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Franz von Rabenau
Johnston
English-1B
March 13, 2013
Word Count: 684
Fountainhead
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig demonstrates Quality as an
event, an ephemeral present that produces objective perception and subjective awareness in an
instant. Subject and object emanate from Quality and have no influence upon it, just as the
genetics of the offspring cannot imprint the genetics of a parent. Pirsig’s premise should be seen
as an emancipation of Quality, achieved through the logical elimination of dualistic definitions,
ultimately elevating its status to the source of all things.
What is Quality? Pirsig sets out to define Quality in his rhetoric class, and he meets with
resistance and protest from both students and faculty. In formalizing his response, Pirsig rejects
subjective and objective definitions. He admits Quality is unmeasurable by scientific means, but
proves its objective existence by extrapolating a world in which Quality does not exist,
illustrating the resultant changes. Pirsig finds this objective definition incomplete. He sees no
merit in defining Quality subjectively either. “Quality decreases subjectivity. Quality takes you
out of yourself, makes you aware of the world around you” (304). Pirsig concludes Quality
cannot be assigned to either subject or object and can only be seen in relation to them, “the point
at which subject and object meet” (304).
This understanding resides in the heart of Pirsig’s thesis, “Quality is an event” (304).
Quality appears in the moment the subject gains awareness of the object, the outside world.
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Through awareness of the object, the subject becomes self-aware. There is no “I” without other;
subjective awareness does not exist without comparison to an external stimulus. Pirsig says,
“Quality is the event which makes awareness of both subjects and objects possible” (304). This
event, Quality, spawns both subject and object and, therefore, cannot be subservient to either.
Attempts to assign purely subjective or objective values to Quality fail, in Pirsig’s view, because
it is the catalyst creating both. Quality is not subject to their duality. Quality, preceding subject
and object, is found in the moment that creates relationships between them.
For Pirsig, this moment is significant and constitutes the present. “You can’t be aware
you have seen a tree until after you have seen a tree and between the instant of vision and the
instant of awareness there must be a time lag” (314). Pirsig asserts this lapse is often ignored or
unjustifiably thought of as unimportant. This dropped moment, transitioning from perception to
intellect, frames the present, separating it from past and future. Because of this time lag, Pirsig
says, “Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal” (315). By
the time it can be comprehended, the tree is a memory, subject to the same a priori knowledge
and experiential wisdom, or analogues as Pirsig calls them, as any other memory. The perceived
tree is outside of the present and unreal.
Reality, Pirsig believes, dwells solely in the present. The subject only perceives the object
with purity during the Quality event, prior to processing the combined data of new experience
and analogue. “Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place.
There is no other reality” (315). Reality exists only in this moment, the present, in the lapse of
time that lies between sensation and cognition. It is in this reality that Quality is found. Pirsig
explains, “At the cutting edge of time, before an object can be distinguished, there must be a kind
of nonintellectual awareness, which he called awareness of Quality” (314). Pirsig deduces
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further: because all knowable things spring from this moment of nonintellectual awareness,
“Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects” (315).
In describing Quality as transitory event instead of static entity, Pirsig refocuses a
rhetorical question, placing Quality as parent or cause of both subject and object rather than an
effect of either. The subject/object duality no longer exerts control over Quality because subject
and object spring from the moment of awareness that is Quality. This paradigm shift is
Copernican in stature, revealing the moment subject and object, two irreconcilably opposed
dialectics, converge, emerging as codependent siblings circling the fountainhead, Quality.
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Works Cited
Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. New York: William Morrow &
Company, Inc. 1974. Print.
The essay I’ve submitted represents an earnest attempt to examine an idea and to share with
readers my thinking, insights and values. I affirm that I have respected the importance of my
intellect and the worthiness of the question at issue by honestly exploring the issue and carefully
constructing my argument so that a reasonable person can understand my ideas and consider
them intelligently.