[percy-l] Re: animals, symbols, Gnosticism, Judaaica etc

Parlin, Steven PARLINS at culver.org
Fri Jan 3 14:46:05 EST 2003


Nikki, you provide some interesting replies here, and I must confess I am
hugely envious that you had opportunity to personally engage Percy (You at
least can use his first name!) and discern what was on his mind. That gives
you a leg up on some of these thorny matters, I think. However, may I point
out a few or your errors and/or misunderstandings here? I may even have to
be a tad bit discourteous, for your tone on some points seems a little
condescending. 
 
First, Aristotle on animal souls: Aristotle never claimed that animals had
no "soul". On the contrary, he argued that all things living had a "soul".
He used "soul" to refer to that actualizing force or principle of the body,
but he also classified the soul's faculties hierarchically, with rationality
or thought, only possessed by humans, at the top. (I echo Karey, here, in
that we need to be careful to define our terms). 
 
Second, the RC Church on animal souls: The Church has never doctrinally
denied the existence of animal "souls". (In fact, JPII spoke about this
matter recently when giving voice to responsible stewardship). However, the
Church is very carefully discerning about her terms and how they are to be
understood when she uses them. For example, the Church's teachings
demonstrate an understanding that words like "consciousness" are, strictly
speaking, indefinable, and that the definitions thereof are used with the
understanding that they are only metaphors (as all words are) and with the
explicit or implicit warning that they must not be taken literally or as
finite. Again, I reiterate my point from an earlier part of this thread:
this very discussion on the matter of  "consciousness" demonstrates the
slippery nature of trying to name things that most likely cannot be named.
Who of us on this list really knows precisely what "consciousness" is, after
all? While I suppose it is possible that we will one day "evolve",
Theosophically speaking, into creatures that finally know these things in
the "absolute", I must contend that its most likely the case that the mind
will remain intractable to us (at least in this life). 
 
Third, the Poet as namer: Yes, poet's name things. Of course. But then, not
really. They don't actually render things completely in form, they can only
approximately get at things (like "consciousness") with metaphor. The can
only approximately name things. That's what poetry is, after all. It's a
chase, a hunt, a quest. And if the "thing" were found, the hunt would be
over. Ergo, no more poets. Poets are ever in pursuit of the unicorn, but
their attempts to ensnare it are ever frustrated. The thing can't be caught.
And the chase goes on. In fact, Lear's "nonsense" poetry illustrates my
point precisely. And, Percy's. Percy was interested in how words can be
emptied out and the meanings restated. It might be more accurate to say that
poets re-name, and then re-name again, and again, and again. Poet's make
available to us those things that get lost because the names didn't stick.
(However, as Percy observes, some words seem to resist this leakiness, like
'Jew'). 
 
Fourth, Percian courtesy: You say that Percy "NEVER raised the slightest
banner of mean-tempered virulence but was always the soul of interested
courtesy." Now, I certainly did not know Percy on a personal bases, and your
point about him may be quite true, but I wonder. I'm sure Percy was a kind
and courteous gentleman, especially in person, and I'll do nothing here to
cast erroneous aspersions about his character. However, it is impossible to
argue from his fiction that he was never mean tempered. He was hardly an
advocate of pluralistic brotherly tolerance. Instead, his work was nothing
other than a brutally violent act of vivisection upon the affairs of this
world. He rather bloodily cut things open wide and went in to have a look
see. That is precisely why his work is so important. Few other writers have
had the courage to be "mean" in this way. No. He was quite mean-tempered
about some things and, to the things he found most disagreeable, he was
unmercilessly virulent. And, dare I say, he was even a bit rude about some
things. 
 
(BTW: Jim, Percy wouldn't have made a distinction in kinds of truth, but
that the realm of Truth is accessible to us in different ways. Percy would
say that science describes the "truth" that it "sees", and that literature
reveals "truth" as it is experienced. The difference is existential. Whereas
science is concerned with observing and collecting data, literature is
concerned with revelation. Whereas science is powerless to explain things
(like existence), literature is the narration of things, the revealed
account of our experience of things (like existence) as they are. For
example, the true nature of a relationship, say between lovers, is most
accurately revealed in a story that shows the intersubjectivity of their
relationship than it is in a data base of information about those two
people. It's fitting to note, here, that Chimps and the like are almost
never observed for their "language use" in their own environments but are
removed from their own "narratives" to a lab or a cozy home.)). 
 
Percy was an advocate of brotherly love, no doubt, but he opposed
sentimental notions of it. He never let sentimentality get in the way of
stating things are they are -screwed up. He was a fierce diagnostician who,
after doing the messy work of exploratory surgery, offered us a prognosis,
and then dared to point us to a cure. (For what its worth, I became Catholic
in large part because of Percy. Is there anyone else on this list interested
in this part of Percy's work? Or am I the only the only Catholic?)  
 
Fifth, Percy as Jew:  I never claimed that Percy was Jewish in the practical
sense, nor was I "boxing him in with the Jews". Rather, Percy was keenly
aware that Catholicism is the full sacramental realization of Judaism. I can
even recall from an interview, in "Conversations" I believe, that he said
(and I'm paraphrasing), that spiritually we [christians] are all Semites,
ie. we are all Jews. His fascination with the Jews was more than mere
wistful reverence. He really believed the Jews were the "chosen". It is
true, however, that he never thought himself a good Catholic (though what he
meant by that is not at all obvious. Who, after all, is a "good" Catholic?)
but his Catholicism mattered to him a great deal nevertheless. 
 
