[MD] What does Pirsig mean by metaphysics?

[Andre Broersen]

Hi Steve,

I have been away a few days and upon return found some 20 Issues
waiting for me (this means anything b/w 100-140 posts) so do not know
if you have considered the quotes I dug up in the archives ( an
exchange between Paul Turner and Bodvar). It seems to be related to
the subject matter of your letter to Mr. Pirsig:

"The Vedanta of the Hindus, the Way of the Taoists, even the Buddha
had  been described as an absolute monism similar to Hegel's
philosophy.  Phædrus doubted at the time, however, whether mystical
Ones and  metaphysical monisms were introconvertable since mystical
Ones follow no  rules and metaphysical monisms do. His Quality was a
metaphysical  entity, not a mystic one. Or was it? What was the
difference?

He answered himself that the difference was one of definition.
Metaphysical entities are defined. Mystical Ones are not. That made
Quality mystical. No. It was really both. Although he'd thought of it
purely in philosophical terms up to now as metaphysical, he had all
along refused to define it. That made it mystic too. Its indefinability
freed it from the rules of metaphysics." [ZMM Ch.20]

Like Buddhist philosophy, the MOQ gives intellectual (or metaphysical)
meaning to the place of non-intellectual (or mystical) experience in our
lives without devouring it with concepts. It doesn't reject one for the
other and it never claims to actually be the reality it describes.

This comment from Pirsig taken from "The Role of Evolution, Time and
Order in Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality" by Ant McWatt is maybe
worth  bearing in mind:
"The purpose of the description of 'Dynamic Quality' as 'the continually
changing flux of immediate reality' is to block the notion that Dynamic
Quality is some kind of object. To try to take that definition as some
kind of philosophic object itself is to pervert the purpose for which
the statement was intended."

Hope this clarifies things for you.

Cheers
Andre