[1] The reader need not have read my earlier article to appreciate the subjects addressed below. In structuring my essay, I have deliberately placed the more technical aspects of and support for my essay's statements in the footnotes, attempting to make the main body of my essay as accessible (general) as possible. When wishing for more definition, detail, and qualification, however, the reader should consult the footnotes for explanation and further exploration. (For a brief review definition of deconstruction, see footnote 2).

Likewise, each main section of this essay has been structured so that it stands reasonably well on its own for reader ease if the reader is interested in a particular topic: while the first two sections serve to recapitulate and clarify earlier expressed ideas, the latter three attempt to open up completely new avenues of questioning and consideration.

For an overview of the key ideas of CHRISTIAN EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY as explored in this essay, see addendum.

[2] Deconstruction, it will be recalled, is a mode of literary analysis that capitalizes on the arbitrary nature of language, the ways in which language (and texts) can be shown to be self-subverting because of "slippage" between "signifiers," between the words (signs) we use to convey our thoughts. Generally speaking, from a deconstructive perspective all texts are understood to lack reliably stable, self-contained "meaning" because the language of which they are "constructed" may suggest other meanings than what the writer intended, the worst case scenario being language suggesting two contradictory "readings" or interpretations at the same time. Central to deconstructive theory is the notion that there is no "transcendent signified," or "logos," that ultimately grounds "meaning" in language (and texts), rather just the self-bearing system of language, which generates signification in a fluid state of "free play" because of its components' interdependent nature.

(For one overview of modern "semiotics," or the study of signification, see the chapter "From Sign to Subject, A Short History," from Kaja Silverman's The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford Univ., 1983, pp. 3-53), where the author traces a line of thinking through Saussure, Peirce, Barthes, Derrida, and Benveniste).

At its best, deconstruction suggests that we should read again, should not finalize the apprehension of the meaning of any work we attempt to interpret. At its worst, however, deconstruction becomes anti-rational in nature-if not an anti-philosophy-to the extent that all knowledge is considered arbitrary and relative. (See footnote 16 below). Of course, there are more ways than one to employ such thinking, and my work attempts to address the abuse of deconstructive thinking, if not check its "devaluation" of language.

[3] The author concedes that this distinction between the "deconstructive mindset" and "deconstruction" could have been more clearly maintained throughout his earlier essay. See deconstructionist-advocate J. Nealon's article for discussion of other abuses of deconstruction as a "world view."

[4] that is, because of notions of either absence/presence; literal/figural or connotative/denotative differences; or contradiction/undecidability in language,...

[5] To put it another way, "truth" is not pre-existent to language, independent from it, or absolute in nature, but rather is "created" by language, "dependent" upon its binary relationships (i.e., notions of "difference"), and subject to its larger systemic framework of sign-interdependency. "Meaning," consequently, is said to be possible only as a function of "relationships," to be "de-centered," the result of which is that it is only ever "tentative" at best.

Thus it that current post-structuralist thinking suggests that all knowledge is based in relative "epistemic fields" (or limited, given frames of reference that determine what knowledge will be knowable, and what not knowable, as a product of specific underlying assumptions) which lie at the heart of any given perspective, none of which can have primacy over others. In other words, knowledge is merely "rhetoric," with no ultimate context existing. Below, we will attempt to supersede this claim, though not necessarily disclaim it. (See footnote 25 for similar themes as they relate to mathematics).

[6] Cf. Richard Rorty in his chapter "The Contingency of Language" from his book Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), where he writes,

if we could ever become reconciled to the idea that most of reality is indifferent to our descriptions of it, and that the human self is created by the use of a vocabulary rather than being adequately or inadequately expressed in vocabulary, then we should at last have assimilated what was true in the Romantic idea that truth is made rather than found. What is true about this claim is that languages are made rather than found, and that truth is a property of linguistic entities, of sentences (7).

Rorty ends his chapter with a general call for a new "vocabulary" which "de-divinizes" our worldview, and he seeks to advocate a position where "we try to get to the point where we no longer worship anything, where we treat nothing as a quasi divinity, where we treat everything-our language, our conscience, our community-as a product of time and chance" (22) [italics original]. As such, we can understand Rorty's "pragmatist" position as an affirmation of "nothing."

