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

[Thomas Gollier <tgollier AT gmail.com>]

Mike and Bob,

I don't disagree with you that Lance's is not a Catholic kind of confession. He never shows any remorse or
repentance for murdering his wife and several others, and hence there could be no absolution. What's more, if we

go along with the idea that he killed himself in the explosion, then we definitely have a "knight mired in his sin,

unable to respond to the presence of the Blessed Sacrament." Nevertheless, Lance is released from wherever it

is that this novel is taking place.

When it comes to Percival and Anna, who are also being released, there are no confessions, Catholic or otherwise.
Percival seems to come to an understanding, via Lance's arguments against the Church but also, I think, in
recognizing the impossibility Lance faces with regard to Church doctrine, the importance of his listening to Lance's
recounting on a personal level. He has resolved to pursue his religion on the more personal level of a local priest.
And Anna, who through Lance's interventions, resolves to rejoin the community of human interactions on her own
terms. None of these alternatives involves a "confession" per se, but all involve human intercourse that attains
some kind of understanding resulting in their release and a chance to re-start their lives on a firmer basis.

My argument is that Percy is presenting these alternatives, not for us to choose and defend the right one, but
rather to give us a glimpse of an all but imperceptible and unnameable universal that underlies or animates them
all, including the traditional Catholic alternative. He propels us to imagine other alternatives to psychiatrists
and parole boards rather than priests, to parents, lovers, and friends, to recountings of all sorts that lead to
understanding the causes and consequences of where we're at, so we can find a release from that place and restart
our lives. These alternatives are all better or worse, relevant or irrelevant for various situations, but there is a
universal, inherent in all of them and traversing all situations, that is the key, the "holy grail" of these "searches."
 
At this point, though, I have to admit I don't have much concern for what Percy himself thought about all this. I run

into the same problem with Peirce scholars. It reminds me of a cartoon with two polar bears standing outside an

igloo and the one saying: "That's just the way I like them, crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside." The

crunchy discussions for me, like the novel itself, are just a tasty way to get at what's chewy on the inside.

Thanks again,
Tom

On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 12:03 PM Michael Larson <larsonovic AT gmail.com> wrote:

Tom,

Thanks for the post.

I think I am using the term "rhetoric" in a broader sense than you are. That is to say, I am not using it as a synonym for "persuasion," though persuasive effect would certainly be a component of rhetoric. Then again, so would critical thinking--as well as the use of logic and grammar, to round out the classical trivium--and several other skills. The rhetorical act involves everything, from start to finish, that goes into the eventual communication of what one believes to be true. It is possible to be very skilled in many or all of those components and still to misapprehend the objective truth of the thing being examined. That was the point I was making. It follows, then, from my use of "rhetoric" that "critical thinking," especially in the way that you have defined it (i.e. as a conscious attempt to discover truth, often in consultation with the arguments of others) cannot be, or at least should not be, divorced from the art of rhetoric. If it is divorced, it is more likely to be sophistry than rhetoric.

My use of "elegance" and "cohesion" was merely the naming of two specific elements of rhetoric, not meant to be comprehensive but rather to illustrate how portions of a skill set might be differentiated from the objective truth toward which the skill set is being employed.

The following statement of yours is interesting:

"... regardless of how sure we may be that we've tp what's true, it never flips over into The Truth once and for all. Every conclusion, having better or worse reasons for believing it is true, is open to debate. This is, I think, is the inescapable predicament of finite bodies that think in an infinite universe."

What you describe here is definitely accurate with regards to the individual who is attempting to perceive a truth that cannot be proven deductively. Lacking infinite knowledge, we must always make our assertions in the framework of what is more or less probable. Aristotle explains this well in his discussion of inductive reasoning in the service of rhetoric. However, from the side of whatever is actually true (about whatever is under consideration), the once-and-for-all-ness is not subject to human error or ignorance or blindness. In other words, the objective truth doesn't need an escape clause, like we do, to change positions based on new information.

Let's take the Catholic Church's claim to be the divinely appointed authority (and consequent protection from error) in matters of faith and morals. That claim is either objectively true, or it is not. Individuals can examine the claim, as Percy did, and decide it is more or less probable and make their decisions accordingly, but the reality of the situation just is what it is, regardless of the finite mind's ability to assess the odds.

When you say this, "If that's Lance's confession, it sounds more like a kind politician's unapologetic 'apology' to me. I really don't see how it could warrant any kind of absolution or release," I am in complete agreement with you. And the rest of your analysis in that paragraph seems spot on to me as well. That's why I said, in the very beginning of this discussion, that Lance is surely not about to be "absolved" by Percival when the novel ends. Yes, of course, his "confession" has been cathartic, and he believes he has found the means of a restart, as you call it. But that is not how Percival sees it. He has something more to tell Lance. The whole novel has been leading up to this moment where Lance feels finally purged of his side of the story and is now ready to move on and live (self) righteously in defiance of a world gone mad. And now Percival is finally ready and willing to speak. Brilliantly, his words will occur off camera.

In your final paragraph, you seem to be saying that Percy himself is, through the novel, changing the notion of sacramental confession into existential confession, as Lance perhaps does. But this is to ignore the role of Percival, who, in the final pages of the novel, could not be more clearly distinguished from Lance. And your speculation that Percy is rejecting "the illusions of an objective moral code or truth" seems entirely unfounded, given that neither Lance nor Percival makes such a rejection. In fact, they are united in their opposition to the modern world, which has indeed abandoned the notion of objective truth. Their solutions to that problem, however, are quite different.

Best,

Mike