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Robert Maynard Pirsig (born September 6, 1928) is an American writer and philosopher, and 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). ==Background== Pirsig was born on September 6, 1928〔"Robert M(aynard) Pirsig." Contemporary Popular Writers. Ed. Dave Mote. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. Gale Biography in Context. Web. September 1, 2012.〕 to Harriet Marie Sjobeck and Maynard Pirsig, and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is of German and Swedish descent.〔 His father was a University of Minnesota Law School (UMLS) graduate, and started teaching at the school in 1934. The elder Pirsig served as the law school dean from 1948 to 1955, and retired from teaching at UMLS in 1970.〔(A Tribute to Dean Pirsig ), University of Minnesota Law School, republished by MOQ.org.〕 He resumed his career as a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law, where he remained until his final retirement in 1993.〔 Because he was a precocious child, with an I.Q. of 170 at age 9, Robert Pirsig skipped several grades and was enrolled at the Blake School in Minneapolis. Pirsig was awarded a high school diploma in May 1943 and entered the University of Minnesota to study biochemistry that autumn. In ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', he described the central character, thought to represent him, as being far from a typical student; he was interested in science as a goal in itself, rather than as a way to establish a career. While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and, indeed, that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited. He could not find any way to reduce the number of hypotheses—he became perplexed by the role and source of hypothesis generation within scientific practice. This led to his determination of a previously unarticulated limitation of science, which was something of a revelation to him. The question distracted him to the extent that he lost interest in his studies and failed to maintain good grades; and finally, he was expelled from the university. Pirsig enlisted in the United States Army in 1946 and was stationed in South Korea until 1948. Upon his discharge from the army, he returned to the U.S. and lived in Seattle, Washington for less than a year, at which point he decided to finish the education he had abandoned. He earned a bachelor of arts in Eastern Philosophy in May 1950. He then attended Banaras Hindu University in India, to study Eastern Philosophy and culture. Although he did not obtain a degree, he performed graduate-level work in philosophy and journalism at the University of Chicago. His difficult experiences as a student in a course taught by Richard McKeon were later described, thinly disguised, in ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance''.〔The story is recounted in Robert Pirsig, ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'' (New York: Bantam Books, 1974, pp. 329–330). Richard McKeon can be identified from the context.〕 In 1958, he became a professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, and taught creative writing courses for two years. Pirsig suffered a nervous breakdown and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression as a result of an evaluation conducted by psychoanalysts, and was treated with electroconvulsive therapy on numerous occasions, a treatment he discusses in his novel, ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance''. On December 15, 2012, Montana State University bestowed Pirsig with an honorary doctorate in the field of philosophy during the university's fall commencement. Pirsig was also honored with a commencement talk speech by MSU Regent Professor Michael Sexson. Pirsig was an instructor in writing at what was then Montana State College from 1958–1960. In ''Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', Pirsig writes about his time at MSC as a less than pleasurable experience due to the teaching philosophy of the agricultural college at the time that limited his ability to teach writing effectively as well as to develop his own philosophies and literature. Due to frailty of health, Pirsig did not travel to Bozeman in December 2012 from his residence in Maine in order to accept the accolade. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert M. Pirsig」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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