[7] The term "hermeneutic circle" is definable in two ways: the broader notion that we are always trapped within our own discourse, within the finite circle of (mis)representational language, and the more specific notion that our thoughts are the product of our underlying assumptions.

[8] Considerations of the problems of language, it should be noted, are not new, despite all the currency given deconstruction in the late twentieth century academy. For example, John Locke offers this cogent observation over three hundred years ago in his Essay on Human Understanding, (Wilburn, Raymond, ed., London: Dent & Sons Ltd., 1948).:

Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose a natural connection between them. But that they signify only men's peculiar ideas, and that by a perfect arbitrary imposition, is evident, in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same language) the same ideas we take them to be sign of: and every man has so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases, [but] no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their minds, when they use the same words that he does (original italics, 206).

For a further step in this direction, the reader would do well also to consider Immanuel Kant's distinction between "phenomena," or what we "know" through sensual perception, and "noumena," or what we are "attempting to know." More simply, Kant's distinction suggests that "what we perceive" is not necessarily the same "what" we are perceiving (Cf. Kant's Prolegomena to Pure Reason [1781]). For other precedents concerned with problems of "knowing," see Thomson on the subject of the medieval mystics (footnote 10) and Parks' on Buddhism and Taoism (footnote 12) below.

[9] Throughout the history of Western philosophy (and religion), the term "logos" has been synonymous with any idea related to an ultimate, universal ground of being/truth/knowledge. For instance, consider the Christian phrase, "In the beginning was the Word (or logos in Greek)," which one deconstructionist has reformulated as "In the beginning was interpretation...." This statement reflects the idea that there is no "transcendent signified" that grounds "meaning" or "presence" in language to prevent "slippage" between signifiers, (themselves,) and their referents. (See footnote 18 for a varying conception of "Logos").

[10] David Thomson, in his essay "Deconstruction and Meaning in Medieval Mysticism," (Christianity and Literature, Winter, 1991, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 107-121) explores the interesting "affinity with post-structuralist instincts concerning language" that medieval mystics and their negative theology had with meaning and human apprehension of the divine. As he argues, the mystics recognized that there is definitively no connection "between words and God," instead only an absolute rift. Consequently, "absence" in language does not disaffirm the possibility of the existence of God; rather it points to human inadequacy (if not need) in the face of the divine (and of Being).

[11] In contrast to "self-responsible" interpretation, we might consider T. Todorov's (or rather M. Bakhtin's) conception of "dialogic criticism," that is, that ultimately a tension must be honored as existing in the dialogue found between text and critic, a tension out of which "truth" (as a "third" member) emerges as a "horizon of possibility." As such, "truth" always stands yet to be revealed, to be unveiled; and depending on the level of monological dominance/-mastery the interpreter exerts over the text, so will the suggestions (and possibilities) of the dynamic be limited or constrained. (See both entries for "Todorov" [S. Vaszily] and "Bakhtin" [D. Patterson] in Frank Magill's Critical Survey of Literary Theory, [Pasadena: Salem Press, 1987]). Bakhtin's notion of the "third" gels well with Percy's triadic theory of language, which we will consider below.

[12] See Ward Parks' "Deconstruction: The New Nihilism," (The World and I, April, 1992, pp. 547-561, especially 551-54, 555-58) for a critical perspective addressing these and other concerns about the important role deconstruction has come to play politically in the academy. Parks' article also relates deconstructive thinking to the Eastern tradition of Buddhism and Taoism, while contrasting their respective values and modes of skepticism.

[13] Cf. notions of existential "angst" and the abyss of Non-Being underlying human existence.

[14] Cf. W.B. Yeats' statement from one of his last letters: "When I try to put all into a phrase I say, `Man can embody truth but he cannot know it....'"

[15] The issue of "human will," for instance, must be given respect. The complex notion of the human "self" must be understood to be non-quantitative in nature. See footnote 36 below.

[16] The following criticism of science is not necessarily related to my critique of deconstruction, though "language" certainly will prove to be a central issue relevant to both. Nevertheless, as the reader will see, certain implications will follow from the below discussion of the "new physics" that will help cast a new light on deconstructionists' "participation" in deconstruction.

