Walker Percy and the Crisis of Meaning: Communication in the Ruins 3031370236, 9783031370236

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Walker Percy and the Crisis of Meaning Communication in the Ruins Justin N. Bonanno

Walker Percy and the Crisis of Meaning

Justin N. Bonanno

Walker Percy and the Crisis of Meaning Communication in the Ruins

Justin N. Bonanno Ave Maria University Ave Maria, FL, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-37022-9    ISBN 978-3-031-37023-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37023-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Unhurried, the words turned into sounds and dissolved into the expanse, after shedding the shells of their meaning. —Eugene Vodolazkin, Laurus (trans. Lisa C. Hayden) And the Lord God having formed out of the ground all the beasts of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name. And Adam called all the beasts by their names, and all the fowls of the air, and all the cattle of the field: but for Adam there was not found a helper like himself. —Genesis 2:19-20 (DRA)

To Anna, my wife, co-namer, and concelebrant of being To Maria, diligently exploring C1 consciousness To Ruthie, babbling vocables into the air, waiting for symbols to appear

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their encouragement, support, counsel, prayers, friendship, and generous assistance: Leslie Marsh, Rhonda McDonnell, Philip Getz, Vinoth Kuppan, Karey Perkins, Zoë Bodzas, Mary Pratt Lobdell, Ann Percy Moores, Matthew Turi, Anthony and Jeri Naccarato, Sam and Kim Naccarato, Pat and Linda Kemper, Anthony and Melisa Wachs, Rita McCaffrey, Janie M.  Harden Fritz, Lynn Dutertre, Jean Henry, Andrew Chrystall, Rob Grano, David Mills, Mike Aquilina, Eric Grabowsky, John Jasso, Gavin Hurley, the Campuzano family, the Argenti family, the O’Brien family, the Chute family, and the West family. The following organizations and institutions helped to make this project possible: Palgrave Macmillan, Springer Nature, the Walker Percy Papers at UNC Chapel Hill, the UNC Wilson Special Collections library, McIntosh & Otis, Inc., the Gumberg Library, Duquesne University, the Canizaro Library, and Ave Maria University. I want to especially thank my dissertation advisor and mentor Dr. Ronald C. Arnett for his overall contribution to how I read, write, and look at life. A special word of gratitude goes out to my students at Duquesne University and Ave Maria University, especially those in my interpersonal communication course, wherein we explored Percy’s ideas together. Without students, a teacher cannot teach. Thank you Canon William Avis, Canon John O’Connor, Fr. Adam Potter, Fr. Jamie Power, Fr. Timothy Van Zee, Fr. Martin Adams, Fr. Romanus Cessario, Fr. Joseph Lugalambi, and Fr. David Vidal for ix

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

administering the sacraments and bringing “news from across the seas” to castaways like me. Thank you Sue and Gene Bonanno, mom and dad, for being such loving parents. You’ve done so much for me over the years. Thank you for supporting me on my academic journey and for bearing with me whenever I waxed philosophical. Thank you to the Laurel Grant Committee and especially to Mrs. Mary Laurel for awarding me with funds to help bring this book project to completion. Brady Beckerman and Megan Hare did great work helping me to prepare this book for publication. Above all, I would like to acknowledge and thank my wife Anna, mother of my children, fellow traveler, and breakfast-time interlocutor. Without you, this book simply would not have been possible. You’ve been exploring Percy’s ideas with me for several years now, and you really helped me drag this book over the finish line with your masterful copyediting, research, and advice. How blessed am I!

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Percy’s Life and Background   4 Key Figures and Philosophical Trends   8 Key Distinctions in Percy’s Semiotic Realism  11 The Contemporary Crisis of Meaning  22 Chapter Preview  25 References  28 2 C1  Consciousness and the Epiphany of Meaning 33 The Symbolic Breakthrough and the Presence of Others  34 Cassirer: Philosopher of the Symbol  39 Langer: Analogy and Symbolic Transformation  42 Beyond Idealism and Naturalism  45 Maritain: In Alio Esse   47 Implications for the Crisis of Meaning  54 References  58 3 C2  Consciousness and the Unspeakable Self 61 The Unspeakable Self  62 Unspeakability: A Semiotic (and Existential) Predicament  65 Sartre: Being-in-Itself and Bad Faith  70 Marcel: Simulacrum and Homo Viator  75 A Partial Overview of Heidegger’s Being and Time   79 Heidegger: The “As,” the “They,” and the “Reverse Phenomenon”  83 xi

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Contents

Implications for the Crisis of Meaning  87 References  91 4 C3  Consciousness and the Defamiliarization of the God-Man 95 Defining C3 Consciousness  97 Defamiliarization via Art 102 Defamiliarization via Ordeal and the Postapocalyptic 106 Kierkegaard: The Apostle’s Transcendent Authority 111 Aquinas: News as a Type of Knowledge, Faith as a Type of Knowing 117 Implications for the Crisis of Meaning 122 References 126 5 Truth and Meaning131 Nominalism 132 Realism 136 Real Predicates, Real Judgments 138 Implications for the Crisis of Meaning 144 References 148 6 Love and Meaningfulness153 Storge: In Defense of the Familiar 158 Philia: The Interpersonal Context of Truth 165 Eros: The Desire to Know 170 Agape: The Self-Giving Word 174 References 178 Index183

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 6.1

A dyadic event: A causes B A triadic event: Person, symbol, and entity Symbols mediate intersubjective relationships The triadic emerges amidst the tetradic

13 14 16 154

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Everyone has had that awful sensation of knowing the right word for something and yet struggling to utter it aloud. And everyone knows the glorious release from having discovered the right word hitherto at the tip of their tongue. Scientists, for example, patiently observe natural phenomena looking to name what lies before them. Try to imagine the feeling felt by the first person to have identified that elongated slimy thing as an “eel.” “What is that? An eel!” Authors, too, must grope their way through a manuscript, stretching for the appropriate noun or verb, participle or adjective. All too often, writers describe the sensation of being moored in the sea of language, unable to take flight and articulate themselves. A terrible tension follows from the inability to remember names, even (and perhaps especially) of other people. If you are a teacher, imagine a group of students sitting before you early in the semester, undifferentiated by their names. Who is who? If you are not a teacher, recall the embarrassment of someone who has called you by the wrong name, perhaps more than once. In my own case, I have been called “Jason” on many occasions by relatives and acquaintances alike, even though my real name is “Justin.” I do not hold this against them. If anything, I am usually embarrassed by their embarrassment. Why does anxiety follow from the inability to name something? Why does embarrassment follow from using the wrong word? And why does finding the right word lead to elation and a sense of release? Such

