Kibbe, Michael. From Topic to Thesis: A Guide to Theological Research. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016, pp. 152.
It is good to think of research and writing as a process. Sometimes, professors assign a research paper and the emphasis is on it as a product. On such and such you will deliver this research paper (product) to me. Students struggle on how to get from the assignment to the finished product. Michael Kibbe's From Topic to Thesis: A Guide to Theological Research is a useful resource that can guide the student through the different steps of the process: picking a topic, narrowing a topic, finding resources, creating a thesis statement, and writing the paper.
Kibbe introduces his guide in an introduction. He discusses the process of research. The process should take you from topic to thesis, not topic to paper. Kibbe asserts, "It is a simple book designed to take you step by step from a research topic to a research thesis" (14). He suggests that the student should not move topic to a paper. He notes, "A research paper is not built around a topic, but a thesis" (15). Next, he provides a short history of theological research. He describes theological research as taking part in a conversation. It is not a one-person event. He thinks theological research is like any other research, but it is also not like any other research. It seems to be that certain principles of research can be applies across discipline, but each discipline has its own specificity. Kibbe states, "Every research process has a preparation component, a field component and an analysis component" (21). He makes a key point that the "goal of your research is new knowledge for you. You, and you only. No one else" (24). He ends the introduction by defining key terms: theological, primary sources, secondary sources, tertiary sources, and bibliography.
The main part of this book is "about the process of moving from topic (assignment) to thesis (argument)" (43). This process is divided into five steps. Each chapter discusses one of the steps, so there is a chapter for each step of the process.
Chapter one discusses finding direction. Kibbe provides keys to finding direction. First, do not begin your paper already knowing what you are "going to argue." Second, "research takes time." The third and fourth keys go together: do not depend on secondary sources in the beginning; instead, depend on primary and tertiary sources.
Chapter two discusses gathering sources. First, do not "spend too much time on any one source" (56). In the beginning you are skimming your sources to see if they will be relevant to your research project. Second, you need to distinguish between "redirecting and getting distracted." Third, not every source you encounter will be "well written." His last key argues that "research is first and foremost about primary sources" (57).
Chapter three discusses understanding issues. He states, "Your goal in this next phase is to learn as much as you can from your sources about the specific issues involved with your topic" (65). The first key is about reading your sources efficiently. Second, you must "allow yourself large time segments" for doing your work. In other words, you cannot be doing it in 15 minute time allotments. Third, your reading has a specific purpose: you are reading the source for information applicable to your thesis or paper. Fourth, "the specificity of your sources will determine the specificity of your topic" (69).The Fifth key is that research is not a linear process because it requires circling back at different times in the process.
Chapter four discusses entering into the discussion. The important point here is on the student speaking into the conversation or speaking into the discussion with his own argument. He needs to have been listening to the conversation before he is ready to speak. First, the student needs to "have something to contribute to the conversation." Second, he must speak at the appropriate time. Third, he needs to know how to communicate or speak his thesis that "fits into the discussion."
The final chapter discusses establishing a position. First, he states that the thesis is the "heart" of the paper. He asserts, "Every single word, phrase and paragraph in your paper should contribute to your thesis" (87). Second, do not start "writing your paper too soon" (88). He thinks the research should "mold the thesis" and the thesis should "mold the paper." Third, the paper should enter into a conversation already occurring about your "chosen topic."
After the final chapter Kibbe provides six appendices on the following topics: 1) things a student should never do in a paper; 2) helpful theological research tools; 3) scholarly resources; 4) How to use the ATLA religion database; 5) How to download and use Zotero bibliography; and a timeline for papers.
From Topic to Thesis is a short guide on doing theological research. It is well written and easy to read. One might want to start with the thesis earlier in the process than this guide, depending what one is doing research: theology, Biblical studies, Church history, and etc. Personally, I prefer having at least a preliminary thesis early in the process. This book is recommended for all those beginning theological research and those who need a refresher.
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Message in the Bottle Part 2
Percy, Walker. "The Message in the Bottle" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
Island news is something the islanders can figure out on their own; news from across the sea can only be delivered by a divine messenger. Percy asserts, "It is news, however, this news from across the seas, and it is as a piece of news that it must be evaluated. Faith is the organ of the historical, says Kierkegaard" (144). Percy contrasts the different conceptions of faith as defined by Kierkegaard and Thomas Aquinas: Aquinas states, "The act of faith consists essentially in knowledge and there we find its formal or specific perfection." Aquinas is saying that faith resides in the intellect. Arvin Vos states that Aquinas's view of faith is that faith is an act of the intellect, for its goal is truth. However, the intellect is moved to this act "under the impetus of the will moving it to assent." In contrast, Kierkegaard argues, "Faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and the historical as indifferent, or it is pure historical knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical." Stephen Evans asserts, that according to Kierkegaard, "Christian faith is understood to be a passion, a new or higher 'second' form of immediacy, what Kierkegaard sometimes calls an 'immediacy after reflection,' meaning that it is not simply a natural or spontaneous form of immediacy but a quality that must be developed, and that the individual has some role in developing."
Kierkegaard seems to be stressing that faith is a movement of the heart and will. It is not mere intellectual assent. Evans states that Aquinas's concept is a faith beyond reason. In describing Kierkegaard's view of faith, he says it is both above reason and against reason. Percy sides with Aquinas in believing that faith is knowledge, and he thinks Kierkegaard is wrong in setting up an "antinomy of faith versus reason." He argues that island news and news from across the sea "would correspond roughly with the two knowledges of Saint Thomas: (1) scientific knowledge, in which assent is by reason, (2) knowledge of faith, in which scientific knowledge and assent are undertaken scientifically" (107). Scientific knowledge for medievals is not restricted to modern day science, but all forms of knowledge. Percy wants to argue with Aquinas and the Catholic tradition that faith does not contradict reason. Percy thinks Kierkegaard sees faith as the "Absolute Paradox" and that embracing it is "setting aside reason."
The castaway sees himself in a predicament in which island news will not help him. Because he knows that island news does not address his situation, he is open to a message from across the seas. Westkarp explains Percy's view on faith as knowledge: "Faith is news 'from across the seas' is, according to Percy, not Kierkegaard's embrace of the Absolute Paradox, not credo quia absurdem est, but a knowledge in which with Thomas Aquinas scientific knowledge and assent are undertaken simultaneously. . . Percy accepts Kierkegaard's definition of faith as 'the organ of the historical' but adds to it Aquinas's understanding of faith as a special kind of knowledge 'in which scientific knowledge [assent achieved by reason] and assent are undertaken simultaneously,' . . . combining in a magnificent way Kierkegaard's and Aquinas's thoughts about faith."
Percy says that faith must be communicated to the hearer. For faith comes by hearing the message. Percy asserts, "Faith comes from God, but is also comes from hearing. It is a piece of news and there is a news bearer. But why should we believe a news bearer?" (146). Percy draws from Kierkegaard's distinction between an apostle and a genius. A genius would communicate island news, but an apostle would deliver news from across the seas. Westkarp states, "It is characteristic that Percy, in 'The Message in the Bottle,' presents his view of the revelation in a paradoxical form, since the scientist-philosopher-artist would expect the message about salvation to be presented as knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. But Percy shows that precisely the opposite is true, 'that salvation comes by hearing, by a piece of news, and not through knowledge sub specie aeternitatis.
Island news is something the islanders can figure out on their own; news from across the sea can only be delivered by a divine messenger. Percy asserts, "It is news, however, this news from across the seas, and it is as a piece of news that it must be evaluated. Faith is the organ of the historical, says Kierkegaard" (144). Percy contrasts the different conceptions of faith as defined by Kierkegaard and Thomas Aquinas: Aquinas states, "The act of faith consists essentially in knowledge and there we find its formal or specific perfection." Aquinas is saying that faith resides in the intellect. Arvin Vos states that Aquinas's view of faith is that faith is an act of the intellect, for its goal is truth. However, the intellect is moved to this act "under the impetus of the will moving it to assent." In contrast, Kierkegaard argues, "Faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and the historical as indifferent, or it is pure historical knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical." Stephen Evans asserts, that according to Kierkegaard, "Christian faith is understood to be a passion, a new or higher 'second' form of immediacy, what Kierkegaard sometimes calls an 'immediacy after reflection,' meaning that it is not simply a natural or spontaneous form of immediacy but a quality that must be developed, and that the individual has some role in developing."
Kierkegaard seems to be stressing that faith is a movement of the heart and will. It is not mere intellectual assent. Evans states that Aquinas's concept is a faith beyond reason. In describing Kierkegaard's view of faith, he says it is both above reason and against reason. Percy sides with Aquinas in believing that faith is knowledge, and he thinks Kierkegaard is wrong in setting up an "antinomy of faith versus reason." He argues that island news and news from across the sea "would correspond roughly with the two knowledges of Saint Thomas: (1) scientific knowledge, in which assent is by reason, (2) knowledge of faith, in which scientific knowledge and assent are undertaken scientifically" (107). Scientific knowledge for medievals is not restricted to modern day science, but all forms of knowledge. Percy wants to argue with Aquinas and the Catholic tradition that faith does not contradict reason. Percy thinks Kierkegaard sees faith as the "Absolute Paradox" and that embracing it is "setting aside reason."
The castaway sees himself in a predicament in which island news will not help him. Because he knows that island news does not address his situation, he is open to a message from across the seas. Westkarp explains Percy's view on faith as knowledge: "Faith is news 'from across the seas' is, according to Percy, not Kierkegaard's embrace of the Absolute Paradox, not credo quia absurdem est, but a knowledge in which with Thomas Aquinas scientific knowledge and assent are undertaken simultaneously. . . Percy accepts Kierkegaard's definition of faith as 'the organ of the historical' but adds to it Aquinas's understanding of faith as a special kind of knowledge 'in which scientific knowledge [assent achieved by reason] and assent are undertaken simultaneously,' . . . combining in a magnificent way Kierkegaard's and Aquinas's thoughts about faith."
Percy says that faith must be communicated to the hearer. For faith comes by hearing the message. Percy asserts, "Faith comes from God, but is also comes from hearing. It is a piece of news and there is a news bearer. But why should we believe a news bearer?" (146). Percy draws from Kierkegaard's distinction between an apostle and a genius. A genius would communicate island news, but an apostle would deliver news from across the seas. Westkarp states, "It is characteristic that Percy, in 'The Message in the Bottle,' presents his view of the revelation in a paradoxical form, since the scientist-philosopher-artist would expect the message about salvation to be presented as knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. But Percy shows that precisely the opposite is true, 'that salvation comes by hearing, by a piece of news, and not through knowledge sub specie aeternitatis.
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Meaning and Authenticity
Braman, Brian J. Meaning and Authenticity: Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor on the Drama of Authentic Human Existence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.
Braman acknowledges that the quest for authenticity began among the new left in the 1960s. However, Bramas asserts, "This quest for authentic human existence does not, however, just spring up with the radical left of the 1960s" (3). It has roots in the 18th century with Rousseau and John Locke. The jargon of "self-fulfillment, self-actualization, self-realization, and authenticity is now common linguistic currency in contemporary culture" (4). It does have its critics: Christopher Lasch speaks of the quest for authenticity as another form of narcissism. Other critics are Alan Bloom, Robert Bellah and Theodor Adorno. Braman accepts the criticisms of these authors, but in "spite of the ongoing criticism, however, the idea of human authenticity persists" (6). Like the argument of Charles Taylor in A Secular Age, Braman argues for a middle position between "uncritical acceptance" and "wholesale condemnation of the idea of authenticity" (6). Braman sets out to just this in his book, Meaning and Authenticity by putting two Canadian thinkers in Conversation, the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan and the Catholic philosopher and public intellectual, Charles Taylor.
