Re: Percy and Friendships...


Subject: Re: Percy and Friendships...
From: Barranger, G. K. (nikkibar@wild.net)
Date: Sat Jul 31 1999 - 11:18:59 EDT


Bryon McLaughlin wrote:
>
> I know little of Percy's interest in philosophy outside the existentialists.
> Can anyone tell me if Percy had an interest in process philosophy and
> process metaphysics? Thanks.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Walker Percy Literary and Philosophic Topics
> [mailto:PERCY-L@listserv.lsu.edu]On Behalf Of David Dreith
> Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 1998 8:37 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list PERCY-L
> Subject: Re: Percy and Friendships...
>
> In an earlier posting, Jim Woods wrote:
>
> >I think it interesting to contrast Flannery O'Connor's response to secular
> >critics and, occassionally, her friends, when they disparaged the faith in
> >relationship to writing etc.
> >She was considerably more 'feisty' than Walker, a cultural difference that
> >someone who is closer to Southern history and society than I am might help
> us
> >to understand.
>
> >Jim
>
> I tend to think the difference between the two responses towards secular
> critics lays in what each chose to write about. O'Connor wrote unabashedly
> from a Southern perspective largely about Southern subjects while Percy
> maintained that the fact that he was a Southerner was non-essential to
> understanding his work and that he was writing on problems of the human
> condition in general.
>
> I realize that I am speculating as I am far more familiar with Percy's
> responses than with O'Connor's responses, but I think I may have shared more
> experience with O'Connor. When I left Pensacola, FL to attend Stanford
> University, many peers made summary judgements about me, my faith, and my
> abilities (or lack thereof) as a scholar simply because I was from a town in
> the South which has gained notariety for intolerance. Even though the
> assumptions about my faith were usually erroneous, my faith was dismissed as
> being counterproductive to scholarship. I tended to be feisty and almost
> defensive not only of my faith but of Southern culture and against academia
> for not demonstrating the common sense God gave an Alabama cotton farmer
> (perhaps I'm using a little too much hyperbole to demonstrate my point).
>
> Percy on the other hand viewed problems in the human condition as global (or
> at least Western). His was not to defend the faith but rather it seems that
> his faith was his solution to many of these problems. By being feisty, he
> would have allowed he and his ideas to be relegated into a subset of
> thinking
> known as Southern literature and therefore allowing them to be diminished.
>
> That's my guess anyway.
>
> David Dreith
Dear David,

The expression "process philosophy" is a shorthand unknown to me. Could
you give us a hint. Thanks.

Nikki



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