuable or desirable. It is equivalent to that persons conception of ‘the good’.

Pirsig identifies the inability to see beauty, quality or value in the underlying forms of science and technology, as a major source of discontentment in Western society. Instead, he says, many people get stuck on the surface ‘ugliness’ of science and technology.

It seems here that Pirsig may be commenting on the growing notions of postmodernity which were developing in the social turmoil and uncertainty of mid 1960’s, USA. This would conform with the opinion, as expressed by Dallmayr (ix), that postmodern ideas have a common undercurrent of suspicion or unease that the apparent post-WWII triumph of Western liberal democracy, rationalism, and ‘progress’ could not deliver  happiness or even viable conditions of human life.

Pirsig appears to be trying to address these issues by revising the Enlightenment concepts of reason, empiricism and science on which Western liberal democracy is still based, to ‘encompass values as well as facts’. His quest continues in his second book.

Lila, published 17 years later in 1991, is the story of another journey, this time in a yacht. The main character is Phaedrus (Pirsig), who travels with Lila, a woman spiralling towards insanity, who he picks up in a bar along the way. It is a less coherent, less readable book than Zen and primarily a vehicle for Pirsig to present his Metaphysics of Quality.

In Lila, Phaedrus moves quickly from one topic to the next, testing the MOQ on anything and everything he experiences in his travels. The result is a somewhat disjointed explanation,  though there are some useful insights into Pirsig’s perceived application of his theory to our everyday existence.

A complete description of the MOQ, is outside the scope of this essay, however it will be necessary to at least present the basic concepts in a concise and hopefully clear form, before addressing the philosophical influences on Pirsig’s ideas.
Describing  (not Defining) Quality

Pirsig stumbled upon the intriguing concept of ‘Quality’ when, as a teacher of rhetoric, he tried to define quality in order to teach it to his students. He found he couldn’t define it, and no-one else could come up with a satisfactory definition either. Despite this, his students could consistently  recognise quality in written composition when asked to.  This ‘Quality’ appears to be something we cannot define precisely, although we all know what it is (assuming a prior understanding of whatever we are observing).

In this way, Pirsig’s quest is related to one of the fundamental questions of philosophy - the nature of ‘good’. The Theory of Forms which ‘constitutes Plato’s distinctive contribution to metaphysics’ (Hamilton 17) is itself arranged in a hierarchy with the Form of Good (Pirsig’s Quality) at the head.

Pirsig suggests in Zen, that in our current world view, there exists a dichotomy of romantic and classic Quality, with most people developing a tendency to focus on only one side and ignore or de-emphasise the other.

Romantic Quality is associated with the artistic. It is the emotional, inspirational, creative and intuitive side of Quality. While classic Quality is associated with a scientific outlook, based on reason and laws, analysis and classification. Underlying forms and structure take precedence over romantic impressions. Capra discusses similar ideas to the ‘value’ dichotomy in The Web of  Life (9-10).

It is interesting to observe the increasing complexity of  Pirsig’s attempts to define or explain quality as his metaphysical concepts evolve into the MOQ, where romantic Quality becomes Dynamic Quality and classic Quality become the levels of Static Quality Patterns.

From Zen: ‘Quality is shapeless, formless, and indestructible. To see shapes and forms is to intellectualise’ (252).

From Lila: ‘Quality doesn’t have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions’ (66).

Later, from his Einstein Meets Magritte conference paper: ‘Quality is . . . the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object . . . not just the result of a collision between subject and object. The very existence of subject and object is deduced from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the Quality!’ (12).

This last description seems to be the edge of the metaphysical ground on which Pirsig’s theory stands. The belief that ‘the Quality event is the cause of subjects and objects’ would I think, be problematic to many people. It would seem to imply that if I do not perceive the world (am not aware of the object) – it is not there. Surely this is true only as far as ‘I’ am concerned ­- it does not mean that the world ceases to exist for someone or something else to perceive.