Before beginning this conversation, he introduces the topic of authenticity by discussing some of Heidegger's key ideas in chapter one. Although Rousseau and Herder are influential in the history of "self-determining freedom," Braman thinks that Martin Heiddegger is the "most instrumental in making this question of human authenticity prominent within and without philosophical circles" (4). For Heidegger, authenticity has to do with one's historicity and one's being-to death. This chapter provides detailed descriptions of key terms used by Heidegger: dasein, care, thrownness, everydayness, fallenness, guilt, etc. Braman appreciates Heiddegger's ideas, but he believes it falls short: "in the end, Heidegger's position closes off the possibility of transcendence and leaves death as the only horizon" (73). Both Taylor and Lonergan will argue for the transcendence that Braman thinks is important.
Chapters two and three provide Taylor's and Lonergan's accounts of authenticity. Taylor gives us a "genealogical rehabilitation of what is best and viable in modernity's approach to human authenticity" (7). Taylor seeks to discover the moral sources of the self. Taylor emphasizes the "facticity" of our lives and that one's "identity is always constructed linguistically, socially, and historically" (34). We are engaged agents which means that we "find ourselves (individually as well as culturally) within a lived background of past judgments" (37). Heidegger's view of authenticity related it to the horizon of death, Taylor's account relates it to the life of fullness. Taylor's account relates authenticity to higher goods, constitutive goods, and hyper goods. Taylor even talks about how nature and art can act as an epiphany and be considered a moral source. Taylor asserts, "The central nature of epiphany is not just one's praxis, but also the intimate transactions that take place between one's self and one's world" (45).
Chapter three covers Bernard Lonergan's hermeneutical and existential account of authenticity. Authenticity for Lonergan is "self-transcendence, and self-transcendence involves intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. This path to authenticity is not just for the elite, but for everyone. This conversion is not a one-time experience, but continues life-long. Lonergan states, "Authenticity is a lifelong commitment, both individually and culturally, to the imperatives to be attentive, reasonable, intelligent, and responsible" (48).
Chapter four compares Taylor's account of authenticity with Lonergan's account. Braman compares the two through exploring three themes: art, cognitional theory, and the human good. Braman thinks the two share much in common: "Lonergan and Taylor have shown that human existence and human understanding are historically dynamic and complex relationship between the person and culture. Both stress the historicity of the human subject, and both dismantle Cartesian certitude and the Kantian transcendental ego. Lonergan and Taylor have de-centered the subject by showing to what degree our self-understanding is conditioned from above downwards by the facticity of human existence. Both have articulated, in response to postmodernism's critique of what Heidegger called 'humanism,' how indeed the person is not truncated, neglected, or immanentist, but existential, and each has done so from a particular but complementary viewpoint" (74). Braman definitely appreciates both thinkers, but Lonergan's view is probably more like his own because in the last part of the chapter is a sectioned called: "Lonergan Beyond Taylor" (95). The author successfully shows the how bot Taylor and Lonergan have provided ways to retrieve authenticity in an acceptable way. He does think that Lonergan's account might add certain depth to Taylor's account with his concept of self-transcendence.
Braman has shown that the quest for authenticity can be retrieved in a way that is not narcissistic. He has also shown how Taylor and Lonergan"s ideas on authenticity is complementary. The introduction to the book by reviewing key ideas of Heidegger is helpful to those not familiar, and Heidegger was an important author since both Taylor and Lonergan have been influenced by Heidderger and interact with his in their own ideas. The book is readable and makes these philosophers understandable to the non-specialist.
Source: Book review by Randall S. Rosenberg
Braman acknowledges that the quest for authenticity began among the new left in the 1960s. However, Bramas asserts, "This quest for authentic human existence does not, however, just spring up with the radical left of the 1960s" (3). It has roots in the 18th century with Rousseau and John Locke. The jargon of "self-fulfillment, self-actualization, self-realization, and authenticity is now common linguistic currency in contemporary culture" (4). It does have its critics: Christopher Lasch speaks of the quest for authenticity as another form of narcissism. Other critics are Alan Bloom, Robert Bellah and Theodor Adorno. Braman accepts the criticisms of these authors, but in "spite of the ongoing criticism, however, the idea of human authenticity persists" (6). Like the argument of Charles Taylor in A Secular Age, Braman argues for a middle position between "uncritical acceptance" and "wholesale condemnation of the idea of authenticity" (6). Braman sets out to just this in his book, Meaning and Authenticity by putting two Canadian thinkers in Conversation, the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan and the Catholic philosopher and public intellectual, Charles Taylor.
Before beginning this conversation, he introduces the topic of authenticity by discussing some of Heidegger's key ideas in chapter one. Although Rousseau and Herder are influential in the history of "self-determining freedom," Braman thinks that Martin Heiddegger is the "most instrumental in making this question of human authenticity prominent within and without philosophical circles" (4). For Heidegger, authenticity has to do with one's historicity and one's being-to death. This chapter provides detailed descriptions of key terms used by Heidegger: dasein, care, thrownness, everydayness, fallenness, guilt, etc. Braman appreciates Heiddegger's ideas, but he believes it falls short: "in the end, Heidegger's position closes off the possibility of transcendence and leaves death as the only horizon" (73). Both Taylor and Lonergan will argue for the transcendence that Braman thinks is important.
Chapters two and three provide Taylor's and Lonergan's accounts of authenticity. Taylor gives us a "genealogical rehabilitation of what is best and viable in modernity's approach to human authenticity" (7). Taylor seeks to discover the moral sources of the self. Taylor emphasizes the "facticity" of our lives and that one's "identity is always constructed linguistically, socially, and historically" (34). We are engaged agents which means that we "find ourselves (individually as well as culturally) within a lived background of past judgments" (37). Heidegger's view of authenticity related it to the horizon of death, Taylor's account relates it to the life of fullness. Taylor's account relates authenticity to higher goods, constitutive goods, and hyper goods. Taylor even talks about how nature and art can act as an epiphany and be considered a moral source. Taylor asserts, "The central nature of epiphany is not just one's praxis, but also the intimate transactions that take place between one's self and one's world" (45).
Chapter three covers Bernard Lonergan's hermeneutical and existential account of authenticity. Authenticity for Lonergan is "self-transcendence, and self-transcendence involves intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. This path to authenticity is not just for the elite, but for everyone. This conversion is not a one-time experience, but continues life-long. Lonergan states, "Authenticity is a lifelong commitment, both individually and culturally, to the imperatives to be attentive, reasonable, intelligent, and responsible" (48).
Chapter four compares Taylor's account of authenticity with Lonergan's account. Braman compares the two through exploring three themes: art, cognitional theory, and the human good. Braman thinks the two share much in common: "Lonergan and Taylor have shown that human existence and human understanding are historically dynamic and complex relationship between the person and culture. Both stress the historicity of the human subject, and both dismantle Cartesian certitude and the Kantian transcendental ego. Lonergan and Taylor have de-centered the subject by showing to what degree our self-understanding is conditioned from above downwards by the facticity of human existence. Both have articulated, in response to postmodernism's critique of what Heidegger called 'humanism,' how indeed the person is not truncated, neglected, or immanentist, but existential, and each has done so from a particular but complementary viewpoint" (74). Braman definitely appreciates both thinkers, but Lonergan's view is probably more like his own because in the last part of the chapter is a sectioned called: "Lonergan Beyond Taylor" (95). The author successfully shows the how bot Taylor and Lonergan have provided ways to retrieve authenticity in an acceptable way. He does think that Lonergan's account might add certain depth to Taylor's account with his concept of self-transcendence.
Braman has shown that the quest for authenticity can be retrieved in a way that is not narcissistic. He has also shown how Taylor and Lonergan"s ideas on authenticity is complementary. The introduction to the book by reviewing key ideas of Heidegger is helpful to those not familiar, and Heidegger was an important author since both Taylor and Lonergan have been influenced by Heidderger and interact with his in their own ideas. The book is readable and makes these philosophers understandable to the non-specialist.
Source: Book review by Randall S. Rosenberg
Monday, December 17, 2018
Charles Taylor's A Secular Age
Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Taylor's A Secular Age tells the story of secularization in Western society. Throughout the book, Taylor is critiquing the mainstream secularization thesis which he calls secularization2: This characterization of secularity has to do with "the falling off of religious belief and practice, in people turning away from God, and no longer going to church" (2). Taylor argues for hos own definition of secularization in his book, secularization3. (Secularization one has to do with religion in public spaces.) Secularization3: It is a "move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace" (3).
Taylor's book is divided into five parts. Part 1 discusses religious reform; Part 2 is the "turning point" the move toward exclusive humanism; Part 3 is the "Nova Effect" the multiplying of possible positions; Part 4 covers different narratives of secularization (Taylor's own arguments against secularization2); part five analyzes the immanent frame and possible stances to transcendence.
Part 1: The Work of Reform
Taylor's key question: "The question I want to answer . . . why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God, in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?" (25)
God's presence retreated in three areas: 1. The people did not see natural events as acts of God. 2. Society was no longer "conceived as grounded in something higher" (25). 3. People now live in an disenchanted world.
Five major changes from 1500 to 2000:
1. The First major change was disenchantment.
2. The second major change was the creation of the buffered self: this self can disengage itself from anything external to it.
3. The third major change was the breaking of the equilibrium of duties to the state and duties to God.
4. The lost of holy time, plural concepts of time to only clock time.
5. The final change was losing the view of a cosmos and exchanging it for a universe.
Another cause of secularization was the creation of a disciplined society. One part of it came from the Renaissance "notion of civility." A second part came from combining civility with piety. Basically the call for the moral order in society without God.
A big emphasis in the book is how these changes changed the "social imaginary."
James K. A. Smith says that Taylor allows you to feel what it is like to be open to the transcendent and what it feels like to be closed to the transcendent.
Part 2: The Turning Point
This part tells how exclusive humanism "became a live option for large numbers of people" (221).
Four major shifts: First, the shift from the idea that God has a purpose for us outside this world. Second, a shift from the need for grace to accomplish God's purposes. Third, now believing reason can discover everything. No need for mystery. Deists are a transitional stage to exclusive humanism.
Part 3: The Nova Effect
Three stages: First, the development of exclusive humanism as an alternative to the Christian faith. It was followed by the diversification of the nova effect: the creation of many options are particular worldviews in the world. Third, it spread from the elites to the general population. Art became an option for unbelievers.
Part IV: Narrative of secularization:
The Ago of Mobilization from 1840 -1960. The Age of Authenticity began in the 1960s. This is the age we live in. Taylor describes it as a "culture of authenticity," which emphasizes individual expressivism: each person is on a search to find themselves. Emphasis on spirituality, rather than organized religion. Loosening of sexual restrictions. Emphasis on subjectivism. We have seen the end of Christendom. A minimal religion is practiced by the many. Emphasis on tolerance and intolerant of intolerance. We are not to judge how people live. LGBT become an option.
Part V: Conditions of Belief
We all now live in an immanent frame. Taylor asserts, "We come to understand our lives as taking place within a self-sufficient order" (543). There is no need for God in the immanent frame. Taylor distinguishes the immanent frame from two possible spins open to the transcendent or closed to the transcendent. Taylor's "understanding of the immanent frame is that, properly understood it allows for both readings" (550).
Throughout the book Taylor has analyzed different positions in the unbelievers' camp. In the last chapter, Taylor provides examples, exemplars, of people who broke out of the closed frame of the immanent domain: Vaclav Havel, Ivan Illich, Charles Peguy, and Gerard Manly Hopkins.
Taylor has written an impressive book that has provoked much discussion. One must be aware that Taylor is Roman Catholic and his religion does influence some of his interpretations. In other words, some Protestants might disagree with some of his conclusions about how Protestants have influenced secularization. Taylor writes in good, readable prose. It is almost like reading a novel because he is telling the story of secularization.
Taylor's A Secular Age tells the story of secularization in Western society. Throughout the book, Taylor is critiquing the mainstream secularization thesis which he calls secularization2: This characterization of secularity has to do with "the falling off of religious belief and practice, in people turning away from God, and no longer going to church" (2). Taylor argues for hos own definition of secularization in his book, secularization3. (Secularization one has to do with religion in public spaces.) Secularization3: It is a "move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace" (3).
