[percy-l] walker percy dissertation?

Patrick Lynch padraig at well.com
Thu Nov 3 00:34:55 EST 2005


How kind of you to share this and your process. Share what's  
comfortable.
Patrick

On Nov 2, 2005, at 9:04 PM, KMitch2626 at aol.com wrote:

> 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.
> --
> An archive of all list discussion is available at http:// 
> lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/percy-l/
>
> Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
>

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