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. N. Bonanno, Walker Percy and the Crisis of Meaning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37023-6_1

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questions, which exemplify the crossing of the semiotic and the existential, lie at the heart of Walker Percy’s semiotic paradigm. Naming puts us in contact with existence, the ground of truth beyond ourselves. Ultimately, this book is about how Percy’s semiotic paradigm provides a fitting response to the contemporary crisis of meaning. Percy provides us with novel interpretive and evaluative criteria for making sense of the chaos that characterizes this historical moment, which suffers from a failure to recognize both the glories and the limits of symbol use. In Percy’s ideal world, the most hardheaded scientist and the most cold-blooded existentialist would shake hands. They could reconcile their differences through a proper appreciation of the symbol. Without the symbol, we could not know anything, for it is the primary instrument of thought. The scientist exults! Yet, the symbol cannot construe everything under the sun, and, comically, this includes the very self that uses symbols. We can know many things thanks to the symbol, but some of the most important things we cannot. The existentialist nods in approval. Existence is mysterious, ineffable, and, at times, painful. The symbol can block your perception of the uniqueness, the particularity, and the magnificent presence of another person standing right before you. It is the recognition of both the glories and especially the limits of symbol use that sets Percy’s work apart from so many others. Like many other thinkers in the twentieth century, Percy was very interested in language and especially symbols as objects of study. What is a symbol? It is a communicative medium composed of something sensible and something insensible. When you speak, you make sounds. When you write, you make shapes. But somehow, some way, those shapes point beyond themselves to an immaterial, invisible world of meaning. It so happens, then, that the crossing of the semiotic and the existential implies the conjunction of the material and the immaterial. The symbol is the tie, the buckle, the Janney coupler between self and other. Depending on your philosophical commitments, your attempt to study the symbol may miss half of the story, which is no small matter. For to miss half the story is to lose half the world. The idealist recognizes the glories of symbol use but gets carried away. The materialist shuns the transcendent but finds the immanent frame constricting. You have to contort your philosophy (and your very self) in a number of strange postures to accommodate a world without the possibility of the immaterial. This book intersects primarily with the field of communication studies; however, individuals who simply appreciate Percy’s novels or who study

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the philosophy of mind might find it worthwhile to read. While certain figures in the field of communication have taken an interest in Percy, for the most part communication scholars have only scratched the surface regarding everything that Percy has to offer. Scholars have hinted at the ontological and epistemic importance of metaphor in Percy’s work, but a more thorough investigation of the symbol (and its role in the discovery of knowledge) would support and extend these scholarly analyses (e.g., Cleary 1959; Osborn and Ehninger 1962; Caraher 1981; Campbell 1987; Lessl 1989; Engnell 2001). Cartesian idealism makes the individual the starting point for any philosophical inquiry. “I think, therefore I am” is the well-known Cartesian motto. If he were here now, Percy might instead say, “We exist, other things do, too, and we share a language. Therefore, we think.” Materialism breaks down complex wholes into discrete, measurable units (e.g., atoms). If you cannot quantify it, whatever it is, it is not real. But how do you measure the phenomenon of “meaning”? You cannot, because meaning is more like a relationship between persons than a static entity in the cosmos. Idealist and materialist investigations into communication fail to fully grasp the significance of the symbolic event. What is at stake in Percy’s work (and in this book) is nothing less than the very possibility of human communication itself. People may not really believe in solipsism, the idea that other minds are illusions, that you are alone in the cosmos, and that any sort of communication with others is impossible. But they may live as self-reliant solipsists, gods unto themselves, unmoored from the source of existence that gives them life and holds them in being. Percy’s semiotic realism culminates in a theological commitment to a religion that reconciles the transcendent with the immanent: Christianity. The Incarnation implies that God became man, that the transcendent entered into the immanent realm. Thus, as a fair warning, this book will take a decidedly religious turn around the fourth chapter. This book does not propose to examine all the theological implications that follow from Percy’s project; however, it does consider the extraordinary influence of Søren Kierkegaard, a Protestant, and St. Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic, on Percy’s thought. While the nonreligious pantheist, Buddhist, Deist, Enlightenment rationalist, or nihilist might find something to appreciate in Percy’s semiotic realism, they will ultimately disagree with the final stage of his thought, which involves self-transformation through identification with a suprasymbolic Someone: Christ Himself. Communication, understood as a complete fusion with the other, may be undesirable in the

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merely human, immanent realm. But it is not so if you consider communi­ cation as the union of the human with the divine. I do not expect all readers of this book to share the same religious commitments. But it is important to note that Percy’s Christianity (more specifically, his Catholicism) influenced the direction that his project took. This current chapter will give readers a brief introduction to Percy and his semiotics. I do not presume any familiarity on the part of the reader with Percy’s work. Thus, I introduce the reader to his life and background, and then I consider some key terms that the reader will find across his writings. Reviewing these terms will help clarify what Percy’s work was in response to and what distinguished it from his contemporaries’. This chapter will prepare the way for those that follow, providing the reader with a number of key distinctions necessary for understanding Percy’s paradigm.