Taylor's book is divided into five parts. Part 1 discusses religious reform; Part 2 is the "turning point" the move toward exclusive humanism; Part 3 is the "Nova Effect" the multiplying of possible positions; Part 4 covers different narratives of secularization (Taylor's own arguments against secularization2); part five analyzes the immanent frame and possible stances to transcendence.
Part 1: The Work of Reform
Taylor's key question: "The question I want to answer . . . why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God, in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?" (25)
God's presence retreated in three areas: 1. The people did not see natural events as acts of God. 2. Society was no longer "conceived as grounded in something higher" (25). 3. People now live in an disenchanted world.
Five major changes from 1500 to 2000:
1. The First major change was disenchantment.
2. The second major change was the creation of the buffered self: this self can disengage itself from anything external to it.
3. The third major change was the breaking of the equilibrium of duties to the state and duties to God.
4. The lost of holy time, plural concepts of time to only clock time.
5. The final change was losing the view of a cosmos and exchanging it for a universe.
Another cause of secularization was the creation of a disciplined society. One part of it came from the Renaissance "notion of civility." A second part came from combining civility with piety. Basically the call for the moral order in society without God.
A big emphasis in the book is how these changes changed the "social imaginary."
James K. A. Smith says that Taylor allows you to feel what it is like to be open to the transcendent and what it feels like to be closed to the transcendent.
Part 2: The Turning Point
This part tells how exclusive humanism "became a live option for large numbers of people" (221).
Four major shifts: First, the shift from the idea that God has a purpose for us outside this world. Second, a shift from the need for grace to accomplish God's purposes. Third, now believing reason can discover everything. No need for mystery. Deists are a transitional stage to exclusive humanism.
Part 3: The Nova Effect
Three stages: First, the development of exclusive humanism as an alternative to the Christian faith. It was followed by the diversification of the nova effect: the creation of many options are particular worldviews in the world. Third, it spread from the elites to the general population. Art became an option for unbelievers.
Part IV: Narrative of secularization:
The Ago of Mobilization from 1840 -1960. The Age of Authenticity began in the 1960s. This is the age we live in. Taylor describes it as a "culture of authenticity," which emphasizes individual expressivism: each person is on a search to find themselves. Emphasis on spirituality, rather than organized religion. Loosening of sexual restrictions. Emphasis on subjectivism. We have seen the end of Christendom. A minimal religion is practiced by the many. Emphasis on tolerance and intolerant of intolerance. We are not to judge how people live. LGBT become an option.
Part V: Conditions of Belief
We all now live in an immanent frame. Taylor asserts, "We come to understand our lives as taking place within a self-sufficient order" (543). There is no need for God in the immanent frame. Taylor distinguishes the immanent frame from two possible spins open to the transcendent or closed to the transcendent. Taylor's "understanding of the immanent frame is that, properly understood it allows for both readings" (550).
Throughout the book Taylor has analyzed different positions in the unbelievers' camp. In the last chapter, Taylor provides examples, exemplars, of people who broke out of the closed frame of the immanent domain: Vaclav Havel, Ivan Illich, Charles Peguy, and Gerard Manly Hopkins.
Taylor has written an impressive book that has provoked much discussion. One must be aware that Taylor is Roman Catholic and his religion does influence some of his interpretations. In other words, some Protestants might disagree with some of his conclusions about how Protestants have influenced secularization. Taylor writes in good, readable prose. It is almost like reading a novel because he is telling the story of secularization.
Smith's Guide to Taylor's A Secular Age
Smith, James K. A. How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014.
James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, has written a guidebook for Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. It could be helpful for those unable to read Taylor's book which is almost 800 pages. It could also be used to guide one as one reads through Taylor's book. Smith's purpose is not criticism, but outlining Smith's argument in the book. He also includes questions for applying it to current Evangelicals.
Smith's, How (Not) to Be Secular is divided into five chapters to go alongside Taylor's five parts in A Secular Age. Chapter one describes the reforming of Christianity which led to secularization. Chapter two describes the path from Deism to Atheism. Chapter three analyzes the "Malaise" of the Secular Age. The next chapter covers Taylor's arguments against secularization 2. The last chapter describes people who broke out of immanence to transcendence.
Smith describes Taylor's book as a map of our current age. Smith thinks our age is "haunted." Even the immanent frame is haunted. Unbelievers are tempted by belief, and believers or faith "is haunted by an inescapable sense of its contestability" (4). What Taylor describes as secularization is a "situation of fundamental contestability when it comes to belief, a sense that rival stories are always at the door offering a very different account of the world" (10). Taylor's question is : "Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God, in say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable (19)?" Taylor's book is basically a history of this change.
Taylor looks at religious reform as responsible, in some sense, for bringing about secularization. Some other changes contributing to secularization were disenchantment from the premodern view of the world, to development of a buffered self, and going from a cosmos to a universe. Some other causes are Deism, excarnation, the disengaged self, and others. Providential Deism provided a path for exclusive humanism. Taylor believes that we all live in an immanent frame. In this frame, we can be either open or close to the transcendent.
Taylor believes that we now live in the Age of Anxiety in which expressive individualism is prominent. An important part of this age is the quest for the self or authenticity. Taylor believes there are both pros and cons to this movement.
Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a good guide of Taylor's book. It could be used alone as a summary of Taylor's argument or read alongside Taylor's book to keep the overall argument in mind. I read Smith's book a few years ago, then, I read it alongside Taylor's book, then I read it a third time after finishing Taylor's book. I believe Smith's book helped me to better understand Taylor's book.
James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, has written a guidebook for Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. It could be helpful for those unable to read Taylor's book which is almost 800 pages. It could also be used to guide one as one reads through Taylor's book. Smith's purpose is not criticism, but outlining Smith's argument in the book. He also includes questions for applying it to current Evangelicals.
Smith's, How (Not) to Be Secular is divided into five chapters to go alongside Taylor's five parts in A Secular Age. Chapter one describes the reforming of Christianity which led to secularization. Chapter two describes the path from Deism to Atheism. Chapter three analyzes the "Malaise" of the Secular Age. The next chapter covers Taylor's arguments against secularization 2. The last chapter describes people who broke out of immanence to transcendence.
Smith describes Taylor's book as a map of our current age. Smith thinks our age is "haunted." Even the immanent frame is haunted. Unbelievers are tempted by belief, and believers or faith "is haunted by an inescapable sense of its contestability" (4). What Taylor describes as secularization is a "situation of fundamental contestability when it comes to belief, a sense that rival stories are always at the door offering a very different account of the world" (10). Taylor's question is : "Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God, in say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable (19)?" Taylor's book is basically a history of this change.
Taylor looks at religious reform as responsible, in some sense, for bringing about secularization. Some other changes contributing to secularization were disenchantment from the premodern view of the world, to development of a buffered self, and going from a cosmos to a universe. Some other causes are Deism, excarnation, the disengaged self, and others. Providential Deism provided a path for exclusive humanism. Taylor believes that we all live in an immanent frame. In this frame, we can be either open or close to the transcendent.
Taylor believes that we now live in the Age of Anxiety in which expressive individualism is prominent. An important part of this age is the quest for the self or authenticity. Taylor believes there are both pros and cons to this movement.
Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a good guide of Taylor's book. It could be used alone as a summary of Taylor's argument or read alongside Taylor's book to keep the overall argument in mind. I read Smith's book a few years ago, then, I read it alongside Taylor's book, then I read it a third time after finishing Taylor's book. I believe Smith's book helped me to better understand Taylor's book.
Friday, December 14, 2018
Bernard Lonergan
Roy, Louis. Engaging the Thought of Bernard Lonergan. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-7735-4707-0.
Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) was a Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian, taught in the United States, Canada, and Rome. His two major works are Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), they attempt to "discern how knowledge is advanced in the natural sciences, the human studies, the arts, ethics, and theology." Lonergan is a great fit for the Great Books program since he is a critical realist and a Christian humanist. In addition, he engaged most of the great thinkers in Western civilization: Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger, Gadamer, Kierkegaard, and others. He is a good companion to Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age. I will be reading through an anthology of his writings next semester.
Louis Roy is a professor of theology at Dominican University College, Ottawa.
In Engaging the Thought of Bernard Lonergan, Louis Roy "stresses the empirical aspect of Lonergan's cognitional theory in relation to the role of meaning, objectivity, subjectivity, and historical consciousness." I like the way that Roy has organized this book. Instead of giving a broad overview of Lonergan's writings, he provides fifteen different studies that engages Lonergan with the following topics: empirical method, integrating method of different fields, religious belief, faith and reason, meaning and truth, mysticism, liturgy, education, and God's providence. He even has a study which compares Lonergan with Gandhi. Roy not only engages Lonergan's thought, but also its implications for many fields.
Part one provides a broad overview of Lonergan's contribution to methodology, philosophy, and theology. Study 1 characterizes Lonergan's method as empirical. Study 2 "adds that his method is integrative" because it connects philosophy and theology with the major disciplines of knowledge. Part 2 analyzes religious experience. Study three describes Lonergan's view of religious experience how he connects it with the working of the human mind. Study four explains the process of human intentionality. Study five analyzes faith and belief and where Lonergan stands, with Schleiermacher and Wilfred Cantwell Smith or Aquinas. Study six "highlights the paramount import of Lonergan's distinction between meaning and truth in regard to divine revelation." Study 7 examines the weaknesses of traditionalism and relativism. Part Three "draws out implications of Lonergan's cognitional theory in four quite different areas: theology, mysticism, liturgy, and education." Study 8 examines Rahner's misreadings of Aquinas. Study nine applies Lonergan's view of consciousness to mysticism. Study 10 uses Lonergan's cognitional theory to explain the liturgical experience. Study 11 applies Lonergan's epistemology, ethics, and theology to the field of education. Lonergan emphasizes asking questions in the learning experience. It made me think of the emphasis of asking questions in reading the Great Books. Part 4 is concerned with ethics. Study 11 compares Lonergan with John Macmurry. Study 13 examines Gandhi and Lonergan's critique of Western society. Study 14 analyzes human rights and discusses Lonergan's his three conversions: intellectual, moral, and religious. Study 15 examines Aquinas's teaching on providence.
This book is quite readable. The chapters are about 15 pages which makes it easy to read in one sitting. I have read many books on Lonergan, and this seems like a perfect one to introduce the reader to Bernard Lonergan's thought.
Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) was a Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian, taught in the United States, Canada, and Rome. His two major works are Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), they attempt to "discern how knowledge is advanced in the natural sciences, the human studies, the arts, ethics, and theology." Lonergan is a great fit for the Great Books program since he is a critical realist and a Christian humanist. In addition, he engaged most of the great thinkers in Western civilization: Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger, Gadamer, Kierkegaard, and others. He is a good companion to Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age. I will be reading through an anthology of his writings next semester.
Louis Roy is a professor of theology at Dominican University College, Ottawa.
In Engaging the Thought of Bernard Lonergan, Louis Roy "stresses the empirical aspect of Lonergan's cognitional theory in relation to the role of meaning, objectivity, subjectivity, and historical consciousness." I like the way that Roy has organized this book. Instead of giving a broad overview of Lonergan's writings, he provides fifteen different studies that engages Lonergan with the following topics: empirical method, integrating method of different fields, religious belief, faith and reason, meaning and truth, mysticism, liturgy, education, and God's providence. He even has a study which compares Lonergan with Gandhi. Roy not only engages Lonergan's thought, but also its implications for many fields.