When it is taken to the extreme, however, it should be noted that deconstruction becomes nothing less than an "anti-science," this even though many deconstructionists consider their "analysis" of the sign to be somehow more "scientific," or more "objective," than other modes of literary criticism as the "transhistorical," "transcategorial" methodology it is suggested to be.

[17] Cf. Walker Percy, "The Loss of the Creature" in his The Message in the Bottle [MB] (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1982), pp. 46-63. The reader should connect this statement to the above discussion of the Christian faith as an individual process and experiential event.

[18] Thus the reader of my earlier essay will appreciate the suggestion of God as Love as Logos, the nature of Love being generative, dynamic, and creative, rather than static, fixed. Also consider "objectification" in light of Voegelin's distinctions between "Second Reality" and "First Reality" as presented in my earlier essay under the heading of "The Eclipse of Reality," pp. 10-11.

[19] Cf. Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle," that is, that we can never know simultaneously both a "particle's" position and its momentum, only one or the other. In fact, the more accurately one determines either, the less accurately he knows the other. (It should be noted that some physicists [those espousing the Copenhagen interpretation] go so far as to question if the noun "particles" is not merely a fabrication of the mind, rather than being descriptive of actual entities). Consequently, quantum mechanics is understood to be a science of "probabilities" rather than "certainties."

(For a basic introductory overview of the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics, see the renowned physicist S. W. Hawking's chapter "The Uncertainty Principle" from his book A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988), pp. 53-61).

Consider also the "principle of complementarity" vis-à-vis the uncertainty principle's demonstration of physicists' "participation" in what they "measure." The principle of complementarity holds that, depending on how physicists look at it, light has both "wave-like" and "particle-like" properties, even though these two states are understood to be mutually exclusive (or contradictory). What is comprehend about "light" is thus a function of one's "interaction" with it, both perspectives, though, being fully necessary for a complete (i.e., complementary) assessment of the nature of light.

In short, physicists must make a "choice" about "what" they will "measure" when dealing with sub-atomic phenomena, and the chosen direction determines the nature of the recorded data beyond that choice. Moreover, in many cases, the very act of measurement may actually disturb or change "what" is being recorded, because sub-atomic phenomena are so minute that they cannot be readily approached without inadvertently altering them (cf. the uncertainty principle). Quantum mechanics thus suggests that (perceived) "reality" may be "created" even as it is "measured," ushering in the broader understanding of mankind as "participators" (new physics) in rather than "observers" (classical physics) of "events." See works by L. Papin and G. Zukav in bibliography below for more in this direction.

Parallel terms in modern psychology to the larger implications of the above two principles might include Freud's notions of "transference" and "counter-transference," and experimental science's "experimenter effect" and the "confirmation bias" effect, each problematizing the "objective" relationship between "observer" and "subject(s)." Also, consider the need for a "negative (self-)dialectic," and for "dialogic criticism" in relation to the "principle of complementarity," as well as comparing the principle to the below section which ends this essay entitled "The First Step, etc."

[20] It is interesting to note deconstruction's convenient (self-protecting) repression of notions of intentionality in its suggestion that the reader can never know an author's conscious intentions.

[21] Richard Restak, M.D., in his book The Mind (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), describes the human brain-a three-pound mass of the most elaborate organic substance known in the universe-as a "dynamic," "changing," and "self-assembling" entity whose complexity is mirrored in its diffuse neurological "networking" and its "distributed" structure of organization, whose functioning far transcends the (dyadic) brain-as-computer model, which is often used for comparison, in multiple ways. See chapter eight, "Thinking," pp. 233-273, esp. 254-59 for discussion of the limitations of the brain-as-computer model. One scientist in this chapter likens EEG images of the thinking brain as "shadows of thoughts," or rather only their "traces" (258).

[22] We need turn only as far as Freud's ideas about the "unconscious" to problematize a negative response to this question. The "discovery" of the unconscious, Shoshana Felman explains in her book Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight: Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1987), proved to be nothing less than a "Copernican Revolution" for the implications it suggests about the complexly-divided nature of the human mind: put in Freud's terms, this revolution means the recognition that "the ego...is not even master of its own house," that it is subject to intrapsychic forces and scripts earlier repressed within the individual in defense of ego-protection (Felman, 64).