Percy’s Life and Background It is difficult to understand Walker Percy apart from his Southern and tragic background. Percy was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1916, the eldest of three brothers. Percy’s other brothers were born shortly after him, LeRoy Pratt in 1917 and Billups Phinizy (or Phin, as his family called him) in 1922. The Percy family legacy “acquired mythical or at least legendary dimensions” in the South (Tolson 1992, 24). Percy came from a long line of soldiers, lawyers, and men of honor. Percy’s paternal great-­ grandfather, William Alexander Percy, nicknamed the “Gray Eagle of the Delta,” served as a soldier in the Confederate army during the Civil War (25). Percy’s grandfather, also named Walker Percy, worked as a lawyer and suffered from severe depression, ultimately killing himself in 1917 (25, 31–32). Percy’s father, LeRoy Pratt, also a lawyer, committed suicide in 1929 (44–45, 73). As Percy once told a student, his whole life had been an attempt to understand his father’s suicide (396). After a brief stint living in Athens, Georgia with Percy’s maternal grandmother, Percy, his mother, and his two brothers went to live with his uncle, William Alexander Percy (“Uncle Will”), in Greenville, Mississippi (Tolson 1992, 46–47). Percy’s mother, Martha Susan Phinizy, drowned after driving her car off a bridge only a few years later (98). As George Waring Ball wrote, “Tragedy pursues the Percy family like Nemesis” (Ball as qtd. in Tolson 1992, 99). Indeed, the tragedy that occurred early in Percy’s life set him on a path to try to understand human beings and their

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place in the cosmos. At the center of this inquiry lay the symbol, with its unique capacity to convey truth or lead to error. After the death of his father and mother, Walker and his two brothers were adopted by their Uncle Will. Concerning Uncle Will’s influence, Tolson explains Uncle Will’s “values and outlook” as “the first and greatest spur to his [Percy’s] writing at all” (Tolson 1992, 149). Uncle Will—a lawyer, planter, and former World War I infantry officer—wrote poetry and appreciated the arts, inviting figures such as William Faulkner and Harry Stack Sullivan over to his house. The literary genius of Percy’s Uncle Will, as well as Percy’s childhood friend Shelby Foote, would inspire Percy throughout the entirety of his life (83). Percy’s tragic upbringing would lead him to question the ability of science and technology to answer life’s most pressing questions. Science could not explain, let alone resolve, the problems of anxiety, despair, suicide, and death. Indeed, the darkness cast over Percy’s family mirrored the larger shadow hanging over the postreligious, technological age that Percy found himself in. Before turning to the Catholic Church for answers, Percy invested his faith in science. Tolson relates that Percy looked for certainties in high school, finding them in an “exaggerated faith in science that is called scientism” (Tolson 1992, 96). After high school, Percy went to the University of North Carolina (UNC), where he was first exposed to behaviorism (Percy 1991, 382; Tolson 1992, 128–129). Upon graduation from UNC, Percy made his way to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons to study pathology. Percy’s work in pathology put him in proximity to cadavers, one of which contaminated him with tuberculosis. In August 1942, Percy departed for Trudeau Sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York, to recover from the illness (Tolson 1992, 132, 148, 161–166). Tolson suggests that Percy read Kierkegaard’s essay “The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle” while recuperating at Trudeau (174). According to Percy, Kierkegaard’s essay was decisive in his eventual conversion to Catholicism. Percy confessed, “If I had to single out one piece of writing which was more responsible than anything else for my becoming a Catholic, it would be that essay of Kierkegaard’s” (Dewey 1985, 110). Later, in the early 1950s, Percy would begin to read other existentialists. Percy also discovered the work of Susanne Langer, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and the Church Fathers during his time at Saranac Lake (Samway 1999, 37; Tolson 1992, 174, 237). Percy read Aquinas and Augustine so that he might better debate a Catholic friend of his, Art Fortugno. Providence appears to have placed various Catholic friends

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throughout Percy’s life who eventually turned him toward the Church (Tolson 1992, 156, 174, 198). While not converting at first, Percy began attending Mass with Fortugno. Percy eventually received instruction in the Catholic faith from the Jesuits at Loyola University in New Orleans. Percy had married by this time, and his wife, Bunt, accompanied him on his journey into the Church (Tolson 1992, 175, 198–202). After his conversion to Catholicism, Percy never lost his appreciation of the true merits of science. Percy would suggest that like the poet, the scientist discovers being through the mediation of the symbol (Percy 2019, 196–197). Discovering being (and not a copy of being) through symbolic mediation is discovering the truth. The danger in scientism lies in the unwillingness to acknowledge any limits to what science can know or accomplish. Despite his medical training, Percy turned to writing novels, reviews, and philosophical essays. Percy spent roughly six years teaching himself how to write fiction before he began to write nonfiction essays in 1954 (Tolson 1992, 211). Percy’s two novels The Charterhouse and The Gramercy Winner were never published. The Charterhouse, like Percy’s later novels, involves a confused young protagonist searching for meaning in life (215). The Gramercy Winner tells the story of Will Grey, another searcher (230). As per Tolson, Percy sought to write about the “initiation into a Christian comic vision of truth rather than a tragic one” (230). After failing to publish these two novels, Percy wrote The Moviegoer, which won the National Book Award in 1962. In The Moviegoer, the protagonist Binx Bolling seeks to overcome despair and malaise. Kierkegaard’s philosophy especially influenced The Moviegoer. As Lawson argues, The Moviegoer depicts Binx Bolling’s transition from the aesthetic to the ethical modes of existence (Lawson 1969, 870, 889). After winning the National Book Award, Percy wrote five more novels: The Last Gentleman (1966), Love in the Ruins (1971), Lancelot (1977), The Second Coming (1980), and The Thanatos Syndrome (1987). Percy used novels to convey philosophical ideas to a large audience, especially in an age beset by scientism and the reign of technology over everyday life. Percy, well aware of his audience’s recalcitrance regarding deep religious or philosophical ideas, sought indirect means for conveying larger truths. While Percy has primarily been remembered as a novelist, Percy thought that posterity