Part one provides a broad overview of Lonergan's contribution to methodology, philosophy, and theology. Study 1 characterizes Lonergan's method as empirical. Study 2 "adds that his method is integrative" because it connects philosophy and theology with the major disciplines of knowledge. Part 2 analyzes religious experience. Study three describes Lonergan's view of religious experience how he connects it with the working of the human mind. Study four explains the process of human intentionality. Study five analyzes faith and belief and where Lonergan stands, with Schleiermacher and Wilfred Cantwell Smith or Aquinas. Study six "highlights the paramount import of Lonergan's distinction between meaning and truth in regard to divine revelation." Study 7 examines the weaknesses of traditionalism and relativism. Part Three "draws out implications of Lonergan's cognitional theory in four quite different areas: theology, mysticism, liturgy, and education." Study 8 examines Rahner's misreadings of Aquinas. Study nine applies Lonergan's view of consciousness to mysticism. Study 10 uses Lonergan's cognitional theory to explain the liturgical experience. Study 11 applies Lonergan's epistemology, ethics, and theology to the field of education. Lonergan emphasizes asking questions in the learning experience. It made me think of the emphasis of asking questions in reading the Great Books. Part 4 is concerned with ethics. Study 11 compares Lonergan with John Macmurry. Study 13 examines Gandhi and Lonergan's critique of Western society. Study 14 analyzes human rights and discusses Lonergan's his three conversions: intellectual, moral, and religious. Study 15 examines Aquinas's teaching on providence.
This book is quite readable. The chapters are about 15 pages which makes it easy to read in one sitting. I have read many books on Lonergan, and this seems like a perfect one to introduce the reader to Bernard Lonergan's thought.
Monday, December 3, 2018
The Message in the Bottle Part 1
Percy, Walker. "The Message in the Bottle" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
Percy, probably, refers to this essay in his writings more than any other essay he wrote which indicates it was important to him. It is one of the most important essays he wrote. In it, he divides information into two categories: knowledge and news. He also portrays the nature of human beings as castaways on an island.
He begins the essay with quotes from two different authors: Kierkegaard and Aquinas.
"The act of faith consists essentially in knowledge and there we find its formal or specific perfection.--Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate"
Now, the quote from KIerkegaard's Philosophical Fragments:
"Faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and the historical as indifferent, or is it pure knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical."
Aquinas seems to be saying faith is knowledge and Kierkegaard that it is not. Do they contradict each other? Why does Percy includes these two quotes? Do they have something to do with The Message in the Bottle? What is Percy's relationship to Aquinas? Kierkegaard?
Percy begins the essay by asking us to imagine a man being a castaway on an island. Percy says that he is a "special sort of castaway" (119) because he has amnesia, and he does not know who he is or where he came from. He only knows that he was "cast up onto the beach" (119). The Island turns out to be a good place to live and it is inhabited with other people. All in all, it is a "pleasant" place to live. He finds out that the island is blesses with a "remarkable culture with highly developed social institutions, a good university, first-class science, a flourishing industry and art" (119). The castaway is welcomed by the people of the island. The castaway quickly assimilates to the island: he "gets a job, builds a house, takes a wife, raises a family, goes to night school, and enjoys the local arts of cinema, music, and literature" (119). He becomes a contributing "member of the community" (119).
The castaway becomes "well educated and curious about the world, forms the habit of taking a walk on the beach early in the morning" (119-20). On his walks, he notices different bottles washed up on the shore. The bottles are "tightly corked and each one contains a single piece of paper with a single sentence written on it" (120).
The messages are different "in form and subject matter" (120). He notices that "some of the messages convey important information" (120). Being an educated man, he wants to evaluates the messages "properly and so take advantage of the information they convey" (120). The bottles that washes up on the shore are in the "thousands." The Islanders has joined in his quest to evaluate these messages. They are confronted with two questions: Where did these bottles originate? Second, How can we categorize or divide the messages? Which are important and which are not? Some of the messages make sense; others do not.
Here are some of the messages:
Lead melts at 330 degrees.
2+2=4.
Chicago, a city, is on Lake Michigan.
Chicago is on the Hudson River or Chicago is not on the Hudson River.
At 2 p.m., January 4, 1902, at the residence of Manuel Gomez in Matanzas, Cuba, a leaf fell from the banyan tree.
The British are coming.
The market for eggs in bora bora [a neighboring island] is very good.
If water John Brick is.
Jane will arrive tomorrow.
The pressure of a gas is a function of heat and volume.
Acute myelogenous leukemia may be cured by parenteral administration of metallic beryllium.
IN 1943 the Russians murdered 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest.
A war party is approaching from Bora Bora.
Is it possible to predict a supernova in the constelleation Ophiuchus next month by using the following technique--
The Atman (Self) is the Brahman.
The dream symbol, house with a balcony, usually stands for a woman.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Truth is beauty.
Being comprises essence and existence. (120-21)
As the castaway looks at these messages, he divides them into two different groups. Certain sentences "appear to state empirical facts which can only be arrived by observation" (121). Other sentences "refer to a state of affairs implicit in the very nature of reality" (121). Percy states that these are "synthetic" and "analytic" sentences. He does see other ways of diving them. Some of the senses could be divided into those making sense, and those that do not. He thinks it is possible to divide the sentences in a completely different way. He thinks they could be divided into "knowledge" statements and "news" statements.
He states that some of the sentences "which are the result of a very special kind of human activity, an activity which the castaway, an ordinary fellow, attributes alike to scientists, scholars, poets, and philosophers" (122). Though these thinkers are different, they "are alike in their withdrawal from the ordinary affairs of the island, the trading, farming, manufacturing, playing, gossiping, loving--in order to discover underlying constancies amid the flux of phenomena, in order to make precise inductions and deductions, in order to arrange words or sounds or colors to express universal human experience" (122). Basically, the leaders of the development of the sciences and arts in human culture. This group is pursuing "science" in the broadest sense of knowing, the sense of the German word Wissenschaft" (122). This is different from modern scientism which would include only a small group as pursuing knowledge, would accept only certain types on knowing as true knowledge. The islanders would accept the sentences of this large group as one big group.
The second group of sentences would be what Percy calls "new." Percy says, "In the second group the islander would place those sentences which are significant precisely in so far as the reader is caught up in the affairs and in the life of the island and in so far as he has not withdrawn into the laboratory or seminar room" (123). Percy is saying news would be particularly relevant to the day-to-day situation of the islander. Percy gives two examples: "A hostile war party is approaching. The British are coming [to Concord]" (123). If one asked what might be the problem with the first group of sentences, the islanders might reply that "it unconsciously assumes that this very special posture of 'science' (including poetry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, etc.) is the only attitude that yields significant sentences" (123). To the castaway, it seems that you "cannot abstract from the concrete situation in which one finds himself" (124). Percy seems to be criticizing the excessive objective posture of science. The idea that we separate ourselves completely from the data that we are analyzing. Percy asserts that we need to be able to consider the situation of the hearer when he hears the news, and distinguish between the important piece of news and the insignificant news. Percy does not think that we have to "throw away the hard-won objectivity of the scientist. We have only to take a step further back so that we may see objectively not only the sentences but the positive scientist who is examining them. After all, the objective picture of the scientist is in the world and can be studied like anything else in the world" (125).
In summarizing so far, Percy says that we have two types of sentences in the bottles, two "kinds" of ways of reading them, two "kinds" of ways to verify the messages to "act upon them," and two "kinds" of "responses" to the messages in the bottle.
Percy, probably, refers to this essay in his writings more than any other essay he wrote which indicates it was important to him. It is one of the most important essays he wrote. In it, he divides information into two categories: knowledge and news. He also portrays the nature of human beings as castaways on an island.
He begins the essay with quotes from two different authors: Kierkegaard and Aquinas.
"The act of faith consists essentially in knowledge and there we find its formal or specific perfection.--Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate"
Now, the quote from KIerkegaard's Philosophical Fragments:
"Faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and the historical as indifferent, or is it pure knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical."
Aquinas seems to be saying faith is knowledge and Kierkegaard that it is not. Do they contradict each other? Why does Percy includes these two quotes? Do they have something to do with The Message in the Bottle? What is Percy's relationship to Aquinas? Kierkegaard?
Percy begins the essay by asking us to imagine a man being a castaway on an island. Percy says that he is a "special sort of castaway" (119) because he has amnesia, and he does not know who he is or where he came from. He only knows that he was "cast up onto the beach" (119). The Island turns out to be a good place to live and it is inhabited with other people. All in all, it is a "pleasant" place to live. He finds out that the island is blesses with a "remarkable culture with highly developed social institutions, a good university, first-class science, a flourishing industry and art" (119). The castaway is welcomed by the people of the island. The castaway quickly assimilates to the island: he "gets a job, builds a house, takes a wife, raises a family, goes to night school, and enjoys the local arts of cinema, music, and literature" (119). He becomes a contributing "member of the community" (119).
The castaway becomes "well educated and curious about the world, forms the habit of taking a walk on the beach early in the morning" (119-20). On his walks, he notices different bottles washed up on the shore. The bottles are "tightly corked and each one contains a single piece of paper with a single sentence written on it" (120).
The messages are different "in form and subject matter" (120). He notices that "some of the messages convey important information" (120). Being an educated man, he wants to evaluates the messages "properly and so take advantage of the information they convey" (120). The bottles that washes up on the shore are in the "thousands." The Islanders has joined in his quest to evaluate these messages. They are confronted with two questions: Where did these bottles originate? Second, How can we categorize or divide the messages? Which are important and which are not? Some of the messages make sense; others do not.
Here are some of the messages:
Lead melts at 330 degrees.
2+2=4.
Chicago, a city, is on Lake Michigan.
Chicago is on the Hudson River or Chicago is not on the Hudson River.
At 2 p.m., January 4, 1902, at the residence of Manuel Gomez in Matanzas, Cuba, a leaf fell from the banyan tree.
The British are coming.
The market for eggs in bora bora [a neighboring island] is very good.
If water John Brick is.
Jane will arrive tomorrow.
The pressure of a gas is a function of heat and volume.
Acute myelogenous leukemia may be cured by parenteral administration of metallic beryllium.
IN 1943 the Russians murdered 10,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest.
A war party is approaching from Bora Bora.
Is it possible to predict a supernova in the constelleation Ophiuchus next month by using the following technique--
The Atman (Self) is the Brahman.
The dream symbol, house with a balcony, usually stands for a woman.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.
Truth is beauty.
Being comprises essence and existence. (120-21)
As the castaway looks at these messages, he divides them into two different groups. Certain sentences "appear to state empirical facts which can only be arrived by observation" (121). Other sentences "refer to a state of affairs implicit in the very nature of reality" (121). Percy states that these are "synthetic" and "analytic" sentences. He does see other ways of diving them. Some of the senses could be divided into those making sense, and those that do not. He thinks it is possible to divide the sentences in a completely different way. He thinks they could be divided into "knowledge" statements and "news" statements.
He states that some of the sentences "which are the result of a very special kind of human activity, an activity which the castaway, an ordinary fellow, attributes alike to scientists, scholars, poets, and philosophers" (122). Though these thinkers are different, they "are alike in their withdrawal from the ordinary affairs of the island, the trading, farming, manufacturing, playing, gossiping, loving--in order to discover underlying constancies amid the flux of phenomena, in order to make precise inductions and deductions, in order to arrange words or sounds or colors to express universal human experience" (122). Basically, the leaders of the development of the sciences and arts in human culture. This group is pursuing "science" in the broadest sense of knowing, the sense of the German word Wissenschaft" (122). This is different from modern scientism which would include only a small group as pursuing knowledge, would accept only certain types on knowing as true knowledge. The islanders would accept the sentences of this large group as one big group.
The second group of sentences would be what Percy calls "new." Percy says, "In the second group the islander would place those sentences which are significant precisely in so far as the reader is caught up in the affairs and in the life of the island and in so far as he has not withdrawn into the laboratory or seminar room" (123). Percy is saying news would be particularly relevant to the day-to-day situation of the islander. Percy gives two examples: "A hostile war party is approaching. The British are coming [to Concord]" (123). If one asked what might be the problem with the first group of sentences, the islanders might reply that "it unconsciously assumes that this very special posture of 'science' (including poetry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, etc.) is the only attitude that yields significant sentences" (123). To the castaway, it seems that you "cannot abstract from the concrete situation in which one finds himself" (124). Percy seems to be criticizing the excessive objective posture of science. The idea that we separate ourselves completely from the data that we are analyzing. Percy asserts that we need to be able to consider the situation of the hearer when he hears the news, and distinguish between the important piece of news and the insignificant news. Percy does not think that we have to "throw away the hard-won objectivity of the scientist. We have only to take a step further back so that we may see objectively not only the sentences but the positive scientist who is examining them. After all, the objective picture of the scientist is in the world and can be studied like anything else in the world" (125).
