Robert M. Pirsig

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Robert M. Pirsig (2005)

Robert Maynard Pirsig (born September 6, 1928 in Minneapolis , Minnesota - † April 24, 2017 in South Berwick , York County , Maine ) was an American author . His first work, Zen and the Art of Servicing a Motorcycle (1974), became an international bestseller.

Life

Pirsig was the first child of the lawyer Maynard Pirsig (1902–1997) and his wife Harriet Marie, née Sjobeck, a native of Sweden . He had two younger sisters. Pirsig's father, son of German immigrants, was a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School from 1934 until his retirement in 1970 , and as its dean from 1948 to 1955 . From 1970 to 1993 he taught at the William Mitchell School of Law , a private college.

Even during his childhood in Minneapolis, Robert M. Pirsig stood out for his extraordinary intelligence; at the age of 9½ he had an IQ of 170. When he entered kindergarten, he was already able to read and write, and after a short time he was promoted to the second grade. There the left-hander was forced to write with his right hand and developed a severe stutter which, together with the age difference and giftedness , made him a bullied outsider, so that he eventually had to leave school. He switched to Blake School , a private elementary school, where he was allowed to use his left hand, and his stuttering disappeared. In 1939 he went to the University of Minnesota high school about where he skipped again two classes and 1943 with only 14 years of high school acquired Accounts. In the summer of 1944, at the age of 15, he began studying chemistry at the University of Minnesota . He found it difficult to submit to the limitations of academic teaching; He also developed fundamental doubts about the theoretical foundations of science, which preoccupied him so much that he neglected his studies. After two years Pirsig was finally expelled from the university because of insufficient grades, lack of hard work and immaturity.

After several months of backpacking through Montana , Pirsig joined the army in 1946 and was stationed in South Korea until 1948 , where he became interested in the local culture and first came into contact with Zen Buddhism while on vacation in Japan . After his discharge from the army he spent several months living in Seattle and then began at the University of Minnesota , a study of philosophy , which he in 1950 with the BA completed. He then traveled to Benares ( India ) and studied Eastern philosophy at the university there for a year and a half.

After returning to the United States, Pirsig began studying journalism at the University of Minnesota in 1952 . Here he met the married fellow student Nancy Ann James, who together with him edited the 1953 edition of Ivory Tower , the university's student literary yearbook. In late 1953 he went with her to Reno, Nevada , where she got divorced and both worked as croupiers in a casino . They married on May 10, 1954. From September 1954 to May 1955, they lived on the money they earned in Reno in Minatitlán on Campeche Bay in Mexico . After returning to Minnesota, Pirsig made a living for himself and his family as a technical and educational writer, copywriter, and freelance journalist. The couple had two sons, Chris (1956–1979) and Theodore (* 1958). In 1957 Pirsig resumed his journalism studies at the University of Minnesota and graduated with an MA in journalism the following year . In the fall of 1959 he took up a position as an English lecturer at Montana State College in Bozeman . There Pirsig got into conflicts with colleagues and the university because of his unconventional teaching methods (among other things he refused to grade students).

In the fall of 1961 Pirsig took up a doctoral degree with a focus on ancient Greek philosophy at the University of Chicago . At the same time, he was given a lectureship in rhetoric at the University of Illinois . After renewed conflicts with his professor, combined with massive overwork, the first symptoms of a mental illness appeared; In December the patient went to the hospital for the first time and was diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia . The following year, his condition worsened and forced him to give up his studies and teaching. A voluntary stay of several months in a mental hospital in Downey, Illinois , brought no permanent improvement. After Pirsig had begun threatening people in his vicinity, he was forced to go to the Veterans Hospital in Minneapolis in 1963 , where Pirsig was subjected to 28 electroshock treatments, among other things , which, according to his own statements, erased his personality.

After his dismissal, Pirsig worked again as a technical editor and, at the same time, pursued a book project with the working title Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Zen and the art of maintaining a motorcycle). In June 1968 he sent a hectographed synopsis to a large number of publishers, 22 of which showed interest. Pirsig stayed in correspondence with the editor James Landis of the William Morrow publishing house . In 1974, after his book was published, Pirsig said in an interview that he had received 120 rejections, but one acceptance was enough. He repeated this statement in the epilogue from 1983, emphasizing that only one editor offered him the advance of $ 3,000. This gave rise to the widespread urban legend that the book had been rejected by 121 publishers. In fact, it was not the book itself that was rejected, but the synopsis, which, however, was written before the trip in 1968 (see below) and thus cannot really have depicted the book (especially the framework).

From July 8, 1968 to July 24, 1968, Pirsig took his son Chris and two friends, John and Silvia Sutherland, on a motorcycle trip from Minnesota to California. Pirsig used this trip as a framework for his book. He worked on it for more than four years, mostly between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. before starting work. During this time Pirsig began to practice Zen Buddhism regularly. In January 1973, the publishing contract was signed with Morrow; the publisher paid an advance of $ 3,000 without placing great economic expectations in the project. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values was finally released in April 1974, received rave reviews and immediately became a bestseller. To date, the book has been translated into 27 languages ​​and sold in more than five million copies.

A Guggenheim scholarship and the success of his book enabled Pirsig to quit his professional life. He had become famous overnight, but soon withdrew increasingly from the public and pursued a new book project on the differences between white and Native American culture. In the summer of 1975 he bought a sailboat with his wife and planned a trip around the world. The first stage of this sailing trip from Lake Superior to Florida later formed the framework for his second book Lila . In 1976 Pirsig and his wife separated; shortly afterwards he met the journalist Wendy Kimball and lived with her on board his boat. After the divorce from Nancy in 1978, Pirsig and Kimball married on December 28, 1978. In 1981 their daughter Nell was born. On November 17, 1979, shortly before his 23rd birthday, Pirsig's son Chris was ambushed and stabbed to death at a bus stop while leaving the Zen center in San Francisco where he lived.