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would remember him for his work in semiotics, which I expand upon further below (Gulledge 1985, 285; see also Lawler 1999, 97).1 In addition to writing novels and philosophical essays, Percy busied himself with other projects, too. Percy’s conversion to Catholicism granted him a new perspective on racial issues (Tolson 1992, 203–204). Originally a segregationist, Percy would later argue against segregation and advocate for racial justice. In his essay “Stoicism in the South,” Percy compares the tragic inadequacies of Stoicism with the hopeful possibilities of Christianity; the Christian cannot sit idle and remain complicit in the face of racial injustice (Percy 1991, 83–88). Other essays, including “A Southern View” and “The Southern Moderate,” argue for a reconciliation between North and South over the issue of race (92, 96). Like a good Kierkegaardian, Percy knew that real Christians did not have the luxury of simply waiting for the hereafter but had to work out their faith with “fear and trembling” (Collins 1952, 13–17). Not content with remaining in the realm of speculation, Percy translated his ideas into ethical practices. Beginning in 1968, Percy joined the Community Relations Council of Greater Covington, which sought to heal the divide between black and white communities. During his tenure with the Council, Percy served on the education committee, which established a local Head Start program and day-care center. Percy drove buses for the program due to problems finding and paying for drivers. Further, Percy helped start a credit union to assist blacks in obtaining home and business loans (Tolson 1992, 347–348). Beyond racial issues, Percy also held a lifelong interest in (and skepticism toward) psychiatry. Percy’s writings on the philosophy of communication led Gentry Harris, a psychiatrist, to seek out Percy for help in understanding schizophrenia. Beginning in 1963, Percy consulted with Harris on specific cases of schizophrenic patients and their families (Tolson 1992, 312). As Tolson writes, “Percy’s job was to read and decode the linguistic performance of various members of a special ‘intersubjective’ community” (312). Percy warned Harris about the schizophrenic’s proclivity to assume unhelpful scientific categories of understanding as well as the schizophrenic’s deficient use of language (319).

1  Percy said, “The intermezzo in Lost in the Cosmos—a primer on the semiotics of the self— is, despite its offhand tone, as serious as can be. I have never and will never do anything as important. If I am remembered for anything a hundred years from now, it will probably be for that” (Gulledge 1985, 285).

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Finally, in addition to occupying his time responding to exigencies in civil rights and psychiatry, Percy spent time as a teacher. Percy taught courses at Loyola University in 1967 and 1976 and at LSU from 1974 to 1975; the subject matter of Percy’s classes included existential themes in literature and fiction writing (Tolson 1992, 342–343, 391–397, 407). Joking about teaching, Percy once wrote, For me, teaching is harder work than writing. It is hard enough to deal with words but having to deal with words and students overtaken as they are by their terrible needs, vulnerability, likeability, intelligence, and dumbness wears me out. How I respect and envy the gifted teacher! (Percy 1991, 4)

Altogether, Percy’s work as a novelist, advocate for racial justice, consultant, and teacher give the impression that he was dedicated to improving the spiritual and material welfare of those around him. While writing his novel Lancelot in the 1970s, Percy nearly lost his faith. Psychology did not save him during this crisis. Neither did science or art. Percy told his daughter Ann that only the Church had saved him (Tolson 1992, 382–383, 413, 483). Up until the very end, Percy kept the faith. After contracting cancer, Percy confessed his readiness to die to his childhood friend Shelby Foote: “Dying, if that’s what it comes to, is no big thing, since I’m ready for it, am prepared for it by the Catholic faith which I believe” (481). Percy died from prostate cancer in 1990 at age 73.

Key Figures and Philosophical Trends Certain key figures and philosophical trends shaped the direction of Percy’s work. Percy began novel writing and philosophizing as an outsider. He felt free to read widely, searching for truth across traditions, and he engaged with both American and Continental philosophical traditions alike. James Collins’ book The Existentialists: A Critical Study introduced Percy to the existentialists, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Sartre, Jaspers, Marcel, and Heidegger (Collins 1952; Percy 2019, 10). Dostoyevsky’s ability to critique larger societal movements also inspired Percy (Samway 1997, 127; Tolson 1992, 183; Wilson 2017). Like Dostoyevsky, Sartre and Camus influenced Percy, in large part because of their ability to package philosophical themes into novel form (Holditch 1985, 17).

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Percy read Julius Friend’s and James Feibleman’s books on Charles Sanders Peirce, including Feibleman’s (1946) An Introduction to Peirce’s Philosophy, Interpreted as a System (Samway 1995, x–xi). Samway writes, “The exposure of Friend and Feibleman most likely helped Percy, particularly as a beginning novelist, to compare further the thought of American philosophers with that of their European counterparts” (xi). Despite their disparate origins, perhaps Percy saw in both Continental existentialism and American pragmaticism a thirst for the concrete and the real. As Collins writes in his preface to The Existentialists, “For their part, contemporary Thomists—notably, [Étienne] Gilson and [Jacques] Maritain—have spoken of their doctrine as the authentic existentialism, or, at least, as the only philosophy of being in which existence receives its rightful place” (Collins 1952, xiv). Percy would draw upon Maritain and other Thomists, including Frederick Wilhelmsen, in formulating his semiotic realism. Responding to the larger philosophical currents of his day, Percy sought the middle path between idealism and materialism: realism (Percy 2019, 235). Materialism failed to account for mind, soul, and self, while idealism failed to grasp the recalcitrant materiality of the world. I discuss how Percy learned from (and ultimately parted with) Ernst Cassirer, a German Neo-­Kantian idealist, and Susanne Langer, an American philosopher interested in aesthetics and symbolic phenomena, in the chapter that follows. Until the end of his life, Percy continued to respond to problematic ideas in the world around him. In 1983, Percy penned Lost in the Cosmos, a mock self-help book that satirized the quest for self-discovery. According to Percy, the development of the autonomous self has wreaked havoc upon the world since the time of Descartes (Percy 1983, 44). The autonomous self, not knowing from whence it came nor where it goes, wanders about the world seeking transcendence through science, art, sex, drugs, war, and so on. Percy called into question the myth of Progress and wondered why, if everything keeps getting better and better, the twentieth century has had so many deaths from war and genocide (190–191). One commonplace in Percy’s work is his attack on an unthinking, unreflective, consumer attitude toward knowledge. A pervasive atmosphere of passive consumerism, induced in large part by the mass media, has left the autonomous self in awe of what Heidegger called the “they,” or those who know (Percy 1983, 75, 119; Percy 1975, 54, Heidegger 1962/2008, 164). The autonomous self can surrender “sovereignty” to the attitudes of the “they” in both science and art (Percy 1983, 122; Percy 1975, 185).

