Re: Semiotics--strategically adequate to the task...???

A.E. Manier Sr. (A.E.Manier.1@ND.EDU)
Wed, 5 Mar 1997 11:30:43 -0500

All honor to Alasdair MacIntyre! But will I retrace the genealogy from
Percy through Sartre, Heidegger, Hegel and Eckhardt to Thomas Aquinas?
Only if adequately motivated or incarcerated with nothing else to read.
I've spent too much time studying biology and the history of philosophy to
be interested in erudition for its own sake.

The forms of Thomistic metaphysics associated with the students of Etienne
Gilson, e.g., George Klubertanz, S.J., propose that understanding being
eludes any and all forms of concept or category formation. To be
cannot be equated with the being of any finite essence. Let's assume I'm
a docile student and that I buy this and the whole ball of wax: analogous
predication of being, the cogency of a concept of a cause of being that is
an eternally sustaining cause, not a generator that starts ticking at time
zero. We are talking "Delta Factor" big time here.

Nevertheless, I suggest the following questions must be asked of today's
Thomists and perhaps of Percy and his besotted fans. What is there about
all this that carries the barest scent or whiff of the immaterial, the
supernatural? The immortality of the soul? Is somebody suggesting that
if I can understand metaphor or analogous predication I have an immaterial
soul? Or that just because there aren't adequate animal models of the
search for truth, something about that search eludes naturalistic
explanation?

If I should read Heidegger to understand Percy, could someone please write
a short note telling me specifically what I'm missing?

A. Edward Manier, Professor
Philosophy & History and Philosophy of Science
Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values
314 Decio
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556

(o) 219-631-6520
FAX 219-631-8209
Dept 219-631-6471
http://www.nd.edu/~amanier/index.html