In summarizing so far, Percy says that we have two types of sentences in the bottles, two "kinds" of ways of reading them, two "kinds" of ways to verify the messages to "act upon them," and two "kinds" of "responses" to the messages in the bottle.
Friday, November 30, 2018
Novels and the End of the World
Percy, Walker. "Notes for a Novel About the End of the World" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
Mention of the end of the world occurs frequently in Percy's novels. It is a big part of Love in the Ruins. The novel was published four years after this essay was published. The apocalyptic novel is a form of prophecy warning what will happen if changes are not made. This type of novel is written by a particular type of novelist. It is the type of novelist that wants to see changes in his reader. Percy writes, "A serious novel about the destruction of the United States and the end of the world should perform the function of prophecy in reverse. The novelist writes about the coming end in order to warn about present ills and so avert the end" (101).
Percy thinks the novelist is not a prophet, but is like a prophet. He does not think the novelist is necessarily called to be a prophet. He,nevertheless, sees what going on in the world and he has a certain knowledge where it might end. Percy writes, "The novelist is less like a prophet than he is like a canary that coal miners used to take down into the shaft to test the air. When the canary gets unhappy, utters plaintive cries, and collapses, it may be time for the miners to surface and think things over" (101).
Percy describes the kind of novelist he is talking about. He is defined not necessarily by "merit" but by the "goals" he has. I often think Percy is describing himself when he writes about the serious novelist. Percy continues: He is a "writer who has an explicit and ultimate concern with the nature of man and the nature of reality where he finds himself" (102). Instead of writing a novel driven by plot with familiar characters, he is more likely to "set forth with a stranger in a strange land where the signposts are enigmatic but which he sets out to explore nevertheless" (102). He thinks you could the novelist as "philosophical, metaphysical, prophetic, eschatological, and even religious." (102) He has a special meaning for calling the novelist religious. He thinks both believers and nonbelievers can be considered a religious novelist. He uses the term 'religious' in its root sense signifying a radical bond, as the writer sees it, which connects man with reality--or the failure of such a bond--and so confers meaning to his life--or the absence of meaning" (102-103). He thinks of the following novelists as religious: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Camus, Sartre, and Flannery O' Connor. He says that some might object since Sartre is an atheist. He thinks Sartre's atheism is religious in the following sense: "that the novelist betrays a passionate conviction about man's nature, the world, and man's obligation to the world" (103). Along the same line, Percy would exclude many English writers like Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson. Percy did not seem to have a high opinion of English novelists. He states that nineteenth century Russian novelists were haunted by God, as were Southern novelists like Flannery O' Connor. He thinks that English novelists were indifferent to the topic.
Percy believes that true prophets are called by God to deliver a particular message to a particular people. He says that novelists exercise a "quasi-prophetic function" (104). His message is bad like the true prophet. He thinks that the "novelist's art is often bad" (104). The novelist seeks to "shock" the reader and warn them about "last things." They might be in "disagreement" with their countrymen. Unlike the prophet, the novelist is not often killed. He says something worse usually happens to them. They are ignored.
He compares these novelists with secular theologians. He thinks that the novelist is likely to believe in original sin and judgement, but the secular theologian is not.
Percy wonders what is the connection modern, secular society and violence. He notes how he is often asked why he does not "write about pleasant things and normal people" (105). He agrees that there are nice people in the world and that it seems people are growing "nicer," but he wonders why as the world grows nicer that it also grows more violent. He writes: "The triumphant secular society of the Western world, the nicest of all worlds, killed more people in the first half of this century than have been killed in all of history. Travelers to Germany before the last war reported that the Germans were the nicest people in Europe" (105). One could point to the Holocaust of babies in our own time. Percy in his novel, The Thanatos Syndrome speaks about our death culture.
Percy thinks the modern novelist is concerned with catastrophe like the orthodox theologian is concerned with original sin and death.
Percy presents his own view of his writing: "As it happens, I speak in a Christian context. That is to say, I do not conceive it my vocation to preach the Christian faith in a novel, but as it happens, my world view is informed by a certain belief about man's nature and destiny which cannot fail to be central to any novel I write" (111).
Percy thinks that "being a Christian novelist nowadays has certain advantages and disadvantages" (111). He thinks that the Christian faith is complementary to what a novel does. Percy writes, "Since novels deal with people and people live in time and get into predicaments, it is probably an advantage to subscribe to a worldview which is incarnational, historical, and predicamental, rather than, say, Buddhism, which tends to devalue individual persons, things, and happenings" (111). He thinks with the current alienation or "dislocation" of man that it is "probably an advantage to see man as by his very nature an exile and wanderer rather than as a behaviorist sees him: as an organism in an environment" (111). He thinks that Camus's stranger has certain connections with the "wayfarer of Saint Thomas and Gabriel Marcel" (111). Percy also thinks if the time we are living in is eschatalogical, "times of enormous danger and commensurate hope, of possible end and possible renewal, the prophetic eschatalogical character of Christianity is no doubt apposite" (111).
There are, however, certain disadvantages in being a Christian novelist. But he wants to return to his question: "What does he see in the world which arouses in him the deepest forebodings and at the same time kindles excitement and hope?' (111).
First, he sees the failure of Christendom. He says, however that the novelist is more concerned with the "person of the scientific humanist than in science and religion" (111). Not is he interested in seeing that the common Christian complaint that materialism and atheism are the enemies.
Percy thinks that the novelist is interested in a "certain quality of the postmodern consciousness as he finds it and as he incarnates it in his own characters. What he finds--in himself and in other people--is a new breed of person in whom the potential for catastrophe--and hope--has suddenly escalated" (112). People are aware of the massive weapons at our disposal to destroy ourselves. Percy thinks the change in the postmodern conscious is what is not realized. He thinks that the "psychological forces presently released in the postmodern consciousness open unlimited possibilities for both destruction and liberation, for an absolute loneliness or a rediscovery of community and reconciliation" (112).
He describes the subject of the postmodern novel: "The subject of the postmodern novel is a man who has very nearly come to the end of the line" (112). It is odd that when he comes to a new city after overcoming all the sufferings of the past that he loses meaning. It is like he bought a ticket to take the train and when he gives the ticket to get off the train that he "must also surrender his passport and become a homeless person" (112). Percy says the American novels in the past focused on characters suffering "social evils," or about people who attacked those evils, or "expatriate Americans," or people in the South haunted by their past. This is not true of the postmodern novel. The protagonist of the postmodern novel has overcome his "bad memories" and overcome certain setbacks and he "finds himself in the victorious secular city" (1120. he has only one major problem: How does he keep himself "from blowing his brains out" (112).
Percy wonders if the Gospel is relevant to the postmodern man. In other words, can he hear the message? Does it register in his consciousness? Does the Secular Age allow the postmodern man to consider Christianity as a possible option to live in this world? Percy writes, "The question is not whether the Good News is no longer relevant, but rather whether it is possible that man is presently undergoing a tempestuous restructuring of his consciousness which that does not allow him to take account of the Good News" (113). Percy states that it is because of the success of scientism: "It is the absorption by the layman not of the scientific method but rather the magical aura of science, whose credentials he accepts for all sectors of reality" (113). He says that people are seduced by scientism "which sunders one's very self from itself into an all-transcending 'objective' consciousness and a consumer-self with a list of needs to be satisfied" (113). Percy continues: "It is this monstrous bifurcation of man into angelic and bestial components against which old theologies must be weighed before new theologies are erected" (113). Percy thinks that this postmodern man is unable to take account of God, the devil, or the angels. This is the reason that a catastrophe or ordeal is needed for the man to recover himself. Percy writes, "When the novelist writes of a man 'coming to himself' through some such catalyst as catastrophe or ordeal, he may be offering obscure testimony to a gross disorder of consciousness and to the need of recovering oneself as neither angel nor organism but as a wayfaring creature somewhere between" (113).
Mention of the end of the world occurs frequently in Percy's novels. It is a big part of Love in the Ruins. The novel was published four years after this essay was published. The apocalyptic novel is a form of prophecy warning what will happen if changes are not made. This type of novel is written by a particular type of novelist. It is the type of novelist that wants to see changes in his reader. Percy writes, "A serious novel about the destruction of the United States and the end of the world should perform the function of prophecy in reverse. The novelist writes about the coming end in order to warn about present ills and so avert the end" (101).
Percy thinks the novelist is not a prophet, but is like a prophet. He does not think the novelist is necessarily called to be a prophet. He,nevertheless, sees what going on in the world and he has a certain knowledge where it might end. Percy writes, "The novelist is less like a prophet than he is like a canary that coal miners used to take down into the shaft to test the air. When the canary gets unhappy, utters plaintive cries, and collapses, it may be time for the miners to surface and think things over" (101).
Percy describes the kind of novelist he is talking about. He is defined not necessarily by "merit" but by the "goals" he has. I often think Percy is describing himself when he writes about the serious novelist. Percy continues: He is a "writer who has an explicit and ultimate concern with the nature of man and the nature of reality where he finds himself" (102). Instead of writing a novel driven by plot with familiar characters, he is more likely to "set forth with a stranger in a strange land where the signposts are enigmatic but which he sets out to explore nevertheless" (102). He thinks you could the novelist as "philosophical, metaphysical, prophetic, eschatological, and even religious." (102) He has a special meaning for calling the novelist religious. He thinks both believers and nonbelievers can be considered a religious novelist. He uses the term 'religious' in its root sense signifying a radical bond, as the writer sees it, which connects man with reality--or the failure of such a bond--and so confers meaning to his life--or the absence of meaning" (102-103). He thinks of the following novelists as religious: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Camus, Sartre, and Flannery O' Connor. He says that some might object since Sartre is an atheist. He thinks Sartre's atheism is religious in the following sense: "that the novelist betrays a passionate conviction about man's nature, the world, and man's obligation to the world" (103). Along the same line, Percy would exclude many English writers like Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson. Percy did not seem to have a high opinion of English novelists. He states that nineteenth century Russian novelists were haunted by God, as were Southern novelists like Flannery O' Connor. He thinks that English novelists were indifferent to the topic.
Percy believes that true prophets are called by God to deliver a particular message to a particular people. He says that novelists exercise a "quasi-prophetic function" (104). His message is bad like the true prophet. He thinks that the "novelist's art is often bad" (104). The novelist seeks to "shock" the reader and warn them about "last things." They might be in "disagreement" with their countrymen. Unlike the prophet, the novelist is not often killed. He says something worse usually happens to them. They are ignored.
He compares these novelists with secular theologians. He thinks that the novelist is likely to believe in original sin and judgement, but the secular theologian is not.
Percy wonders what is the connection modern, secular society and violence. He notes how he is often asked why he does not "write about pleasant things and normal people" (105). He agrees that there are nice people in the world and that it seems people are growing "nicer," but he wonders why as the world grows nicer that it also grows more violent. He writes: "The triumphant secular society of the Western world, the nicest of all worlds, killed more people in the first half of this century than have been killed in all of history. Travelers to Germany before the last war reported that the Germans were the nicest people in Europe" (105). One could point to the Holocaust of babies in our own time. Percy in his novel, The Thanatos Syndrome speaks about our death culture.
Percy thinks the modern novelist is concerned with catastrophe like the orthodox theologian is concerned with original sin and death.
Percy presents his own view of his writing: "As it happens, I speak in a Christian context. That is to say, I do not conceive it my vocation to preach the Christian faith in a novel, but as it happens, my world view is informed by a certain belief about man's nature and destiny which cannot fail to be central to any novel I write" (111).