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“They,” whether modern scientists or postmodern literary theorists, say who or what the self is, mere brain or mere language. For Percy, certain postmodern trends overemphasized the social construction of the self, which tends to disappear in a sea of competing discourses of equal authority (Tolson 1992, 279–280). The self may not be completely autonomous, but the self is not completely determined by language, either. Tolson writes, “Percy could not understand their [certain academics’] attraction to such French theorists as Derrida. He saw the deconstructive enterprise as little more than rehashed Nietzscheanism, an attempt to get rid of God by first disposing of grammar” (460). Despite his critique of scientism, Percy never abandoned the importance of knowledge in favor of irrationalism. Percy critiqued both rationalist and irrationalist trends in philosophy, especially in semiotics.2 At one point, Percy took an interest in the work of John Poinsot, whom Percy likely first learned about from Maritain (Percy 2019, 51; Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 179; Maritain 1948, 217–254; Tolson 1992, 471). Sometime around 1987, the semiotician John Deely asked Percy to review his translation of Poinsot’s Tractatus de Signis, a Thomist account of semiotics (Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 179). Citing lack of expertise as his reason for turning down Deely’s request, Percy nevertheless expressed hope in Poinsot’s realist semiotics to heal the divide between “neurone scientists and the literary structuralist-post-structuralists” (179). Just one year before his death, Percy confided to his friend and Peirce scholar Kenneth Laine Ketner that he 2  Percy’s understanding of semiotics differs from many modern and postmodern conceptions of semiotics. Unlike those working in zoo-semiotics, Percy did not take an interest in animal communication (Percy 1983, 85n). Neither did Percy care for the analysis of syntax or semantics (Percy 1975, 167–168; Percy 2019, 158). Percy disagreed with certain behaviorist, structuralist, and poststructuralist varieties of semiotics that neglected to give an account of human consciousness. At the most basic level, Percy thought of semiotics as a type of anthropology. You cannot merely study symbols. You must study the human being using symbols (Percy 1983, 82–83; Percy 1975, 11). Percy stressed how language use (and abuse) can lead to existential insight into human experiences, such as joy and despair, which the “semiotic primer of the self” in Lost in the Cosmos seeks to explore (Percy 1983, 86–126). On a related note, the editors of Symbol & Existence speculate that Percy preferred to use the term “semiotic” when referring to his own work instead of “semiotics.” The term “semiotic,” the editors allege, distanced Percy’s work from the “semiotics” of Morris and others (Ketner et al. 2019, xi note 9). Nonetheless, Percy has used both “semiotics” and “semiotic” favorably in his writings (e.g., Percy 1983, 82, 85; Percy 1975, 243–264). In this book, I use “semiotics” and “semiotic” interchangeably, bearing in mind key differences that separate Percy’s understanding of “semiotics” from certain behaviorist, structuralist, and poststructuralist accounts (Percy 1983, 85n–87n).

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planned to use Peirce’s semiotics to support a work on Catholic apologetics (130–131). No one has discovered Percy’s last, lost work of apologetics, which he had titled Contra Gentiles after Aquinas’ work by the same name (Rhonda McDonnell 2019, Personal Correspondence). Percy recognized the importance of realism to his Catholic faith. Like Flannery O’Connor, Percy believed that the Eucharist had to be the Real Presence of Christ (Desmond 2000, 220; Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 25–26; Walter 1993, 235). Christianity offered more than a functional, therapeutic “myth” providing individuals with the necessary means for coping with existence (Percy 2019, 27–28). St. Paul writes, “And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Co. 15:14 DRA). Realism—which acknowledges the reality of other selves, the priority and importance of being, and the abiding relationship between words and things—places necessary limits on the self that ever seeks to escape its predicament (Crawford 2015, 167; Tolson 1992, 455). The predicament of the self is its own unspeakableness. The symbol can render everything in the world formulable with the exception of the self, which I describe further in the third chapter of this book (Percy 1975, 283–286; Percy 2019, 75).

Key Distinctions in Percy’s Semiotic Realism A number of different philosophical distinctions appear in Percy’s thought. These distinctions include dyadic/triadic, signal/symbol, environment/ world, and immanence/transcendence. Each dialectical pairing does not necessarily resolve into some higher synthesis. The tensions between each pair remain intact. Though, Percy does tend to favor one term over the other in each set. For example, Percy gives priority of place to triadic events when compared with dyadic events. Typically, misunderstandings result from confusing one term with another (i.e., mistaking a signal for a symbol or a dyadic event for a triadic one, etc.). In order to fully appreciate what would drive someone to despair and motivate him to commit suicide, you must first acknowledge that mere animals do no such thing. A human being inhabits a meaningful world thanks to the symbol, a triadic event, which leads to transcendence. Alternatively, someone may remain sunk in immanence if he considers himself just like any other animal in an environment, with various biological or social needs that can be met in the here and now. Considering the following distinctions will give us a sense of what Percy’s preoccupations were and a glimpse at what distinguished his philosophy from others in his time.

