Robert M. Pirsig
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Robert Maynard Pirsig (; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He was the author of the philosophical novels '' Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values'' (1974) and '' Lila: An Inquiry into Morals'' (1991), and he co-authored ''On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Selected and Unpublished Writings'' (2022) along with his wife (now widow) and editor, Wendy Pirsig.


Early life

Pirsig was born on September 6, 1928, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Harriet Marie Sjobeck and
Maynard Pirsig Maynard E. Pirsig, LLD, (/ˈpɜːrsɪɡ/; January 9, 1902 - February 7, 1997) was an American legal scholar. He was director of the Minnesota Legal Aid Society, dean of the University of Minnesota Law School, a Minnesota Supreme Court justice, and ...
. He was of German and Swedish descent. His father was a graduate of the University of Minnesota Law School, taught in that school from 1934, served as its dean from 1948 to 1955, and retired from teaching there in 1970. He subsequently taught at the William Mitchell College of Law until his retirement in 1993. A precocious child with an alleged IQ of 170 at the age of nine, Pirsig skipped several grades at the Blake School in Minneapolis. In May 1943, Pirsig was awarded a high school diploma at the age of 14 by the University High School (later renamed
Marshall-University High School Marshall-University High School was a public junior high and high school serving grades 6–12 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The school was founded in 1968 through a merger between John Marshall High School (a Minneapolis public school) and Univer ...
), where he had edited the school yearbook, the Bisbilla. Pirsig then studied biochemistry at the University of Minnesota. In ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', he describes the central character, thought to represent himself, as being an atypical student, interested in science in itself rather than a professional career path. In the course of his studies, Pirsig became intrigued by the multiplicity of putative causes for a given phenomenon, and increasingly focused on the role played by hypotheses in the scientific method and sources from which they originate. His preoccupation with these matters led to a decline in his grades and expulsion from the university. In 1946, Pirsig enlisted in the United States Army and was stationed in South Korea until 1948. Upon his discharge from the Army, he lived for several months in Seattle, Washington, and then returned to the University of Minnesota, from which he received a bachelor's degree in 1950. He subsequently studied philosophy at Banaras Hindu University in India and the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods at the University of Chicago. In 1958 he earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota.


Career

In 1958, he became a professor at
Montana State University Montana State University (MSU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's largest university. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 60 fields, master's degrees in 6 ...
in
Bozeman Bozeman is a city and the county seat of Gallatin County, Montana, United States. Located in southwest Montana, the 2020 census put Bozeman's population at 53,293, making it the fourth-largest city in Montana. It is the principal city of th ...
, and taught creative writing courses for two years. Shortly thereafter he taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Pirsig's published writing consists most notably of two books. The better known, '' Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', delves into Pirsig's exploration into the nature of '' quality''. Ostensibly a first-person narrative based on a motorcycle trip he and his young son Chris had taken from Minneapolis to San Francisco, it is an exploration of the underlying metaphysics of Western culture. He also gives the reader a short summary of the
history of philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
, including his interpretation of the philosophy of Aristotle as part of an ongoing dispute between '' universalists'', admitting the existence of ''
universals In metaphysics, a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. For exa ...
'', and the
Sophists A sophist ( el, σοφιστής, sophistes) was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics, and mathematics. They taught ' ...
, opposed by Socrates and his student Plato. Pirsig finds in "Quality" a special significance and common ground between Western and Eastern world views. Pirsig had great difficulty finding a publisher for ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance''. Pirsig pitched the idea for his book to 121 different publishers, sending them a cover letter along with two sample pages, with 22 responding favorably. Ultimately, an editor at William Morrow accepted the finished manuscript; when he did, his publisher's internal recommendation stated, "This book is brilliant beyond belief, it is probably a work of genius, and will, I'll wager, attain classic stature." In his book review, George Steiner compared Pirsig's writing to
Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
,
Broch A broch is an Iron Age drystone hollow-walled structure found in Scotland. Brochs belong to the classification "complex Atlantic roundhouse" devised by Scottish archaeologists in the 1980s. Their origin is a matter of some controversy. Origin ...
, Proust, and
Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson
, stating that "the assertion itself is valid ... the analogies with '' Moby-Dick'' are patent". Pirsig described the development of his ideas and writing his book in a videotaped lecture that can be viewed on YouTube. The talk was at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design on May 20, 1974. A transcript of this talk also appears as the introduction to ''On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence'', a 2022 book of Pirsig's unpublished and selected writings. In 1974, Pirsig was awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
to allow him to write a follow-up, '' Lila: An Inquiry into Morals'' (1991), in which he developed a value-based metaphysics, Metaphysics of Quality, that challenges our subject–object view of reality. The second book, this time "the captain" of a sailboat, follows on from where ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'' left off. Pirsig was vice-president of the
Minnesota Zen Meditation Center The Minnesota Zen Meditation Center (Kounzan Ganshoji, "Cultivating Clouds Mountain, Living in Vow Temple") is an urban, non-residential, Sōtō Zen practice community in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since 2019, MZMC has been led by two co-guiding Dha ...
from 1973 to 1975 and also served on the board of directors.