Percy thinks that "being a Christian novelist nowadays has certain advantages and disadvantages" (111). He thinks that the Christian faith is complementary to what a novel does. Percy writes, "Since novels deal with people and people live in time and get into predicaments, it is probably an advantage to subscribe to a worldview which is incarnational, historical, and predicamental, rather than, say, Buddhism, which tends to devalue individual persons, things, and happenings" (111). He thinks with the current alienation or "dislocation" of man that it is "probably an advantage to see man as by his very nature an exile and wanderer rather than as a behaviorist sees him: as an organism in an environment" (111). He thinks that Camus's stranger has certain connections with the "wayfarer of Saint Thomas and Gabriel Marcel" (111). Percy also thinks if the time we are living in is eschatalogical, "times of enormous danger and commensurate hope, of possible end and possible renewal, the prophetic eschatalogical character of Christianity is no doubt apposite" (111).
There are, however, certain disadvantages in being a Christian novelist. But he wants to return to his question: "What does he see in the world which arouses in him the deepest forebodings and at the same time kindles excitement and hope?' (111).
First, he sees the failure of Christendom. He says, however that the novelist is more concerned with the "person of the scientific humanist than in science and religion" (111). Not is he interested in seeing that the common Christian complaint that materialism and atheism are the enemies.
Percy thinks that the novelist is interested in a "certain quality of the postmodern consciousness as he finds it and as he incarnates it in his own characters. What he finds--in himself and in other people--is a new breed of person in whom the potential for catastrophe--and hope--has suddenly escalated" (112). People are aware of the massive weapons at our disposal to destroy ourselves. Percy thinks the change in the postmodern conscious is what is not realized. He thinks that the "psychological forces presently released in the postmodern consciousness open unlimited possibilities for both destruction and liberation, for an absolute loneliness or a rediscovery of community and reconciliation" (112).
He describes the subject of the postmodern novel: "The subject of the postmodern novel is a man who has very nearly come to the end of the line" (112). It is odd that when he comes to a new city after overcoming all the sufferings of the past that he loses meaning. It is like he bought a ticket to take the train and when he gives the ticket to get off the train that he "must also surrender his passport and become a homeless person" (112). Percy says the American novels in the past focused on characters suffering "social evils," or about people who attacked those evils, or "expatriate Americans," or people in the South haunted by their past. This is not true of the postmodern novel. The protagonist of the postmodern novel has overcome his "bad memories" and overcome certain setbacks and he "finds himself in the victorious secular city" (1120. he has only one major problem: How does he keep himself "from blowing his brains out" (112).
Percy wonders if the Gospel is relevant to the postmodern man. In other words, can he hear the message? Does it register in his consciousness? Does the Secular Age allow the postmodern man to consider Christianity as a possible option to live in this world? Percy writes, "The question is not whether the Good News is no longer relevant, but rather whether it is possible that man is presently undergoing a tempestuous restructuring of his consciousness which that does not allow him to take account of the Good News" (113). Percy states that it is because of the success of scientism: "It is the absorption by the layman not of the scientific method but rather the magical aura of science, whose credentials he accepts for all sectors of reality" (113). He says that people are seduced by scientism "which sunders one's very self from itself into an all-transcending 'objective' consciousness and a consumer-self with a list of needs to be satisfied" (113). Percy continues: "It is this monstrous bifurcation of man into angelic and bestial components against which old theologies must be weighed before new theologies are erected" (113). Percy thinks that this postmodern man is unable to take account of God, the devil, or the angels. This is the reason that a catastrophe or ordeal is needed for the man to recover himself. Percy writes, "When the novelist writes of a man 'coming to himself' through some such catalyst as catastrophe or ordeal, he may be offering obscure testimony to a gross disorder of consciousness and to the need of recovering oneself as neither angel nor organism but as a wayfaring creature somewhere between" (113).
The Man on the Train
Percy, Walker. "The Man on the Train" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
Percy's essay, "Man on the Train" is about alienation. It is a popular essay mentioned often in works on Percy. Percy writes, "There is no such thing, strictly speaking, as a literature of alienation. In the re-presenting of alienation the category is reversed and becomes entirely different. There is a great deal of difference between an alienated commuter riding a train and this same commuter reading a book about an alienated commuter riding a train" (83). Here, Percy makes a distinction between someone riding a train and the same person reading about someone alienated riding the train. Why does he make this distinction? It probably has something to do with his theory of language and theory of man. Reading about an alienated man riding a train somehow names his experience for him and in a sense, he is no longer alienated. Percy says, "The nonreading commuter exists in true alienation, which is unspeakable; the reading commuter rejoices in the speakability of his alienation and in the new triple alliance of himself, the alienated character, and the author" (82).
Percy describes what he means by alienation: "I mean that whereas one may sit on the train and feel himself quite at home, seeing the passing scene as a series of meaningful projects full of signs which he reads without difficulty, another commuter, although he has no empirical reason for being so, although he has satisfied the same empirical needs as commuter A, is alienated" (84). Other terms Percy uses to describe alienation is boredom, unhappy, a feeling of emptiness and being out of place.
Percy thinks that alienation is a "reversal of the objective-empirical" (84). This means that the man should not be alienated because all of his empirical needs have been met. Why do people feel alienated in the best environments. For example, I am a Christian, I have a good job, I have a good family, I have a roof over my head, and all the food I could want. Why do I still feel alienated? Why do I feel lost, out of place? Why does it feel like that this is not my home? Why do I long for something more? Is the materialist, scientific view really satisfying?
I like the image of the train. It indicates that man is on a journey, as we all are.
As Percy earlier said, alienation can be reversed by art. Alienation can be depicted in art, and this somehow decreases the sense of alienation.
Percy was influenced by Kierkegaard and used some of his ideas for his own use. A key idea was the theory of the stages or spheres: Aesthetic, Moral, and Religious. Then, there was Kierkegaard's distinction between the apostle and the genius. Two concepts that appears frequently in Percy's novels are rotation and repetition. One thing one must understand that when Percy appropriates ideas from others he transforms the ideas to his own purposes. In other words, they may look different than the ideas from the original source. Percy is an original thinker. That is why it is incorrect to think that Percy is simply applying the ideas of others in different contexts. Percy has his own fish to fry.
So two terms that Percy appropriates from Kierkegaard are repetition and rotation. These are things that people do to escape their alienation. Another term to try to escape alienation is the ordeal. The problem is that these things work only temporarily. Percy describes rotation and repetition: "It is by virtue of the fact that rotation is the quest for the new as the new, the reposing of all hope in what may lie around the bend, a mode of experience which is much the same in the reading as the experiencing" (86). Percy thinks repetition is a little harder to understand. Percy notes, "Thus when Charles Gray Marquad's Point of No Return returns to Clyde, Massachusetts, or when Tom Wolfe's hero returns to the shabby boardinghouse in St. Louis, the reader can experience repetition only if he imagines that he too is a native of Clyde or has lived in St. Louis. (He doesn't have to imagine he is Huck--it is he, the reader who is drifting down the river.)" (86). Maybe, it will make sense if I give an example from one of Percy's novels. Will Barrett, in The Second Coming returns to his childhood home where his father killed himself. He relives the earlier experience, but he looks at it from a different perspective. For example, he concludes that his father did not have to kill himself. In another episode, he realizes when he was shot by his father, it was not an accident as he earlier thought.
Percy's essay, "Man on the Train" is about alienation. It is a popular essay mentioned often in works on Percy. Percy writes, "There is no such thing, strictly speaking, as a literature of alienation. In the re-presenting of alienation the category is reversed and becomes entirely different. There is a great deal of difference between an alienated commuter riding a train and this same commuter reading a book about an alienated commuter riding a train" (83). Here, Percy makes a distinction between someone riding a train and the same person reading about someone alienated riding the train. Why does he make this distinction? It probably has something to do with his theory of language and theory of man. Reading about an alienated man riding a train somehow names his experience for him and in a sense, he is no longer alienated. Percy says, "The nonreading commuter exists in true alienation, which is unspeakable; the reading commuter rejoices in the speakability of his alienation and in the new triple alliance of himself, the alienated character, and the author" (82).
Percy describes what he means by alienation: "I mean that whereas one may sit on the train and feel himself quite at home, seeing the passing scene as a series of meaningful projects full of signs which he reads without difficulty, another commuter, although he has no empirical reason for being so, although he has satisfied the same empirical needs as commuter A, is alienated" (84). Other terms Percy uses to describe alienation is boredom, unhappy, a feeling of emptiness and being out of place.
Percy thinks that alienation is a "reversal of the objective-empirical" (84). This means that the man should not be alienated because all of his empirical needs have been met. Why do people feel alienated in the best environments. For example, I am a Christian, I have a good job, I have a good family, I have a roof over my head, and all the food I could want. Why do I still feel alienated? Why do I feel lost, out of place? Why does it feel like that this is not my home? Why do I long for something more? Is the materialist, scientific view really satisfying?
I like the image of the train. It indicates that man is on a journey, as we all are.
As Percy earlier said, alienation can be reversed by art. Alienation can be depicted in art, and this somehow decreases the sense of alienation.
Percy was influenced by Kierkegaard and used some of his ideas for his own use. A key idea was the theory of the stages or spheres: Aesthetic, Moral, and Religious. Then, there was Kierkegaard's distinction between the apostle and the genius. Two concepts that appears frequently in Percy's novels are rotation and repetition. One thing one must understand that when Percy appropriates ideas from others he transforms the ideas to his own purposes. In other words, they may look different than the ideas from the original source. Percy is an original thinker. That is why it is incorrect to think that Percy is simply applying the ideas of others in different contexts. Percy has his own fish to fry.
So two terms that Percy appropriates from Kierkegaard are repetition and rotation. These are things that people do to escape their alienation. Another term to try to escape alienation is the ordeal. The problem is that these things work only temporarily. Percy describes rotation and repetition: "It is by virtue of the fact that rotation is the quest for the new as the new, the reposing of all hope in what may lie around the bend, a mode of experience which is much the same in the reading as the experiencing" (86). Percy thinks repetition is a little harder to understand. Percy notes, "Thus when Charles Gray Marquad's Point of No Return returns to Clyde, Massachusetts, or when Tom Wolfe's hero returns to the shabby boardinghouse in St. Louis, the reader can experience repetition only if he imagines that he too is a native of Clyde or has lived in St. Louis. (He doesn't have to imagine he is Huck--it is he, the reader who is drifting down the river.)" (86). Maybe, it will make sense if I give an example from one of Percy's novels. Will Barrett, in The Second Coming returns to his childhood home where his father killed himself. He relives the earlier experience, but he looks at it from a different perspective. For example, he concludes that his father did not have to kill himself. In another episode, he realizes when he was shot by his father, it was not an accident as he earlier thought.
The Loss of the Creature
Percy, Walker. "The Loss of the Creature" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
"The Loss of the Creature" is how man surrenders his sovereignty to experts. He gives the example of seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. You cannot see it because you are seeing it through the eyes of others, and not your own, For example, you see the Grand Canyon on a tour with a tour guide. The expert is telling you what you ought to see. Another barrier is that instead of looking at the Grand Canyon, the first thing the tourist does is photograph it. Percy asks the question, how can the tourist see the Grand Canyon with fresh eyes. One way is "by leaving the beaten path" (48). Another way is there could be a disruption or a "breakdown of the symbolic machinery by which the experts present the experience" (49). Percy thinks one's sovereignty may also be "recovered in a time of national disaster" (49). One is reminded how ultimate things become real at the time of a disaster. Another example of surrendering one's sovereignty is the need for others to certify it. Instead of confronting the thing directly, the "present experience is always measured by a prototype, the 'it' of their dreams" (53). The loss of the creature occurs when "sovereignty is surrendered to a class of privileged knowers, whether these be theorists or artists" (54).