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Dyadic/Triadic Modern scientists study reality as an interaction of dyadic, mechanistic forces, whereas Percy, following Peirce, sought to understand human beings as interpreting the world on a different ontological plane: the triadic. After reading Langer’s account of the symbolic breakthrough in Helen Keller, Percy discovered that Peirce had been onto the same thing as Langer with his category of the “triad,” or “thirdness” (Percy 1975, 38–39). Examples of dyadic phenomena include “particles hitting particles, chemical reactions, energy exchanges, gravity attractions between masses, field forces, and so on” (Percy 1983, 85–86). Scientists conditioned to see everything as a series of dyadic events understand the mind solely in terms of the brain: the brain causes certain mental states. Alternatively, for idealists, an object imposes itself upon a subject and causes knowledge. Nothing ought to interpose itself between the object and the subject, the materialist and idealist might suggest, because this would upset the dyadic transfer that supposedly exists between knower and known. Thus, both materialists and idealists alike can make the mistake of explaining human behavior in dyadic terms. The “neurone scientists and the literary structuralist-post-structuralists” alike understand the “self” as a product of dyadic forces, whether those forces occur in the brain or in language (Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 179). Both Freud and Marx understood the human subject in dyadic terms. Freud understood the ego as a result of dyadic, unconscious interactions, while Marx understood the subject in terms of a dyadic dialectic, wherein a material ground caused certain ideas to take hold in the subject and society at large (Percy 1991, 128, 284; Smith 2017, 42). Shannon and Weaver’s information transfer model of communication also relies upon a dyadic framework of sender and receiver (Shannon and Weaver 1949, 5; McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, 86). A preference for dyadic explanations reflects modernity’s preoccupation with efficient cause and the vis a tergo, or the force from behind (Burke 1935/1984, 230, 261). The modern reduces the Aristotelian schema of the four causes to the immediate, proximate cause that precedes any given effect. With a dyadic event, one thing follows another in a temporal sequence: A occurs, and then B happens (Fig.  1.1).  Yet, dyadic accounts can omit the place and role of the human person in the search for knowledge. Describing the totality of phenomena in the universe in dyadic terms fails because, for consistency’s sake, theorists must then account for their own behavior in dyadic terms. If he were thoroughly consistent, Pavlov would have to explain his own theorizing in terms of stimulus and response.

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Fig. 1.1  A dyadic event: A causes B

Percy believed that language use set the human being at a distance from the surrounding environment of dyadic, mechanistic forces (Percy 2019, 48–49). Thus, triadic events involve three constituent elements: (1) a namer (a person), (2) a name (a symbol), and (3) a thing named (an entity) (Fig. 1.2). All communication, failed or successful, involves these three elements.3 Percy labeled the triadic event the “delta phenomenon” because when diagrammed the three constituent elements take the shape of a triangle (a Greek “delta,” or Δ) signifying irreducibility. You cannot reduce the triadic relationship to a sequence of dyadic causes, though some have attempted to do so (Percy 1975, Ch. 1, 40, 42).4 3  More precisely, symbols involve three constituent elements at the “atomic level”; however, at the “molecular level,” successful symbolization, which results in communication, includes a fourth element: another human being (Percy 1975, 167n; see also Percy 1975, 200, 270; Percy 2019, 62–63, 159). Ultimately, this tetrad (which includes the fourth element of the other human being) can be reduced into two triadic relations: (1) speaker, name, thing named and (2) hearer, name, thing named (Percy 1975, 167n). On this point, Percy’s comments on the role of the other in the act of the symbolization might be extended and textured by Bakhtin’s analysis of the “utterance” as the basic unit of speech, which always implies the other (Bakhtin 1986, 71–100). 4  The most significant difference between Percy and Ferdinand de Saussure is that Saussure presupposes a dyadic approach to the study of communication, whereas Percy presupposes a triadic approach. Saussure’s analysis of the “speaking-circuit,” which follows the sequence of “concepts” (signifieds) and “sound-images” (signifiers) between two speakers, strikes the reader as exemplary of his dyadic approach (de Saussure 1959, 11–12, 67). Singer explains that Saussure’s semiology studies “the sign-function as a dyadic relation of signifier and signified that dispenses with both independent objects and subjects” (Singer 2017, 491). Saussure’s dyadic approach also places him, the semioticist, in a transcendent relation to others (cf. Percy 1983, 118). Several figures reject Saussure’s dyadic approach. Ketner identifies both Saussure and Charles Morris as “arch-dyadic-scientists” (Ketner as qtd. in Samway 1995, 274). Berthoff implicates Saussure’s semiotics as dyadic, too (Berthoff 1980, 199–200). Due to his dyadic approach, Saussure fails to grasp the importance of mediation, another name for thirdness or “triadicity” (Berthoff 1980, 199; Peirce 1992, 248, 255). Nevertheless, Percy still appropriated Saussure’s work and listed him as a “friend” in Lost in the Cosmos (Percy 1983, 85n). Saussure’s distinction between signifier and signified undoubtedly has merit. Indeed, the careful reader can appreciate how the signifier and signified interpenetrate and in the end become one thing: the sign (Percy 1983, 102–104). You can find the word “sign” in both “signifier” and “signified,” which you can consider as two sides of the same coin. In my estimation, the language of a “symbol” referencing an “entity” (in existence) does not quite indicate this singularity in as succinct a manner as does the term “sign,” which is a true unity of signifier and signified.

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Fig. 1.2  A triadic event: Person, symbol, and entity

Efficient causes do not link the word, referent, and interpreter together (Percy 1975, 36–37). Rather, an intentional relation of identity exists between words and things. The word “intentional” does not refer here to an agent’s intention (or volition) but rather to the immaterial side of existence that the human mind participates in (261). A real, immaterial bond exists between language in all its sensuous forms and those entities that language mediates (Percy 2019, 162, 185). As Percy might suggest, the word “water” is water in alio esse, in a different mode of existence. The perceptual word “water” carries the conceptual waterness within it (Percy 1983, 102n; Percy 2019, 185, 227). Word and thing interpenetrate, with the former transforming into the latter in a strange yet real way (Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 172). That which “couples” word and thing is also immaterial yet real (Percy 2019, 72). Thus, a triadic account of human communication makes room for the human will. All too often, naturalistic explanations of human behavior neglect the role of individual volition in shaping interpretations and utterances. When explaining why someone acted the way she did, individuals

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may quickly jump to the false dichotomy of nature or nurture. People look for dyadic explanations in genes or social environment. But the triadic nature of communication presupposes a subject capable of selecting and interpreting meaning from her world as well as entering into intersubjective communion with others. Triadicity, or thirdness, presupposes a world of meaning shared in common.5 Etymologically speaking, the word “consciousness” comes from the Latin con + scire, or “to know with” (Percy 1975, 274). The symbol couples word and thing, it is true. But symbols also entail intersubjective relationships, real yet immaterial bonds between persons (Percy 1975, 265–276; Percy 2019, 188) (Fig. 1.3).