 
Steve 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Nikkibar at aol.com [mailto:Nikkibar at aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 4:13 PM
To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org; daynesherman at yahoo.com; runner at i-55.com;
atrous at lsu.edu
Subject: [percy-l] Re: animals, symbols, Gnosticism, Judaaica etc
 
Dear Friends,

I have been lurking about with an increasing Holiday headache for the last
couple of weeks over the interesting discussion and have been unwilling to
spoil the fun by getting doctrinaire and behaving like a prissy old fart;
but now that things seem to be slowing up, let me provide a few biographical
observations which I hope will not go so far as to become deconstructionist.

The whole discussion about animals and symbols -- Chomsky, the Chimps in the
household with the letter and icon boards, John Lilly and his dolphin
language, etc. -- was something that Walker followed with eagerness and
interest. We (Walker and I) constantly argued over the matter, Walker
adopting with Aristotle and The Church the position that animals had no
souls (and there was an end on't) and me adopting quite the contrary
position which I had always associated with Theosophical Gnosticism, that
the universe (or all-that-is) is in a state of both physical and spiritual
evolution. And mixing into this lifelong debate was Walker's stout defense
of the notion that animals can't use symbols (despite Chomsky and the
household chimps, etc., and Lilly with his investigation of terciops
truncatus' click language -- possibly indicating to the contrary). 

My own argument inevitably ran to the notion that the symbol as we and
Peirce know it, is irrelevant to the debate and that communication and not
symbolization is the more proper touch-stone to get one to the concept of
evidence of the kind of consciousness that would betoken the existence of
animal-souls. Walker always felt that he prevailed in these contests because
he could fall back on "show me the symbol-making ability) and that for me
was the breakpoint, for while I couldn't show him a symbol emanating from an
animal (although with enough funding and sufficiently sensitive and complex
computers with enough RAM we may in time learn to talk to the dolphin or
translate whale-song) I could always rejoin that he couldn't be certain that
animals couldn't and didn't talk to each other; for our uncertainty is
grounded in the notion that just because they may have little interest in
talking to us, does not logically prove that they cannot talk to one
another. In ot her words, in good lawyer-like fashion, I could always
demonstrate that an absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of
absence. I can assure you, however that WP was head-over-heels in touch with
the problem and took a long and lively interest in it.

For those bewildered by Gnosticism and what it is, search our archives of
about five years back using not only Gnostic as a word search tool but
Elaine Pagels and to a lesser degree Harold Bloom, whose works we discussed
thoroughly. At the end of that discussion I resolved never to get involved
in that fight again, as it simply produces (on this channel at any rate) a
good deal more heat than light. And the debate seemed fruitless to me for
another reason: which was that the RC proponents of antiGnosticism knew a
lot less about Gnosticism than I did (and do)  about the Dogma and History
of the Roman Catholic Church. What was interesting (and horrible to me) in
the discussion was the virulence and mean-tempered attitude emanating at
that time from the antiGnostic position, a latter day resurrection of the
very same mortal combat which the church won with Valentinian and in winning
the victory -- physically obliterated the ancient Gnostics. Pagels refl ects
with great eloquence on that fact of this victory and speculates over what
the world might be like today, had the Gnostics prevailed at least to the
point of remaining alive past the sixth century CE. An additional
exploration might be taken up by anyone interested, by reading an
enthralling novel on the subject published the last year entitled The Years
of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam-Random House). An
additional observation: in all my many discussions with Walker over these
matters, he NEVER raised the slightest banner of mean-tempered virulence but
was always the soul of interested courtesy. For further discussion of
Gnosticism and what it is, I refer you to Bloom's speculatively intriguing
American Gnosticism, but it is not nearly as informative at the basic level
of defining terms as the works of Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels and
Gnostic Paul). Google or Amazon will provide a useful bibliography complete
with price lists. For a useful chapter on Gnosticism, specifically in the
work of Percy (which may however leave you more puzzled after reading it
than before) see Eddie DuPuy's book Autobiography in Walker Percy -- if you
can find a copy. 

I am amused to the point of gentle mirth at the notion that Walker was a Jew
ab initio through his conversion to Rome. That in my view is stretching the
poetry of language just a little too far. (BTW Poets name things all the
time. Just think of Edward Lear's toeless Pobble QED). What Walker would
have said himself to this interesting error about boxing him in with the
Jews, was that on the contrary he was not a Jew, but a reconstructed bad
Presbyterian made over into a bad Roman Catholic. The wistful reverence for
Jewry that he displays repeatedly in the novels was just that: very wistful
and VERY reverent, which it occurs to me is roughly my own attitude toward
Rome but that is BTW; it equals being an indifferent Episcopalian.

A Parthian shot on the subject of the animals. Anyone watching the last
season of The Sopranos (and who isn't?) may have some very interesting
insights to draw over how Tony's conflicted Catholic attitude to the
"Genesis dominion over the beasts" concept works in that most American of
myths in its current HBO state of becoming. This agon may be the only thing
that draws me back to it in its next season. I am suggesting that for us in
the business of the aesthesis of words, myths and stories in the public
mind, it's a pivot point well worth thinking about. One could assign grad
school papers of 20 K words on it... It could enliven one's grading period
to see what results.

And a happy New Year to all.

Nikki Barranger
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