In a similar definition Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst who re-interpreted Freud in light of a greater emphasis on language, defines the unconscious as "knowledge that can't tolerate one's knowing that one knows" (Felman, 77). Put in other words, the existence of the unconscious suggests that our knowledge of ourselves is never fully present, nor complete, but rather is censored, or misplaced. Consequently, even (conscious) human intentions themselves cannot be considered pure, for underlying forces may actually be coloring the intentional actions we deem solid, rational, or whole.

A divided mind thus spells limitations, and language itself (as we would expect at this point) is not immune. As Lacan phrases it, the ramification of "the discovery of the unconscious...is that the scope, the implications of meaning go far beyond the signs manipulated by the individual" (Felman, 96). Moreover, Felman further explains that there is no "metalanguage" in which "interpretation can itself escape the effects of the unconscious" [-for instance, consider notions of "transference" and "projection"](49). Both of these statements about the unconscious thus seem to confirm the existence of a "meta-cognizance" whose dynamics are not limited to language, yet which concretely influences our lives to the most intimate detail.

Nevertheless, whatever the larger implications of psychoanalysis as they relate to epistemology and metaphysics, it must be remembered that psychoanalysis first and foremost is an activity created in the interest of healing, whose use of language is as an instrument and as a medium of (ex)change: whose merits ultimately are indebted to the "gift of speech," as Lacan calls it, as the means by which healing is brought about.

Felman's book, in general, provides a thoughtful analysis of the relevance to literary studies of psychoanalysis and Lacan's re-interpretation of it. Her chapter "Psychoanalysis and Education: Teaching Terminable and Interminable" especially seems insightful in its recognition that human learning is an "interminable" pursuit, and by implication, the human search for "Truth."

[23] See Newsweek, April 20, 1992, pp. 66-72 for feature articles on these topics and breakthroughs in technological study of the brain. Also see Restak throughout.

[24] The scientific method, of course, is a methodology that is concerned with how one event/variable is a "function" of, or is "caused" by another event/variable, as measured by and limited to a specific point/context in both "time" and in "space." Cf. "Culture: The Antinomy of the Scientific Method," MB, pp. 215-242. Quote from p. 230.

[25] A recent book, Pi in the Sky by John Barrow, explores some of the ways in which the foundations of mathematics, or the very vehicle by which many scientists express/prove their theories, are, like language, precarious. Cf. Gödel's theorem, that is, that all mathematical constructions must necessarily have elements within the construction that cannot be proved. See the review "Math has [[pi]] on its Face," by Sharon Begley (Newsweek, November 30, 1992, p. 73).

[26] Cf. the "hermeneutic circle" as defined above.

[27] We must ask, in light of what the new physics tells us epistemologically about even physicists' (our) "participation" in the picture they (we) attempt to frame outside of themselves (ourselves), in what ways might deconstructionists themselves construct the "deconstruction" they "expose"? in what ways might their "objective" sign-analysis prove to be "intentional"? In other words, can deconstruction be understood at the very least as (de)construction? We leave aside here questions pertaining to unconscious motivation.

[28] "Triadic" is Percy's term for describing the unparalleled relationship existing between the three-part interaction of the "sign-using self," the "sign" and the "object/referent"-in other words, symbolization itself. In contrast, as Percy notes, the entire universe, with the exception of human language, may be understood as "dyadic" systems, or systems involving only two interactives (i.e., particle combinations, energy exchanges, gravity attractions between bodies, field forces, chemical reactions, cell exchanges, etc.).

There is a very real sense, then, in which Percy's language theory, because of its larger cosmological context, envelops all other language/literary theories, whether they be Deconstructivist, New Historicist, Feminist, Marxist, Lacanian, Foucaultian, Reader-Response, New Critical, Mythic, Russian-Formalist, Reception, Rhetorical, Speech Act, Skinnerian, Piagetian, Generative (Chomsky), etc. For proper credit purposes, let it be noted that Percy finds his original inspiration for "triadic theory" in the ideas of American logician and philosopher Charles Peirce (1839-1914).

See Percy's "A Semiotic Primer of the Self," Lost in the Cosmos (New York: Washington Square Press, 1983), pp. 86-126 for a broader explanation and clarification of the difference between "dyadic" and "triadic" interactions, as well as between "world" and "environment" mentioned in the main body below. This section of his book presents Percy's language theory in a nutshell while offering interesting commentary about mankind's "strange predicament" and the "unspeakable" nature of the "sign-using self." See also Percy's "Naming and Being" for a simpler, lay version.

