Re: Percy as Christian postmodernist?

D. Vinson (duncan.vinson@SERAPH1.SEWANEE.EDU)
Mon, 7 Apr 1997 19:58:40 -0500

>I don't think PErcy is a post-modernist at all. I recall he explicitly
>denied it once. Anyone else have a recollection of that? Maybe it
>depends what one means by the term Postmodern. Christian is right,
>fer shure. Ken

By 'postmodernism,' I am refering primarily to Percy's position
that empirical materialism is not sufficient to understand the world, and
that developments in modern physics and philosophy have destroyed, or at
least have seriously questioned, the notion that there is one true
'objective' view of the world. Of course, the atheistic postmodernist has a
different answer for what 'fills in the gaps' between 'dull reality'
(chance? personal choice?) than a theistic postmodernist would (God).
I am excited by Percy's work because his view of the cosmos has a
place for God, and not just as a rear-guard defense of a vestigial
anachronism from a previous time, but as a fully extant and important
reality, the being which 'fills in the gaps.'

--
Duncan Vinson - University of the South - Sewanee, Tenn., USA
http://www.sewanee.edu/vinsold0/top.html - Sewanee is not a river.
Prevent forest fires: support strip mining.