A more widely palatable statement might be: ‘the Quality event is the fundamental relationship between subject and object’ or possibly: ‘from the perspective of the subject, the Quality experience is the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object’.

Pirsig frequently mentions the shortcomings of ‘subject-object metaphysics’ (SOM), though I have been able to find no mention of it in a number of general philosophical texts. I think we can take him to mean any metaphysical theory based on the assumption that ‘all the universe is composed of subjects and objects and anything that can’t be classified as subject or object is not real’ (Lila 102). This would include any purely empirical theories.

Pirsig draws another parallel between his later conception of Quality and the ‘undifferentiated aesthetic continuum’ - from F. S. C. Northrop (in The Meeting of East and West 1946). Pirsig states: ‘By "continuum" he  means that it goes on and on forever. By "undifferentiated" he means that it is without conceptual distinctions. And by "aesthetic" he means that it has quality’ (EMM paper: 17).


In Lila, Pirsig moves towards a new model: that of Static and Dynamic Quality (the final conception of the MOQ), explaining that: ‘Dynamic Quality is a stream of quality events going on and on forever, always at the cutting edge of the present. But in the wake of this cutting edge are static patterns of value’ (12).

A number of scientific thinkers have proposed similar ideas. In 1987 (between Zen and Lila), Stephen Jay Gould wrote: ‘time’s arrow and time’s cycle is . . . a great dichotomy . . . for time’s arrow is the intelligibility of distinct and irreversible events, while time’s cycle is the intelligibility of timeless order and law-like structure. We must have both’ (15-16).

In Gould’s scheme, time’s arrow equates to Dynamic Quality, while time’s cycle is the equivalent of the Static Quality Patterns.

Pirsig’s Static and Dynamic Quality model is almost, but not quite another dichotomy, as he (in contrast to Gould’s scheme) places Dynamic Quality firmly at the head, with Static Quality Patterns resulting from and therefore beneath Dynamic Quality.

In his Einstein Meets Magritte conference paper, Pirsig explains similarities between the MOQ and the philosophy of Complimentarity, which was Niels Bohr’s attempt (circa 1927) to ‘find a common ground between the new quantum theory and . . . everyday life’. Bohr was specifically concerned with the wave-particle dilemma. This represented a rare admission by a renown physicist that philosophy might be a useful adjunct to mathematics in explaining the physical reality of the world.

Complementarity is a complex theory, and I would here refer the reader to Pirsig’s conference paper for a better explanation. Primarily it involves a shift of emphasis towards the view that ‘what we really observe is not the object. What we really observe is only data (EMM paper: 7). This concept is related to Positivism which I will not explore here.

In the MOQ, the almost mystical Dynamic Quality (as described earlier) takes primacy. It ranks above and surrounds all Static Quality Patterns (Fig 1).

Fig. 1 Basic framework of the Metaphysics of Quality (from Pirsig’s ‘Einstein Meets Magritte’ conference paper, 1995).

The Static Quality Patterns (equivalent to classic Quality) account for the physical, social and intellectual world that we live in from day to day (Fig1). ‘The MOQ perceives reality as being in an evolutionary moral order of intellectual, social, biological and inorganic (or chemical) patterns’(McWatt). This significant relationship with empirical and evolutionary thinking I will discuss shortly.


An important consideration regarding the four Static Quality Patterns (SQP). is that Pirsig thinks of these as ‘levels of morality’, and prioritises them in the order listed above. This transition from metaphysical theory to moral hierarchy is where Pirsig’s MOQ expands on similar concepts and promises a real contribution to the morality of human society.

The biological level of morality establishes the supremacy of biological life over the inanimate world. Social morality establishes the supremacy of society over biological life. Examples would be prohibitive laws against drugs, murder, adultery and theft. Intellectual moral codes establish the supremacy of intellectual order over society: higher ideals such as democracy, trial by jury, and personal freedoms (Lila 167).