From 1975 to 1985 Pirsig and his wife lived mostly on their boat in the USA, England, Holland, Belgium, Norway and Sweden before settling in Maine . During this time Pirsig was working on his second book. It was published in November 1991 under the title Lila - An Inquiry Into Morals . Pirsig attempted a more systematic summary of his philosophy. Despite occasional academic occupation with his work, Pirsig complained that he was primarily perceived as a “cult author” or “New Age author” and not received as a serious philosopher.

Pirsig, living withdrawn, was in poor health in the last years of his life; he was no longer able to receive the honorary doctorate from the University of Montana, which he was awarded in 2012, in person. He died on April 24, 2017, at the age of 88 at his home in South Berwick, Maine.

Philosophical work

The core of Pirsig's work is the metaphysics of quality . In this nondualistic metatheory, Pirsig rejects the subject-object theory and instead introduces the adjectives static and dynamic . The main benefit of the metatheory of quality lies in its ability to scientifically examine and evaluate moral issues. It therefore functions independently of determinism or positivism and is hierarchically above classic dualistic metaphysics. As a consequence, the metatheory cannot be examined dualistically, while the metatheory of quality is quite capable of explaining dualistic theories.

Statics and dynamics

Static structures are fixed value structures that represent an agreement on behavior in the social sphere, for example. The meaning and purpose of these static stipulations is the definition of good and bad : Everything that promotes the preservation of social structures is declared as “good”, while the “bad” endangers the existing social structures. Statics and dynamics are consequently directed against each other, but serve the purpose of further development and evolution in that the statics safeguards reached evolutionary stages against degeneration and from these safeguarding positions undertakes dynamic attempts to creatively evade existing conditions and practical constraints and “give life more space and to create opportunities ”. It is therefore the basic principle of the dynamic to modify and vary existing structures, whereby the usefulness of these variations can always be revealed later (variation and selection). On the basis of these facts, Pirsig defines the concept of morality, which "philosophy and spiritual knowledge have so far tried in vain to describe": Accordingly, morality is the principle of "giving life the opportunity to develop". This explains when social structures are perceived as immoral - namely whenever they restrict instead of opening up opportunities for development.

Evolutionary stages

Pirsig describes four leaps in the evolution of static value structures that have been preserved as stages of evolution. These are referred to as inorganic, biological, social and intellectual value structures. A fifth, mystical level is described by Pirsig as following the intellectual one, whereby this can no longer be assigned to the static structures (although it permeates and influences all static value levels), but as a dynamic, indefinable, preceding the subject / object separation Shows quality. A breach of expectations in the metaphysics of quality consists in the fact that, according to Pirsig, these levels do not cooperate harmoniously, but rather are hostile to each other, so that a higher level of evolution tries to use the level that is subordinate to it for its own goals. These stages of evolution are consequently static structures, which are continuously corrupted by dynamic influences (organic: mutations; social: antagonists; spiritual: ideas). The result is a field of tension between keepers and revolutionists. The dynamic quality found such a revolutionist in the carbon atom, through whom a new, more dynamic level of values ​​could arise: earthly, biological life. The second property of the evolutionary stages consists in their independence from each other with regard to their structure - the independence therefore exists as in an analogy to the hardware and software of a computer, in which a programmer does not have to know how on the hardware side z. B. a mono-flop circuit is set up, how attack and refractory times, gate voltages, etc. are set. The programmer uses the hardware through the logical relationships in his program without having to be aware of these physical things. The user in turn uses the software without knowing the logical relationships of the program. Also, no statement about an operand or a logical relationship can be proven on the hardware level.

Awards

  • Guggenheim grant 1974
  • American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1979)
  • Nomination for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for purple
  • Nomination for the National Book Award for Contemporary Affairs
  • Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy from Montana State University in 2012

Fonts

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Zen and the Art of Maintaining a Motorcycle” - bestselling author Robert M. Pirsig is dead. In: Spiegel Online . SPIEGELnet GmbH, April 24, 2017, accessed on April 25, 2017 .
  2. ^ A b c Paul Vitello: Robert Pirsig, 88, Author of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' Dies . In: The New York Times . April 25, 2017, p. B12 (English, nytimes.com [accessed April 25, 2017]).
  3. ↑ a b c d e Ian Glendinning: Biographical Timeline of Robert Pirsig. Retrieved April 25, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b Tim Adams: The interview: Robert Pirsig . In: The Observer . November 19, 2006 ( theguardian.com [accessed April 25, 2017]).
  5. ↑ Christie Hefner: Conversation With Robert M. Pirsig. Retrieved May 5, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the art of maintaining a motorcycle . 310 to 319: November 1997 edition. Fischer, ISBN 3-596-22020-3 , pp. 437 .
  7. ↑ Dan Bloom: Robert Pirsig: Celebrated Zen an the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance author, dies at age 88 - An investigation into the unfactchecked and untrue urban legend that he submitted the book to 121 publishers before William Morrow said yes. Retrieved May 5, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Ian Glendinning: #Pirsig and the "121 Rejections" Mythology. Retrieved May 5, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Author Psybertron: #Pirsig and the “121 Rejections” Mythology. In: Psybertron Asks. Retrieved April 28, 2017, May 13, 2020 (American English).
  10. ↑ a b Steve Chawkins: Robert Pirsig at this 88; wrote counterculture classic 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' . In: Los Angeles Times . April 24, 2017 (English, latimes.com [accessed April 25, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Pirsig, Robert M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pirsig, Robert Maynard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author
DATE OF BIRTH September 6, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Minneapolis , Minnesota , United States
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 2017
Place of death South Berwick , Maine , United States