Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["Michael Larson" <Mlarson AT SOUTHEASTMN.EDU>]

Karey, thanks for the comments. I can't speak for Percy or his particular 
struggle with Cartesian dualism, but it is true that Descartes adopted a 
Platonic model of ultra-dualism (wherein the soul and the body are paired but 
have no apparent causal or interactive connection), whereas the Church--via 
Scholasticism--came to develop and refine the Aristotelian-based model of an 
intimate union of form and matter, whereby the soul animates the body, and 
the body without the soul has no substantial existence.

Part of the Cartesian problem is perhaps in this idea of "matter and spirit 
existing separate but equal within us." This assumed egalitarian relationship 
between the realms encourages the conception of an interactive impasse. But 
if the relationship is hierarchical, if spirit is above matter, then it is 
natural to conceive of the soul as animator of the body and interaction as 
both unidirectional and causal.

As for the animals, they have, according to Aquinas, animating souls as well, 
although they are sensitive souls--as opposed to intellective--and they are 
not immortal. In other words, the animal soul possesses perceptive abilities 
(unlike plant souls, which are also animating but merely nutritive). This 
would explain their apparent awareness of spirit as well as perhaps the 
absence in them of human emotional states that are derived from a reasoning 
process.

But you're right. Spirit/matter dualism is clearly complex (makes my head 
hurt, actually) and evidently worrisome, as you suggest, to Percy. But that 
doesn't necessarily mean it hasn't already been resolved, maybe even before 
Descartes posed the problem...

Mike Larson




>>Yes.  Great quote.  For Percy it was qualitative difference, not
quantitative.

However, the comment....:

"Which is all to say that language is not likely to be some evolutionary
breakthrough but rather a design feature in a unique creature, a creature
whose nature must accommodate two realms: those of both matter and spirit.
Language, for Percy, was a clue and ultimately a proof for the spiritual
order; and because it is rooted in the material world, I think he thought he
had something that even the rationalist-naturalist
intelligentsia would have to acknowledge."

.... is problematic.  Because it doesn't get rid of Cartesian dualism, which
was Percy's goal.  There are still two separate and distinct realms here,
matter and spirit.  He's trying to resolve that dilemma.  I think Percy was
a bit confused by it himself.  And that a material thing shows a spiritual
presence doesn't do that job of resolving the split between the two (though
it does do Percy's Christian apologist duties of showing the presence of
spiritual world).  

Middle creature is unclear on how we are middle - both matter and spirit
existing separate but equal within us (Cartesian dualism - and no word on
how they can interact) - or some amalgam of the two completely mixed and
losing the original identity of both. Or something else.  Percy himself
never resolved the split and it plagued him his whole life.

We also need to define "spiritual" - I do think animals have perception of a
spiritual world - don't laugh (ahem).  Dogs, cats, other animals have a
perception where they sense the presence of ghosts, etc., before humans.  So
the "spiritual realm" or "spiritual order" needs to be defined.  

Is it the characteristics of guilt, regret, redemption, joy, purpose,
meaning - human psychological characteristics animals don't have?  Humans
obviously have that, animals don't.  That's what Percy meant.

Is it the presence of a world of spirits - angels, demons, ghosts (or
whatever it is that exists in the non-material world).  Animals have that
sense, better than humans.  That doesn't seem to be what Percy was referring
to.

That's why I think we really need to take a step back and define our terms,
including "consciousness", "matter", "spirit", "middle"  - etc. etc.  I also
don't' think it'll get resolved here or any time soon by anyone.  It's far
more complex when examined it's all it's depth.

Karey<<





-----Original Message-----
From: percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:percy-l-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Michael Larson
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 4:43 PM
To: percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [percy-l] Middle creature

This discussion was reminding me of something I couldn't quite place.
Then I remembered that passage from THE MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE in which
Percy addresses the implications of language for distinguishing between
man and the animals. Then I remembered that I made a post about that
very thing last May. So I went back to the archives and found it, and
I've pasted it in (unedited) below. For whatever it's worth...

Mike Larson


*****

This is from "The Mystery of Language," THE MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE (p.
158):

"An awareness of the nature of language must have the greatest possible
consequences for our minimal concept of man. For one thing it must
reveal the ordinary secular concept of man held in the West as not
merely inadequate but quite simply mistaken. I do not refer to the
Christian idea of man as a composite of body and soul, a belief which is
professed by some and given lip service by many but which can hardly be
said to be a working assumption of secular learning. We see man--when I
say we, I mean 95 per cent of those who attended American high schools
and universities--as the highest of the organisms: He stands erect, he
apposes thumb and forefinger, his language is far more complex than that
of the most advanced Cebus azarae. But the difference is quantitative,
not qualitative. Man is a higher organism, standing in direct continuity
with rocks, soil, fungi, protozoa, and mammals.

This happens not to be true, however, and in a way it is unfortunate. I
say unfortunate because it means the shattering of the old dream of the
Enlightenment--that an objective-explanatory-causal science can discover
and set forth all the knowledge of which man is capable. The dream is
drawing to a close. The existentialists have taught us that what man is
cannot be grasped by the sciences of man. The case is rather that man's
science is one of the things that man does, a mode of existence. Another
mode is speech. Man is not merely a higher organism responding to and
controlling his environment. 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 for it a clearing."


So Percy argues here, as he does in many places, that the human capacity
for language is what separates us from the animals. The Christian
philosophers, to whose work he makes implicit reference here, would say
that the animals are of an entirely material (thus, dyadic) order and
that God and the angels are of an entirely spiritual (non-material)
order. But man is a middle creature, both material and spiritual (the
highest of the former and the lowest of the latter), and the triadic
nature of language is both a material clue for this reality and the
means by which this composite creature (man) has access to that which is
higher. Language itself is always material--whether written or
spoken--but it allows by way of signification for consciousness and
contemplation, which is of the spiritual order. And by a mere sleight of
words, Percy gets an existentialist, Heidegger, to describe in grand
terms, what Aquinas had fulfilled centuries earlier, in the high Middle
Ages, long before "the old dream of the Enlightenment" was even born.

Which is all to say that language is not likely to be some evolutionary
breakthrough but rather a design feature in a unique creature, a
creature whose nature must accommodate two realms: those of both matter
and spirit. Language, for Percy, was a clue and ultimately a proof for
the spiritual order; and because it is rooted in the material world, I
think he thought he had something that even the rationalist-naturalist
intelligentsia would have to acknowledge.

*****

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