[percy-l] walker percy dissertation?

KMitch2626 at aol.com KMitch2626 at aol.com
Thu Nov 3 00:04:29 EST 2005


Father Burns,

I once attempted such a project. But to make a very long story short, after 
many committee changes, life problems, and several rewrites, i ultimately put 
my dissertation aside and started a new life outside of academia. My only 
regret is that my work would have been a perfect resource for persons such as your 
self. Towards the end of my work i found all of Ketner's writing to be the 
most helpful on the subject. (even kinda had him on my committee at one time). I 
still have the roiginal abstract, although it doesnt quite capture where i 
ended up. I'll send you that at the bottom of this text. I'll also try to dig 
through some of my disks and see if there is any info i can share with you and 
others interested on the listserve. I lost a lot of my work due to a hard drive 
failure. but i think i still have some of the rough drafts of some of the 
capters lying around. if nothing else, they could give you some ideas and some 
good references to look at. Much of the philosophical work at the time, only 
dealt with Percy and Keirkegaard. Mine focused more on Peirce and Percy. Its 
definitely a project that needs to be done. However, i'm not in a spot right now to 
finish it. Also, I think if i ever were to try such a thing again, I'd simply 
revise/rewrite Lost in the cosmos. Bring it up to date, and change some of 
the stuff in the semioitc primer section. Let me see what if anything i can dig 
up for you, if you and others are interested.

somewhere lost in the cosmos,
ken mitchell
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT
Along with the rise of the natural sciences, there has been an increasing 
attempt to apply empirical methodologies to the study of human beings. This 
scientific approach has generated a wealth of fruitful insights into human nature 
and the workings of the
human body. However, there has been a long-standing debate within philosophy 
over the limits and applicability of empirical methodologies to the study of 
human beings. Many philosophers have argued, and I think quite convincingly, 
that scientific approaches yield necessary but not sufficient explanations and 
understandings of human activity. Instead, they suggest the need to implement a 
plurality of methodological approaches to persons. Hermeneutics, 
phenomenology, and narrative for example, are just some of the varying methods that 
philosophers are increasingly turning towards to study the self.  Walker Percy, 
perhaps best known for his
fiction, developed in his philosophical writings a philosophy of the self 
which addresses these issues.  He develops a non-Cartesian, semiotic account of 
the self which critiques empirical and reductionistic approaches to the self,  
and sets forth a theoretical foundation for the use of other methodologies, 
especially narrative. Percy's theory emphasizes the constitutive role of 
language in the formation of the self, along with the self's intersubjective and 
narrative structure. His theory is especially interesting in that it is built upon 
the metaphysics, epistemology, and semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, which 
until recently, have been seen by many Peirce scholars as philosophically  
inadequate for building a useful theory of subjectivity. My dissertation first 
explicates the elements of Peirce's philosophy that Percy employs, and then 
presents a systematic account of how Percy uses these elements to construct a 
semiotic account of the self. 
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