5  Scholars have made various attempts to classify (and thereby “dispose of”) Percy (Percy 2019, 107–109). Despite his interest in and ability to draw upon existentialism, Percy eschewed the label of existentialist (Percy 1991, 375). For Percy, alienation did not result from the Enlightenment or life in a mass culture; rather, alienation is primordial because of the Fall (Percy 1975, 24). Many have labeled Percy a novelist. Others have labeled him as a pragmatist. In the preface to Percy’s Symbol & Existence, the editors write, “And it is to the pragmatists that Percy turns to support his philosophical hypothesis, his ‘radical anthropology’” (Ketner et al. 2019, xii). One cannot blame pragmatists, pragmaticists, or Peirce scholars in the least for trying to claim Percy’s work as a vindication of pragmatism. But Percy references Peirce on only two pages in Symbol & Existence. As Percy himself noted in a letter to Ketner written in 1989, one year before his death:

As you well know, I am not a student of Peirce. I am a thief of Peirce. I take from him what I want and let the rest go, most of it. I am only interested in CSP [C. S. Peirce] insofar as I understand his attack on nominalism and his rehabilitation of Scholastic realism. (Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 130) Percy continues, “I admire at most one percent of it [Peirce’s writing] (two pages) and with the understanding to [sic] that it would spin CSP in his grave” (131). Percy claimed that he was interested in Peirce only insofar as Peirce’s philosophy could support his own “Catholic apologetic” (131). In another of his letters to Ketner, Percy writes, “Sometimes I could genuflect before CSP for his genius and for seeing, before his time and before our time still, the difference between dyadicity and triadicity” (4). Percy continues, “Othertimes I could kick his [Peirce’s] ass for his deliberate withdrawal into logical games” (4). Despite some references to Peirce’s theory of abduction, for the most part Percy only used Peirce’s ontological categories of secondness (dyadic) and thirdness (triadic), eschewing notions of firstness as unhelpful (130). If anything, more so than a pragmatist or an existentialist, Percy was a Thomist (Lawler 1999, Ch. 3). Percy repeatedly cites and relies upon Thomists such as James Collins, Jacques Maritain, Frederick Wilhelmsen, John of St. Thomas, and St. Thomas Aquinas himself. Nonetheless, Tolson suggests that Percy shied away from using the language of Scholastic realism because such language would not have resonated with his contemporaries (Tolson 1992, 241).

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Fig. 1.3  Symbols mediate intersubjective relationships

Signal/Symbol Before entering into a discussion on the distinction between signal and symbol, an important word of caution is in order. As with reading any author, it is important to “come to terms” with that author to understand what he or she means by any given term or set of terms (Adler and Van Doren 1972, 96–112). Depending on who you read, you may find a different definition of the terms “signal,” “symbol,” or “sign.” Furthermore, authors in their early work may define a term in one way, and at a later stage define it in quite another. This shift between the meaning of a term is certainly true of Percy. The safest way to read across Percy’s work in semiotics is to presuppose that “signal” is always a reference to a dyadic event and “symbol” always refers to a triadic event. The word “sign” is, unfortunately, a bit more confusing and can go either way. In Percy’s early work such as Symbol & Existence, for example, “sign” refers to dyadic events. In Percy’s later work Lost in the Cosmos, on the other hand, “sign” can refer to either dyadic or triadic events. In a note at the beginning of his “semiotic primer” in Lost in the Cosmos, Percy explains his wish to use “sign” in place of “symbol” to indicate a triadic event (Percy 1983, 87n). Yet just a bit later after the primer, Percy utilizes the term “signs” when he ought to have written “signals” (168).6 Percy was not alone in his desire to move away from the dichotomy between sign and symbol. In the preface to the 1951 edition of Philosophy in a New Key, Langer expressed her wish to have used “signal” in place of “sign” and “sign” in place of “symbol” (Langer 1942/1980, x). 6  Percy writes, “It now appears that chimps are not using language after all but are, rather, using signs and responses in order to obtain rewards (e.g., bananas)” (Percy 1983, 168). Even further on in Lost in the Cosmos, Percy references “sign communication” where he really means “signal communication” (207).

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Among other things, Percy wished to change his terminology because he feared that audiences would think of a “symbol” as something emblematic or rare rather than as something more pervasive (Percy 1983, 87n; Percy 2019, 74–75). For the sake of this book, I will nevertheless utilize the term “symbol” where the later Percy may have used “sign.” For one, Percy appears to have more consistently used the language of “symbol” across his works to refer to a triadic event, even in Lost in the Cosmos (e.g., Percy 1983, 144). In addition, the word “symbol” retains the etymological significance of symballein, a Greek term that means “putting together” or “thrown together” and implies a “coupling,” a key term for Percy (Percy, as qtd. in Samway 1995, 172; “Symbol”). The action of “coupling” word and thing implies a “coupler,” a soul (Percy 2019, 72).7 Signals involve a pairing of stimulus and response, or cause and effect. Animals use signals to communicate with one another. The classic example of Pavlov’s dog demonstrates signal behavior; the causal stimulus of a bell elicits the response of salivation. Symbols, on the other hand, transcend the mechanism of stimulus and response. Symbols enable real “conception of an object” and real knowledge inexplicable in functional terms (Percy 1954, 385–386, 388). Humans use symbols to communicate with one another. Explanations of communication in terms of signals alone fail to capture the true nature of the communicative event. If you explain communication only in terms of the signal and not the symbol, then no real knowledge can occur as a result of a communicative interaction. Despite drawing upon Cassirer’s idealism in formulating her thoughts on the symbol, Langer still retained her naturalist assumptions and thus explained the symbol in terms of a biological “need” (Percy 1954, 388–389). Percy rejected the reduction of human symbol-making to functional interpretations. Percy writes: Simply to call the symbolic transformation a need and let it go at that, is to set up an autonomous faculty which serves its own ends, the equivalent of saying that bees store honey because there is in bees a need of storing honey. (389)

Yet symbols are not ends in themselves but rather means to knowledge of reality. Symbols do not constitute knowledge in the idealist sense but  It is important to note that while use of the word “sign” may shift attention away from the triadic nature of communication toward the study of signs alone, this does not necessarily have to be the case. You can think of a sign as composed of a signifier and signified within a triadic relationship, just as Percy does in Lost in the Cosmos. 7

