The Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) is a theory of reality introduced in Robert M. Pirsig's philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) and expanded in Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991).
[1] The Metaphysics of Quality originated with Pirsig's college studies as a biochemistry student at the University of Minnesota.
He describes in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that as he studied, he found the number of rational hypotheses for any given phenomenon appeared to be unlimited.
After spending some time in Korea as a soldier, Pirsig concluded that Oriental philosophy was a better place to search for ultimate answers.
In 1950, Pirsig continued his philosophical studies at Banaras Hindu University, where he 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.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pirsig taught rhetoric at Montana State College – Bozeman and, with the encouragement of an older colleague, Sarah Vinke, decided to explore what exactly was meant by the term quality.
This, coupled with a Native American Church peyote ceremony he attended with an anthropologist friend, James Verne Dusenberry, led Pirsig into what he called "a mushroom cloud of thought.
According to Pirsig, East Asian philosophers and American Indian mystics, dynamic quality/the Tao/God/the One cannot be defined.
Pirsig calls dynamic quality "the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality" because it is recognized before it can be conceptualized.
These static forms, if they have enough "high" or "low" quality, are given names and are interchanged with other "sentient beings", building the base of knowledge for a culture.
Likewise, an intellectual pattern of value overcoming a social one (e.g. civil rights) is a moral development because intellect is a higher form of evolution than society.
Pirsig is not proposing criticism or responsibility, but acceptance, and pure absorption: "When he wrote it he felt momentary fright and was about to strike out the words 'All of it.
… This Cartesian 'Me,' this autonomous little homunculus who sits behind our eyeballs looking out through them in order to pass judgment on the affairs of the world, is just completely ridiculous.