[29] As for consideration of the extent of mankind's "symbol-mongering," estimates place the number of distinct human languages in excess of 5000. See Allman, p. 60. Also, besides organization as a "triad," it is interesting to note other "triadic" dimensions of language. For example, as Restak explains, human language takes the shape of three forms: speech, sign, and script. Likewise, Walter Ong in his work has further offered that communication has passed through three stages during the history of mankind: the oral-aural, the chirographic-typographic, and the electronic.

[30] As Percy states at another point, the "greatest difference between the environment (Umwelt) of a sign[al]-using organism and the world (Welt) of the speaking organism is that there are gaps in the former but none in the latter. The nonspeaking organism only notices what is relevant biologically; the speaking organism disposes of the entire horizon symbolically" (MB, 203). Put in other words, the "gaps" of the speaking organism (or mankind) are identified by the symbol/sign "gaps," or that of "unknown." Consequently, the "world" of human language and the mind thus may be seen to encompass or subsume "environment" within itself. Of course, the "world" of the human mind also might be said to have an "environment" of its own, that is, the field of mental experience that exists only within the realm of the abstract, the realm of human cognition.

[31] In his essay "Symbol, Consciousness, and Intersubjectivity," Percy offers a fundamental definition of intersubjectivity as "that meeting of minds by which two selves take each other's meaning with reference to the same object beheld in common" (MB, 265). He also considers here the philosopher Marcel's "intersubjective nexus" as the "mysterious root of language," that is that our relationship with others through language is implicitly a "metaphysic of we are as opposed to a metaphysic of I think." Put another way, inherent in the "naming act" of language is the "hearing act." Thus, Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" becomes "we think, therefore we are."

As Percy further offers, intersubjectivity is describable as a "noncausal bond" forming a "tetradic relationship" of "symbol," "object," "organism1" (I), and organism2 (Thou). See Fig. 9A and accompanying text in MB, pp. 258-9. Also, cf. Lacan's statement, "What I seek in speech is the response-the reply- of the other" (Felman, 118).

[32] We might ask additionally, despite what deconstructionists conclude about language, what further does it "mean" that they can communicate their ideas? At the very least, in light of a new physics perspective, we might note that deconstructionists "participate" themselves in the language they criticize, in fact the very language (and intersubjectivity) upon which they are dependent for the expression of their ideas. In other words, the very statements and concepts by which deconstructionists operate exist themselves within the larger system of language and meaning (i.e., systematicity) they devalue and of which they are but a part. Deconstructionists must thus be seen to "interact" with and within that which they "critique," that by which they articulate their "transcategorial" understanding. Cf. my previous essay's quote from Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" about the susceptibility of the key terms of deconstructive rhetoric to "slippage" themselves (pp. 7-8).

[33] Cf. Percy's "Semiotic and a Theory of Knowledge," MB, pp. 243-264, where he makes the statement: "It may well turn out that the semioticist [i.e., symbolic logician and behaviorist] has good reason to ignore the [uniqueness of the] symbol relation in view of his dictum that sign analysis replaces metaphysics, since an impartial analysis of symbolization can only bring one face to face with the very thing which the semioticist has been at all pains to avoid-a metaphysical issue" (246).

Implicit in Percy's assertion is a distinction between language as a physico-causal event or sequence (i.e., sign utterance-> sound waves-> sensory reception-> afferent nerve impulse-> cortical stimulation, etc.) and language as a "radical," "ontological" mode of being or "orientation" concerned with the expression and assimilation of "meaning" (i.e., intersubjective conceptual understanding). The "symbol meaning-relation," so understood, thus transcends the simple model of language as a mere stimulus-response, or "dyadic," sequence. See above discussion of science and its relationship to the "assertory event." Might it thus accurately be said that "meaning" for mankind is, in a very real sense, (ultimately) "metaphysical"? Cf. also, the "unconscious" above as "metalinguistic" in footnote 22 above.