In practicality, when choosing between two courses of action, Pirsig says we should choose the course which conforms with the higher level of evolutionary morality. Pirsig uses the example: ‘It is more moral for a doctor to kill a germ than to allow the germ to kill his patient’. Both want to live, but the patient has moral precedence because he’s at a higher level of evolution (Lila 163).

In 1958 psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg proposed three levels of moral development (Crain), each then subdivided into two stages – six stages in all. A brief explanation follows.

Kohlberg’s first level of moral thinking, termed ‘Pre-conventional’, is generally found in young children. It is based on obedience, threat of punishment (stage one) and acting in one’s own best interests (stage two).

The second level, termed ‘Conventional’, is the morality most common in society. It is based on ideas of conformity, gaining approval (stage three), and a sense of duty to uphold the law (stage four).

The third level, which Kohlberg named ‘Post-conventional’, is a higher morality based on notions of a social contract, interest in the welfare of others (stage five) and at its ultimate stage: respect for universal moral principles and the demands of individual conscience (stage six) (Crain; Barger).

I would expect that of these, stages one to four would be considered to reside in the MOQ’s social morality level, while stages five and six (for which Kohlberg ) would be examples of intellectual morality.

Interestingly, Barger reports that Kohlberg himself felt the majority of adults did not reach level three (stages five or six) of his scheme, stage six eventually becoming a theoretical level only. Presumably, according to the MOQ, Kohlberg’s fifth and sixth stages of morality might still be in the relatively early stages of evolution.


Pirsig has drawn from many sources in the development of his theories, mentioning many influential thinkers, including philosophers: Aristotle, Socrates and Plato; Hume, Kant, Popper, Herrigel and William James; Scientists: Darwin, Lamarck, Poincare’ and Niels Bohr; A little known American child prodigy: William Sidis; and anthropologist: Ruth Benedict among others.

Some of the strongest influences on the MOQ come from the intellectual concepts which originated in the Enlightenment era.

Pirsig asserts that the MOQ subscribes to empiricism, which states that all legitimate thought and knowledge is based upon empirical facts provided by the senses (Hall and Gieben). However, traditional  empiricism would reject the validity of any knowledge gained through imagination, authority, tradition, or purely theoretical reasoning, because it is unverifiable. This knowledge is excluded because of the assumptions of subject-object metaphysics mentioned earlier (page 5).

The MOQ differs from traditional empiricism by accepting the validity of all knowledge which is the legitimate product of social and intellectual Quality patterns. This is why Pirsig claims the MOQ is the missing link between artistic and empirical modes of thought.

The evolutionary thought of Charles Darwin, his predecessors, and followers in the Enlightenment, is a major influence on Pirsig’s concept of ‘evolutionary levels of morality’ discussed earlier.

In effect, Pirsig has simply expanded the application of evolutionary thought to cover all physical realms, rather than the biological realm alone. The validity of this at first seems questionable, however if each level of Static Quality Pattern (SQP)  is treated separately, one can see how evolutionary thought can be applied to all SQP’s:

In the Inorganic SQP, unstable atoms, molecules or compounds break down into stable ones. Stable compounds have greater more Quality or value and are therefore most ‘moral’ at this level.

In the Organic realm, evolution applies as conceived by Darwin: The fittest survive to reproduce, selecting useful traits over generations. Fitness equates with Quality, with the fittest being most moral.

Similarly, in both the Social and Intellectual SQP’s, those patterns which benefit society and higher intellectual ideals are the most moral and should be encouraged to persist. Detrimental patterns should be cast aside. 

Pirsig notes that there are often clashes between the ‘competing’ level of morality (Lila 162-168), and it is also apparent that the distinction between social and intellectual morality can be difficult to ascertain, as intellectual concepts become accepted and incorporated into social morality.

