[percy-l] Re: transcendence and immanence

From: SrCoyote@aol.com
Date: Tue Mar 19 2002 - 10:39:21 EST


Oh, shoot. While we're at it, I have a couple of questions myself. I was tempted to answer the original question of transcendence vs. immanence, but I can't help but feel that I am not quite grasping Percy's ideas on the subject. In lost in the Cosmos, he spends a chapter or two on means of re-entry from the transcendant to the immanent. Made perfect sense to me at the time, but since I've read it, I've read The Thanatos Syndrome, some Jung, and some Ken Wilber, and it then seemed to me that Percy was mired in a separation of self in which he was trying to marry the angelism and bestialism into one whole being which I thought was ground already covered by others (such as Jung). So now my questions:

1. He briefly mentions Eudora Welty as a person who's immanent self had expanded to encompass her transcendant self. He stated that she could finish writing a transcendant novel and then go make small talk at the local post office without any problem of re-entry. Isn't that the answer he was looking for?

2. Is it possible that the whole thing gumming up his search was his orthodox Catholic view of Christ which made it necessary for an external salvation by Christ rather than an internal salvation by Self and subsequent loss of self(in the Buddhist sense)?

Please do not mistake my question as being Anti-Catholic (or Anti-Christian). And I realize that I may have taken the discussion beyond Percy, but I guess I am more interested in the Percy-ian view of these questions. He was obviously reaching beyond an either/or dualism of angelism vs. bestialism, but I'm unsure of where he was headed.

Thanks.

David Dreith

--
An archive of all list discussion is available at <http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail>.  
Visit the Walker Percy Project at <http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy>.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Jun 22 2002 - 20:15:02 EDT