Another problem is when the object becomes captive to the theory. Percy thinks things can become invisible because of theory. We try to make the thing fit the theory. Percy argues, "The dogfish, the tree, the seashell, the American Negro, the dream, are rendered invisible by a shift of reality from concrete thing to theory which Whitehead has called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. It is the mistaking of an idea, a principle, an abstraction for the real. As a consequence of the shift, the 'specimen' is seen as less real than the theory of the specimen" (58). Kierkegaard thought when people are "seen as a specimen of a race or species, at that very moment" they stop seeing people as individuals.
"The Loss of the Creature" is how man surrenders his sovereignty to experts. He gives the example of seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. You cannot see it because you are seeing it through the eyes of others, and not your own, For example, you see the Grand Canyon on a tour with a tour guide. The expert is telling you what you ought to see. Another barrier is that instead of looking at the Grand Canyon, the first thing the tourist does is photograph it. Percy asks the question, how can the tourist see the Grand Canyon with fresh eyes. One way is "by leaving the beaten path" (48). Another way is there could be a disruption or a "breakdown of the symbolic machinery by which the experts present the experience" (49). Percy thinks one's sovereignty may also be "recovered in a time of national disaster" (49). One is reminded how ultimate things become real at the time of a disaster. Another example of surrendering one's sovereignty is the need for others to certify it. Instead of confronting the thing directly, the "present experience is always measured by a prototype, the 'it' of their dreams" (53). The loss of the creature occurs when "sovereignty is surrendered to a class of privileged knowers, whether these be theorists or artists" (54).
Another problem is when the object becomes captive to the theory. Percy thinks things can become invisible because of theory. We try to make the thing fit the theory. Percy argues, "The dogfish, the tree, the seashell, the American Negro, the dream, are rendered invisible by a shift of reality from concrete thing to theory which Whitehead has called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. It is the mistaking of an idea, a principle, an abstraction for the real. As a consequence of the shift, the 'specimen' is seen as less real than the theory of the specimen" (58). Kierkegaard thought when people are "seen as a specimen of a race or species, at that very moment" they stop seeing people as individuals.
Walker Percy's Delta Factor Part 5
Percy, Walker. "The Delta Factor" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
As mentioned earlier, Percy was attempting to diagram what happened to Helen Keller at the well-house. In his diagram, he has Helen, water (word), and water (the liquid). He concluded that what happened to Helen was not a stimulus-response event. Helen received "both the sensory message from the hand Miss Sullivan was spelling in and that from the other hand, which the water was flowing over" (37). Percy wonders after this happened, then, "What happened in Helen's head?" (37). He believed that Helen's breakthrough had great significance. Before her breakthrough, she had acted like "a good responding organism" (38). After her breakthrough, she acted "like a rejoicing symbol-mongering human" (38). Before she was simply like other animals responding to an environment. After, she had become completely "human."
What was Percy's breakthrough? His breakthrough was determining that Helen's experience was a triadic event, not a dyadic event. He calls this event the Delta Factor. There were three elements involved in this triadic event: Helen, water, and the word water. Percy writes, "The Delta phenomenon lies at the heart of every event that has ever occurred in which a sentence is understood, a name is given or received, a painting printed or viewed" (40).
Percy wonders if by using this Delta phenomenon, one could come up with a theory of man. Would it help to understand man as the languaged animal. Could it explain "the manifold woes, predicaments, and estrangements of man" (41). Remember, Percy believed that a Theory of man had to account for the alienation of man. He knew that the "conventional wisdom was a mishmash: man set forth as 'organism in an environment' but man also . . . set forth as repository of democratic and Judeo-Christian 'values.' (41) In other words, the modern theory of man is incoherent.
Percy's breakthrough would hold his attention for a very long time.
As mentioned earlier, Percy was attempting to diagram what happened to Helen Keller at the well-house. In his diagram, he has Helen, water (word), and water (the liquid). He concluded that what happened to Helen was not a stimulus-response event. Helen received "both the sensory message from the hand Miss Sullivan was spelling in and that from the other hand, which the water was flowing over" (37). Percy wonders after this happened, then, "What happened in Helen's head?" (37). He believed that Helen's breakthrough had great significance. Before her breakthrough, she had acted like "a good responding organism" (38). After her breakthrough, she acted "like a rejoicing symbol-mongering human" (38). Before she was simply like other animals responding to an environment. After, she had become completely "human."
What was Percy's breakthrough? His breakthrough was determining that Helen's experience was a triadic event, not a dyadic event. He calls this event the Delta Factor. There were three elements involved in this triadic event: Helen, water, and the word water. Percy writes, "The Delta phenomenon lies at the heart of every event that has ever occurred in which a sentence is understood, a name is given or received, a painting printed or viewed" (40).
Percy wonders if by using this Delta phenomenon, one could come up with a theory of man. Would it help to understand man as the languaged animal. Could it explain "the manifold woes, predicaments, and estrangements of man" (41). Remember, Percy believed that a Theory of man had to account for the alienation of man. He knew that the "conventional wisdom was a mishmash: man set forth as 'organism in an environment' but man also . . . set forth as repository of democratic and Judeo-Christian 'values.' (41) In other words, the modern theory of man is incoherent.
Percy's breakthrough would hold his attention for a very long time.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Walker Percy's Delta Factor Part 4
Percy, Walker. "The Delta Factor" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
Percy says the old modern age ended in 1914.
The Martian concluded two things: (1) that man "had crossed the language barrier and spent most of his time symbolmongering and;" and (2) that man had a tendency for "upside-down feelings and behavior, feeling bad when he expected to feel good, preferring war to peace, and in general being miserable at the time and in the place which he had every reason to expect to be the best of all possible worlds, it seemed to the Martian that earth scientists might do well to search for the explanation of trait 2 in trait 1, or at least to explore the connection between the two" (28).
Percy thinks that "man's capacity for symbol mongering in general and language in particular" is deeply connected to their being human, "of his perceiving and knowing," of consciousness, that it is difficult to study what man sees through to know everything else (29).
To see it, one had to be a Martian or a person on earth, "sufficiently detached, marooned, bemused, wounded, and lucky enough" to become a Martian for a brief time to "catch a glimpse of it" (29).
Percy describes how he had his awakening experience: "The day I was thinking about Helen Keller and became a Martian for five seconds, making a breakthrough like Helen's, the difference being that her breakthrough was something she did and my breakthrough was a sudden understanding of what she did" (30).
He, on a typical day in the summer was sitting at his desk thinking about a day in Helen's life. He explains: he was trying to understand what happens "when a child hears a word, a sound uttered by someone else, and understands that it is the name of something he sees" (30). Percy tried to draw the process with diagrams. He thought for a long time that a few short paragraphs of Helen's story contained the mystery of language, and if one could understand this secret mystery one could understand what it meant to be a symbol-mongerer.
He was unsatisfied by the literature on the subject. The behaviorists wanted to explain the mystery as a "stimulus-response event" (30). For example, they wanted to explain it like Pavlov's dog salivating when he heard the bell. He thought it was a simple, but "valuable model" (31). He says it works in certain circumstances. For example, when a person cries for help and someone comes to help him. The problem was how could it be used to explain people gathered around a fire telling stories. He would try to diagram what occurred, but it was problematic. Percy explains, "Something in fact usually went wrong with the behaviorist S-R model whenever it was applied to a characteristically symbolic transaction, telling a story, looking at a painting and understanding it, a father pointing at a ball and naming it for his child, a poet hitting on a superb metaphor and the reader 'getting' it with the old authentic thrill Barfield speaks of" (32). The behaviorist was forced to stretched his theory all out of proportion to fit the event. In other words, it did not fit the event. It just did not work for symbolic transactions. Percy inquires with questions: "how does it happen that you can talk and I can understand you? Or, how does it happen that you can write a book and I can read it? Or, if the world is really unknowable, why do scientists act as if there were something out there to be known and as if they could even get at the truth of the way things are?" (33).
He was sitting at his desk in Louisiana thinking about these things. Then he began to think about what happened to Helen Keller at the well one summer morning in 1887. Before the event, Helen had responded like "any good animal" (34). When she wanted something she would sign it into her teacher's hand. Miss Sulivan took Helen for a walk to the well. Percy quotes from Helen's story:
We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that 'w-a-t-e-r' meant that wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seem to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. [She had earlier destroyed the doll in a fit of temper.] I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time felt repentance and sorrow.
I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them--words that were to make the world blossom for me, like Aaron's rod with flowers. It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.
Percy notes that something mysterious happened at this well-house. Helen had gone from being like any other animal in an environment to being a languaged creature: a "strange name-giving and sentence uttering creature who begins by naming" typical objects like shoes, boats, and ink, and then "tells jokes, curses, reads the paper. . . or becomes Hegel and composes an entire system of philosophy" (35). Percy reasoned that if he could figure out what happened at that well-house, he would be able to know about the "phenomenon of language and about man himself" (36).
Percy says the old modern age ended in 1914.
The Martian concluded two things: (1) that man "had crossed the language barrier and spent most of his time symbolmongering and;" and (2) that man had a tendency for "upside-down feelings and behavior, feeling bad when he expected to feel good, preferring war to peace, and in general being miserable at the time and in the place which he had every reason to expect to be the best of all possible worlds, it seemed to the Martian that earth scientists might do well to search for the explanation of trait 2 in trait 1, or at least to explore the connection between the two" (28).
Percy thinks that "man's capacity for symbol mongering in general and language in particular" is deeply connected to their being human, "of his perceiving and knowing," of consciousness, that it is difficult to study what man sees through to know everything else (29).
To see it, one had to be a Martian or a person on earth, "sufficiently detached, marooned, bemused, wounded, and lucky enough" to become a Martian for a brief time to "catch a glimpse of it" (29).
Percy describes how he had his awakening experience: "The day I was thinking about Helen Keller and became a Martian for five seconds, making a breakthrough like Helen's, the difference being that her breakthrough was something she did and my breakthrough was a sudden understanding of what she did" (30).
He, on a typical day in the summer was sitting at his desk thinking about a day in Helen's life. He explains: he was trying to understand what happens "when a child hears a word, a sound uttered by someone else, and understands that it is the name of something he sees" (30). Percy tried to draw the process with diagrams. He thought for a long time that a few short paragraphs of Helen's story contained the mystery of language, and if one could understand this secret mystery one could understand what it meant to be a symbol-mongerer.
He was unsatisfied by the literature on the subject. The behaviorists wanted to explain the mystery as a "stimulus-response event" (30). For example, they wanted to explain it like Pavlov's dog salivating when he heard the bell. He thought it was a simple, but "valuable model" (31). He says it works in certain circumstances. For example, when a person cries for help and someone comes to help him. The problem was how could it be used to explain people gathered around a fire telling stories. He would try to diagram what occurred, but it was problematic. Percy explains, "Something in fact usually went wrong with the behaviorist S-R model whenever it was applied to a characteristically symbolic transaction, telling a story, looking at a painting and understanding it, a father pointing at a ball and naming it for his child, a poet hitting on a superb metaphor and the reader 'getting' it with the old authentic thrill Barfield speaks of" (32). The behaviorist was forced to stretched his theory all out of proportion to fit the event. In other words, it did not fit the event. It just did not work for symbolic transactions. Percy inquires with questions: "how does it happen that you can talk and I can understand you? Or, how does it happen that you can write a book and I can read it? Or, if the world is really unknowable, why do scientists act as if there were something out there to be known and as if they could even get at the truth of the way things are?" (33).
He was sitting at his desk in Louisiana thinking about these things. Then he began to think about what happened to Helen Keller at the well one summer morning in 1887. Before the event, Helen had responded like "any good animal" (34). When she wanted something she would sign it into her teacher's hand. Miss Sulivan took Helen for a walk to the well. Percy quotes from Helen's story:
We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that 'w-a-t-e-r' meant that wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seem to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. [She had earlier destroyed the doll in a fit of temper.] I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time felt repentance and sorrow.
I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them--words that were to make the world blossom for me, like Aaron's rod with flowers. It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.