Another Enlightenment concept - that of progress and the improvement of the human condition through the application of science and reason (Hall and Gieben) is supported by the MOQ. There is an interesting tie in here with teleological theories (rejected by the ‘philosophes’ of the Enlightenment) which propose an ultimate purpose for life. Under the MOQ the ultimate purpose would be the achievement of evolutionary perfection or ultimate Quality, rather than any religious idea of perfection.

This seems to me to be a more suitable teleological aim precisely because the state of evolutionary perfection can never be reached - it is always relative to the time and situation.

There is considerable beauty I think, in the idea that there can be no end to the evolutionary processes in our universe. This wider evolutionary model is like an ever branching tree. Some branches will come to an end, but the tree never dies. Teleologically, there is no end point, but there is always something worth aiming at - Quality.

  Human Nature and Individualism
Under the MOQ, a common human nature (as proposed in the Enlightenment) would exist only at the basic organic Quality level. Organo-chemically, all humans are very similar, however on the social and intellectual levels, while some similarities remain, each person is unique. A person’s particular behaviour or ‘nature’ being individual to that person, due to their unique social and intellectual history.

Individualism then, should fit particularly well within the MOQ as these notions of the importance of the individual  in society, and the right to basic freedoms are based on ‘high Quality’ intellectual morality. On this basis, a major issue of our times, that of sexism, generally favouring men over women should be solved. Under the ideal ‘MOQ social morality system’, the (im)morality of sexism which has ancient roots in bio-social morality levels, should be cast aside on the basis of higher intellectual morality guaranteeing basic freedoms and equality.

Beasley notes in contrast to this apparent support of individualism that Pirsig seems to: ‘focus on the ‘patterns of patterns’ at the expense of the 'self'. Pirsig has trouble explaining just how his metaphysics will actually make a difference to people, particularly when it comes to discriminating those ideas with 'Quality' from the dross’ (Beasley).

This is a valid criticism worthy of detailed examination via practical examples and case-studies, which I cannot provide at this time.

A major part of the problem, would seem to stem from the fact that a persons judgement will ultimately depend on their conception of ‘the good’ or ‘Quality’ which will often be quite different from the conception of the person next to them, or the community in general. This has been demonstrated by Kohlberg’s research mentioned earlier.

I would contend that this need not necessarily be a problem, or at least certainly not one we would ever want to fully overcome, as a world in which everyone is equipped with an identical value system, would be a world with very little diversity, which would at best, be terminally boring and at worst constitute  unsound evolutionary practice.
As to the question of whether the individuals intellectual morality should be subservient to a common intellectual morality, I would expect this might come down to the question of ‘harm’ to society. That is, if an individuals moral choices are different but not injurious to the common morality, then they should be freely allowed their action of choice.

 The Metaphysics of Quality - A Postmodern Theory of ‘The Nature of The Good’

Robert M. Pirsig is very serious about his Metaphysics of Quality. There is no doubt he has read and researched prodigiously and from many fields of knowledge in his personal quest for the nature of  ‘the good’.

His MOQ, which seems to have been mainly concieved in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, fits the hypothesis of a postmodern reworking and expansion upon established Western ideologies based on empiricism, science and other Enlightenment concepts. It appears to have been borne out of a common unease with the fruits of  Western liberal democracy, and a suspicion that ‘something is missing’ from our technological world.

Pirsig attempts to transcend the ‘hard’ dichotomy of what he calls ‘Subject-Object Metaphysics’ which tends to split all human endeavours into either ‘artistic’ or ‘scientific’ realms. He believes he has developed a superior model, with ‘Dynamic Quality’ at its head, apparently not unlike Plato’s Theory of Forms, with the Form of Good in the prime position.

I believe that Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality, though still in a relatively raw state, is a valuable postmodern contribution to philosophy, despite the apparent nonchalance of academic philosophers. At the very least, his books and theories encourage thought and debate in the public arena, which I believe is the rightful domain of social philosophy, in addition to the sometimes dark and silent halls of academia.

One can not help but wonder what Plato might have thought of the MOQ and how the two would get along..



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