[34] See Chomsky, Language and Responsibility (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), where he makes the statement: "Any objective scientist must be struck by the qualitative differences between human beings and other organisms, as much as by the difference between insects and vertebrates" (95). Chomsky also alludes at one point to Harry Bracken's idea of consciousness as a (non-empiricial) counter to racism, because there is no such thing as a "black" or "white" mind when it comes to constituting "human essence" (91-92). See especially the chapters, "A Philosophy of Language?" and "Empiricism and Rationalism" for thoughtful considerations of important issues related to (descriptive) linguistics.

Also cf. Percy's, "The Mystery of Language," MB, pp. 150-58. Among other statements, Percy writes here: "man is not merely a higher organism responding to and controlling his environment," for "he is, in Heidegger's words, that being in the world whose calling it is to find a name for Being, to give testimony to it, and to provide a clearing."

[35] Cf. "Culture: The Antinomy of the Scientific Method," where Percy asserts the statement: "no space-time event, however intricate, no chemical or collodial interaction, no configuration of field forces, can issue in an assertory event [(e.g., E=MC[2]; the "sign" as indeterminate, etc.)],....there is a gap [or gulf] between the responses of animals and the propositions of men which no amount of biological theorizing can bridge" (MB, 219).

[36] As Restak explains throughout his book, a great deal of study about the potential for language in other primates has been conducted during the past several decades (Premack, Gardner, Terrace, etc.), more specifically with chimpanzees, whose brain shares a striking structural similarity with our own and whose genetic material approximates ours by 99%.

Despite these similarities, though, fundamental and substantive differences still remain and divide the two species. In the words of the zoologist Desmond Morris, whom Restak quotes, humans are "somehow over a whole new threshold, even a whole new world,...not just ten degrees but a million degrees further [in complexity]" (7-8) {italics mine}. Foremost across this threshold is the capacity for "self," that is, the ability to have self-conception, to be self-referential. Other components intimately related to this concept and bred out of it include the ability to have: introversion and self-reflection; a sense of time and the capacity to plan (i.e., transcend time); and a sense of autonomy and of "choice." (Cf. existentialism and choosing to pursue the "authentic" self). See Percy's Lost in the Cosmos for unique reflections upon the elusive nature of the "sign-using self."

[37] To return to our earlier question left in abeyance-if there is such a thing as a "soul," undoubtedly it must be seen to be intimately connected with language. We might further speculate in this direction with the questions: is this why literature has the capacity to touch us so deeply, the power to move and transform the human heart so fully? because it speaks to the "soul"?

[38] Indeed, as Thomas Mann suggests, "speech is civilization itself, etc.," that which has made civilization possible. One linguist, Philip Lieberman (Brown University), agrees when he states his belief that "it's really impossible to conceive of human culture without language...[because] language facilitates thought." Moreover, he offers, "I think it's impossible to conceive of human thought without human language. The two are integral elements tied together (Restak, 205).

Linguist Derek Bickerton (Univ. of Hawaii) likewise comments upon the nexus between language and mind in his statement: "the relationship between language and mind is that language produces mind. Without language, I wouldn't say it is impossible to have mental experiences, but I'd say that the mental experiences would not be very coherent" (Restak, 216).

A third linguist whom Restak also quotes, William S.-Y. Wang (UC-Berkeley), additionally offers his contention that "language is the best window through which we view mental life. But it's probably even more than that. It also plays a major role in shaping the mind. I think how we relate to others, how we see things, how we represent reality within ourselves, to ourselves, are all very critically influenced by the choices that our language makes available to us (221-22). All three linguists affirm the importance of language to human consciousness and knowledge, the true foundations of (enduring) human civilization and culture.

[39] Percy closes his essay "Culture: The Antinomy of the Scientific Method" with the general call for a re-cognition of the need for a new, more "radical" science than modern science embodies, one that can take into account the "metascientific, metacultural reality" of human assertions that stand at the center of both the scientist's methods and the various cultural phenomena he studies. As Percy writes, this need derives "not merely from metaphysical and religious arguments" but also from "the antinomy into which a nonradical science falls in dealing with man," because it cannot be used to explain itself similarly, be said to encompass its own assertions (MB, 242).

[40] See Felman's chapter "Psychoanalysis and Education: Teaching Terminable and Interminable" for a similar understanding as relates to psychoanalysis and pedagogy.

[41] "The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics," p. 277 from Existentialism: Dostoevsky to Sartre, Walter Kaufmann, ed. (New York: Meridian Books, 1975).

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© 1993, Henry P. Mills