Percy notes that something mysterious happened at this well-house. Helen had gone from being like any other animal in an environment to being a languaged creature: a "strange name-giving and sentence uttering creature who begins by naming" typical objects like shoes, boats, and ink, and then "tells jokes, curses, reads the paper. . . or becomes Hegel and composes an entire system of philosophy" (35). Percy reasoned that if he could figure out what happened at that well-house, he would be able to know about the "phenomenon of language and about man himself" (36).
Walker Percy's Delta Factor Part 3
Percy, Walker. "The Delta Factor" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
A big emphasis in Percy's writings is the alienation of man. A theory of man must be able to account for this alienation. The scientific theory that man is an organism in an environment fails to account for the alienation of man.
Percy notes that the Judeo-Christian anthropology does account for the alienation of man. Percy writes: "By the very cogent anthropology of Judeo-Christianity, whether or not one agreed with it, human existence was by no means to be understood as the transaction of a higher organism satisfying this or that need from its environment, by being creative or enjoying 'meaningful relationships,' but as the journey of a wayfarer along life's way. The experience of alienation was thus not a symptom of maladaptation (psychology) nor evidence of the absurdity of life (existentialism) nor an inevitable consequence of capitalism (Marx) nor the necessary dehumanization of technology (Ellul). Though the exacerbating influence of these forces were not denied, it was not to be forgotten that human alienation was first and last the homelessness of a man who is not in fact at home" (24).
The Judeo-Christian anthropology was "cogent enough and flexible enough, too, to accommodate the several topical alienations of the twentieth century" (24). The problem with accepting this theory one had to accept the idea of an original Fall. To believe this was an obstacle for the scientist and the humanist.
Instead of accepting a Fall, they accepted that people are basically good. Percy states that the scientists "re-entered Eden, where scientists know like the angels, and laymen prosper in good environments, and ethical democracies progress through education" (24). Percy says be believing this they deny themselves the ability to deal with the particular predicament of man: "deprived themselves of the means of understanding and averting dread catastrophes which were to overtake Eden and of dealing with the perverse and ungrateful beneficiaries of science and ethics who preferred to eat lotus like the Laodiceans or roam the dark violent world like Ishmael and Cain" (24).
"Then Eden turned into the twentieth century" (24).
Percy thinks that the modern world has ended and we are now in some kind of post-modern, post-Christian world. Possibly, Charles Taylor's Secular Age. In this new age people are unable to understand themselves by the theories of this age.
Percy notes that scientists and humanists were saying something different than the poets and artists of this age. Scientists and humanists were saying that we are progressing in knowledge about people and this world. We just need to apply their theories and we will make a better world. But the poets and artists were saying something different that though man should be happy in this age, they were actually homeless in this world. Percy points out that "something was wrong" (25). Percy thinks the poets and artists are correct.
Percy thinks the world ended when people could no longer understand themselves by the theories of the age "which was informed by the spirit of abstraction," and they could not speak a single word to the individual, but could speak to him "only as he resembled other selves" (26).
A big emphasis in Percy's writings is the alienation of man. A theory of man must be able to account for this alienation. The scientific theory that man is an organism in an environment fails to account for the alienation of man.
Percy notes that the Judeo-Christian anthropology does account for the alienation of man. Percy writes: "By the very cogent anthropology of Judeo-Christianity, whether or not one agreed with it, human existence was by no means to be understood as the transaction of a higher organism satisfying this or that need from its environment, by being creative or enjoying 'meaningful relationships,' but as the journey of a wayfarer along life's way. The experience of alienation was thus not a symptom of maladaptation (psychology) nor evidence of the absurdity of life (existentialism) nor an inevitable consequence of capitalism (Marx) nor the necessary dehumanization of technology (Ellul). Though the exacerbating influence of these forces were not denied, it was not to be forgotten that human alienation was first and last the homelessness of a man who is not in fact at home" (24).
The Judeo-Christian anthropology was "cogent enough and flexible enough, too, to accommodate the several topical alienations of the twentieth century" (24). The problem with accepting this theory one had to accept the idea of an original Fall. To believe this was an obstacle for the scientist and the humanist.
Instead of accepting a Fall, they accepted that people are basically good. Percy states that the scientists "re-entered Eden, where scientists know like the angels, and laymen prosper in good environments, and ethical democracies progress through education" (24). Percy says be believing this they deny themselves the ability to deal with the particular predicament of man: "deprived themselves of the means of understanding and averting dread catastrophes which were to overtake Eden and of dealing with the perverse and ungrateful beneficiaries of science and ethics who preferred to eat lotus like the Laodiceans or roam the dark violent world like Ishmael and Cain" (24).
"Then Eden turned into the twentieth century" (24).
Percy thinks that the modern world has ended and we are now in some kind of post-modern, post-Christian world. Possibly, Charles Taylor's Secular Age. In this new age people are unable to understand themselves by the theories of this age.
Percy notes that scientists and humanists were saying something different than the poets and artists of this age. Scientists and humanists were saying that we are progressing in knowledge about people and this world. We just need to apply their theories and we will make a better world. But the poets and artists were saying something different that though man should be happy in this age, they were actually homeless in this world. Percy points out that "something was wrong" (25). Percy thinks the poets and artists are correct.
Percy thinks the world ended when people could no longer understand themselves by the theories of the age "which was informed by the spirit of abstraction," and they could not speak a single word to the individual, but could speak to him "only as he resembled other selves" (26).
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Walker Percy's The Delta Factor Part 2
Percy, Walker. "The Delta Factor" in The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, And What One Has To Do With the Other. New York: Picador.
Percy wants to look at the Delta Factor through a person not familiar with the situation. For example, what would it look like to a martian? Percy believes he qualifies for a martian: "As a nonpsychologist, nonanthropologist, a nontheologian, a nontheologist--as in fact nothing more than a novelist--I qualift through my ignorance as a terrestial Martian. Since I am only a novelist, a somewhat estranged and detached person whose business it is to see things and people as if he had never seen them before, it is possible for me not only to observe people as data but to observe scientists observing people as data--in short to take a Martian view" (11). Percy considers himself to be a martian with an outsider's view. The interesting thing is he sees the whole picture even the scientist observing people, the perspective that gets left out in the scientist's account. The Martian view would observe how frequently people use language: "That they are forever making mouthy little sounds, clicks, hisses, howls, hoots, explosions, squeaks, some of which name things in the world and are uttered in short sequences that say something about these things and events in the world" (12). Before he came to the earth, the Martian had read many books on man by biologists, psychologists, sociologists, and others. They emphasized that man was not much different from the animals. The Martian, however, noticed that the "earthlings talk all the time or otherwise traffic in symbols: gossip, tell jokes, argue, make reports, deliver lectures, listen to lectures, take notes, write books, read books, paint pictures, look at pictures, attend plays, tell stories, listen to stories. . ." (12-13). The earth scientists insist that man is not much different from other earth creatures. They tell him how they spend millions on studying monkeys, chimpanzees, and other animals. The Martian responds that people talk all the time. "Why don't you investigate that?" (13).
Percy asserts, "It was no coincidence when the Martian discovered that earthlings, who have a theory about everything else, do not have a theory about language and do not have a theory about man" (17). Percy is pointing out that language might be the key to developing a theory of man.
Percy states that there is the traditional view of man from a religious perspective: a person with a soul and the scientific view that man is an organism in an environment. Percy wants to develop his theory of man differently. He describes man as man the talker or man the symbol-monger. He asserts, "Instead of starting out with such large vexed subjects as soul, mind, ideas, consciousness, why not begin with language, which no one denies, and see how far it takes us toward the rest" (17). Percy accepts the biblical view of man, but he knows that simply describing man from a Biblical perspective with not work in a secular age. So he wants to work from a foundation that most people accepts. Percy describes the irony of behaviorists studying people through a stimulus-response theory which does not account for the activity of the behaviorist. He suggests that we study the behaviorist through a "larger theory of language" (17) because they are not accounted for in behaviorist theory since behaviorists "not only study responses; they write articles and deliver lectures, setting forth what they take to be the truth about responses, and would be offended if anyone suggested that their writings and lectures were nothing more than responses and therefore no more true or false than a dog's salivation" (17).
Percy says that his theory will make certain assumptions. First, the current theory of language is incoherent; second, the current theories of man are incoherent, and that the incoherences are related. Percy thinks there are two different options for a theory of man: one, he "can be understood as an organism in an environment"(20). Second, he can be "understood to be somehow endowed with certain other unique properties which he does not share with other organisms" (20).
Percy believes there are certain limitations with the scientific method. For one, science can say nothing about the individual. Percy asserts, "Science cannot utter a single word about an individual molecule, thing, or creature in so far as it is an individual but only in so far as it is like other individuals" (22). Percy often states that the problem is that laymen in science idolize scientists, but science cannot say anything about them as an individual knower, only how they are similar to other knowers.
Percy wants to look at the Delta Factor through a person not familiar with the situation. For example, what would it look like to a martian? Percy believes he qualifies for a martian: "As a nonpsychologist, nonanthropologist, a nontheologian, a nontheologist--as in fact nothing more than a novelist--I qualift through my ignorance as a terrestial Martian. Since I am only a novelist, a somewhat estranged and detached person whose business it is to see things and people as if he had never seen them before, it is possible for me not only to observe people as data but to observe scientists observing people as data--in short to take a Martian view" (11). Percy considers himself to be a martian with an outsider's view. The interesting thing is he sees the whole picture even the scientist observing people, the perspective that gets left out in the scientist's account. The Martian view would observe how frequently people use language: "That they are forever making mouthy little sounds, clicks, hisses, howls, hoots, explosions, squeaks, some of which name things in the world and are uttered in short sequences that say something about these things and events in the world" (12). Before he came to the earth, the Martian had read many books on man by biologists, psychologists, sociologists, and others. They emphasized that man was not much different from the animals. The Martian, however, noticed that the "earthlings talk all the time or otherwise traffic in symbols: gossip, tell jokes, argue, make reports, deliver lectures, listen to lectures, take notes, write books, read books, paint pictures, look at pictures, attend plays, tell stories, listen to stories. . ." (12-13). The earth scientists insist that man is not much different from other earth creatures. They tell him how they spend millions on studying monkeys, chimpanzees, and other animals. The Martian responds that people talk all the time. "Why don't you investigate that?" (13).
Percy asserts, "It was no coincidence when the Martian discovered that earthlings, who have a theory about everything else, do not have a theory about language and do not have a theory about man" (17). Percy is pointing out that language might be the key to developing a theory of man.
Percy states that there is the traditional view of man from a religious perspective: a person with a soul and the scientific view that man is an organism in an environment. Percy wants to develop his theory of man differently. He describes man as man the talker or man the symbol-monger. He asserts, "Instead of starting out with such large vexed subjects as soul, mind, ideas, consciousness, why not begin with language, which no one denies, and see how far it takes us toward the rest" (17). Percy accepts the biblical view of man, but he knows that simply describing man from a Biblical perspective with not work in a secular age. So he wants to work from a foundation that most people accepts. Percy describes the irony of behaviorists studying people through a stimulus-response theory which does not account for the activity of the behaviorist. He suggests that we study the behaviorist through a "larger theory of language" (17) because they are not accounted for in behaviorist theory since behaviorists "not only study responses; they write articles and deliver lectures, setting forth what they take to be the truth about responses, and would be offended if anyone suggested that their writings and lectures were nothing more than responses and therefore no more true or false than a dog's salivation" (17).
Percy says that his theory will make certain assumptions. First, the current theory of language is incoherent; second, the current theories of man are incoherent, and that the incoherences are related. Percy thinks there are two different options for a theory of man: one, he "can be understood as an organism in an environment"(20). Second, he can be "understood to be somehow endowed with certain other unique properties which he does not share with other organisms" (20).
Percy believes there are certain limitations with the scientific method. For one, science can say nothing about the individual. Percy asserts, "Science cannot utter a single word about an individual molecule, thing, or creature in so far as it is an individual but only in so far as it is like other individuals" (22). Percy often states that the problem is that laymen in science idolize scientists, but science cannot say anything about them as an individual knower, only how they are similar to other knowers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)