[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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