Personal life

Robert Pirsig married Nancy Ann James on May 10, 1954. They had two sons: Chris, born in 1956, and Theodore (Ted), born in 1958. Pirsig had a
mental breakdown A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and treated with electroconvulsive therapy on numerous occasions, a treatment he discusses in ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance''. Nancy sought a divorce during this time; they formally separated in 1976 and divorced in 1978. On December 28, 1978, Pirsig married Wendy Kimball in
Tremont, Maine Tremont is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States. It is located on the southwestern side of Mount Desert Island, known to locals as "the quiet side." Tremont includes the villages of Bass Harbor (or McKinley), Bernard, Gotts Island, ...
. In 1979, his son Chris, who figured prominently in ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', was fatally stabbed in a mugging outside the
San Francisco Zen Center San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC), is a network of affiliated Sōtō Zen practice and retreat centers in the San Francisco Bay area, comprising City Center or Beginner's Mind Temple, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. Th ...
at the age of 22. Pirsig discusses this tragedy in an afterword to subsequent editions of ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', writing that he and his second wife Wendy Kimball decided not to abort the child they conceived in 1980 because he believed that this unborn childlater their daughter Nellwas a continuation of the "life pattern" that Chris had occupied. Pirsig died aged 88, at his home in
South Berwick, Maine South Berwick is a town in York County, Maine, United States. The population was 7,467 at the 2020 census. South Berwick is home to Berwick Academy, a private, co-educational university-preparatory day school founded in 1791. The town was s ...
, on April 24, 2017, after a period of failing health.


Legacy and recognition

Pirsig received a
Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in 1974 for General Nonfiction, which later allowed him to complete his second book. The University of Minnesota conferred an Outstanding Achievement Award in 1975. He won an award for literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1979. On December 15, 2012,
Montana State University Montana State University (MSU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Bozeman, Montana. It is the state's largest university. MSU offers baccalaureate degrees in 60 fields, master's degrees in 6 ...
bestowed upon Pirsig an honorary doctorate in philosophy during the university's fall commencement. Pirsig was also honored in a commencement speech by MSU Regent Professor Michael Sexson. Pirsig had been an instructor in writing at what was then Montana State College from 1958 to 1960. Pirsig did not travel to Bozeman in December 2012 to accept the accolade, allegedly due to frailty of health. However, in ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', Pirsig writes about his time at Montana State College as a less than pleasurable experience, and that this limited his ability to teach writing effectively and to develop his own philosophy and writing. In December 2019, the Smithsonian's
National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...
acquired Pirsig's 1966 Honda CB77F Super Hawk on which the 1968 ride with his son Chris was taken. The donation included a manuscript of ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', a signed first edition of the book, and tools and clothing from the ride. In 2020, the Smithsonian acquired additional material from the Pirsig family relating to Pirsig's maritime interests and background. In 2020, the Robert M. Pirsig archive was collected by the Houghton Library at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; a 2021 article in the ''International Journal of Motorcycle Studies'' details the writer's close historic relationship with motorcycles from the age of four to shortly before his death.


See also

*
James Verne Dusenberry James Verne Dusenberry (April 7, 1906 – December 16, 1966) was a well educated and publicly acclaimed scholar. He is best known for his writings on and the relationships he built with many of the various Montana tribes throughout his lifeti ...


Notes


External links

*
The Motorcycle is Yourself: Revisiting 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'
CBC interview
Photographs
from Pirsig's 1968 trip upon which ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'' is based * NPR interviews with Pirsig
Audio: 1974
an
Audio: 1992
* Audio excerpt fro
BBC radio program
about cult books {{DEFAULTSORT:Pirsig, Robert M. 1928 births 2017 deaths 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century American novelists American expatriates in Belgium American expatriates in Ireland American expatriates in Norway American expatriates in Sweden American expatriates in the United Kingdom American people of German descent American people of Swedish descent Banaras Hindu University alumni Military personnel from Minnesota Motorcycling writers Writers from Minneapolis People with schizophrenia Philosophers of technology People with mood disorders United States Army soldiers University of Chicago alumni University of Minnesota alumni American male novelists Novelists from Minnesota American male non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers Notable residents of Montana