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rather mediate it (387–390). When we know something, we do not know our symbols alone. Rather, we know through our symbols. Despite Langer’s naturalist presuppositions, Percy identifies the originality and importance of her contribution, and he claims that both Langer and certain Scholastics refused to discount the intellectual significance of the symbol (382–384). Symbols make knowledge possible and existence formulable. Symbols reveal what something is and “affirm” that something is (Percy 2019, 55–60, 212–213). In Percy’s early essay on Langer, the reader can appreciate the kernel of ideas that eventually play themselves out in the rest of Percy’s work. First, Percy’s view of art, including novels, may have followed from his reading of Langer. As a symbol, the work of art is not an end in itself, despite Modernism’s protests to the contrary. Unlike his friend Shelby Foote, Percy always believed that art serves as a means to some end beyond itself (Tolson 1992, 491, 493). In Percy’s case, his novels portray characters in predicaments awaiting “news,” a certain type of knowledge relative to their alienated condition (see Percy 1975, 111). The readers of Percy’s novels may likewise identify with Percy’s alienated protagonists, waiting for some sort of knowledge that bears upon their predicament. Second, following Langer, Percy admits that symbols may be either discursive or non-discursive—an important qualification that allows Percy’s philosophy to cover a wider range of communicative phenomena beyond the mere “discursive symbol, word and proposition” (Percy 1954, 381). A novel is a symbol, and so is a gesture. What do a novel and a gesture have in common? Both reflect a world of meaning that goes beyond the material realm (e.g., beyond the bound paper in one case or the winking eye in the other). Environment/World Percy’s distinction between dyadic and triadic leads to another important distinction between environment and world, Umwelt and Welt. Ludwig Binswanger, Jakob Von Uexküll, John Eccles, and Martin Heidegger influenced Percy’s understanding of this distinction (Percy 1983, 86n; Percy 1975, 203n). Animals, dealing in signals, inhabit an environment. Biologists may speak in terms of animals fulfilling various biological needs in their environments. Psychologists or sociologists may insist that humans also have various needs (e.g., for sex, for sociability, for community, and so on). But, as suggested above, Percy rejected the functional understanding

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of the symbol that emphasizes the symbol as satisfying some biological, psychological, or sociological need (Percy 2019, 25–29). To underscore the difference between animals and humans, Percy argued that human beings can have all their various biological, psychological, and sociological needs met and still suffer from alienation. The successful Westerner (e.g., a businessman) inhabiting the best of all possible environments may live a life of despair in the suburbs while St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta ­experiences joy in the slums of India (Percy 1983, 80–82, 122). But why? Because the environment does not matter so much as the world. The triadic breakthrough into a shared world of meaning presupposes its own unique successes and failures that cannot be explained in dyadic terms (Percy 1975, 41). Everything in the world has a name (i.e., a symbol). Even the unknown, the ineffable, and the gaps have names: “unknown,” “ineffable,” and “gaps” (Percy 1983, 99–100). Humans experience the world as a “totality” of meaning, as “all-or-nothing” (Percy 2019, 101). Ask someone to provide something that does not have a name, and inevitably he or she will fail. Amending certain phenomenologists’ understanding of intentionality, Percy states that consciousness is not merely “of” something but “of” something “as” something (Percy 1975, 272–273; Heidegger 1962/2008, 56, 202; Palmer 1969, 128). Humans know the world around them under the auspices of the symbol (Percy 1983, 100, 211n-212n). I do not know only the symbol, as idealists suggest, but I know through the symbol (Percy 2019, 184–185). I hear the chirping sound outside my window “as” birds. I taste tea “as” bitter and sugar “as” sweet (Weaver 1985/2001, 1360). The symbol makes both genuine knowledge and error possible (Percy 2019, 75, 96). For you may hear something “as” one thing when it is really something else. If error is possible, then so is truth. When presented with something truly novel, anxiety ensues (Percy 2019, 195).8 Human beings will conceive of that novelty “as” something, regardless. I hear the noises in the night “as” an intruder, even though it is nothing. I run my hand under a classroom desk and feel something “as” gum, which later turns out to be only a knobby part of the desk. I see the SUV “as” a cop car while driving down the highway, even though it is just 8  Movie titles such as It and The Thing relate to this anxiety-inducing experience of not having a name for something, of standing before the that-which-is-unnamed-or-unnameable. If you are trying to name a horror film, consider the merits of an unclear demonstrative or pronoun.

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a regular white car. Each example illustrates how I always already perceive one thing “as” another (Anton 2001, 30; Heidegger 1962/2008, 207).9 Reality may correct my misperception, eventually. But, at least at first, that thing over there has to be something. Percy describes the symbolic function’s tendency to “make use of whatever adventitial elements are at hand” (Percy 2019, 107–109). Lacking the correct symbol, another symbol will fill the void like skin will grow to cover a wound.10 In fact, another symbol or set of symbols must fill the void, even if incorrect. If I cannot remember another person’s name, I will still perceive them “as” a student, a neighbor, a friend of Bob and Larry, and so on. The human mind is oriented by default to know the cosmos.11 Everything in the world is capable of being construed by the symbol with the exception of one thing: the self (Percy 1983, 211n-212n; Percy 1975, 283–284, Percy 2019, 195, Percy 1991, 126). The self has no one adequate symbol for itself because all symbols may apply equally to the self (Percy 1983, 107). The lawyer comes home from work and says, “I am a father.” The same man goes to work in the morning and says, “I am a lawyer.” Which is he? A father or a lawyer? The same woman may conceive herself as a mother, a sales associate, a teacher, an Ohio State Buckeye, a Calvinist, an American, and so on. But which one is the correct symbol? Which one is the ultimate symbol, the one before all others, the most accurate representation of the unspeakable core of her very being? Who 9  I am indebted to Corey Anton for his usage of this catchy term “always already.” I do not recall where I first heard or read him use it. He may have referenced it in one of his YouTube videos (see youtube.com/@coreyanton). In the very least, he uses the term a few times in “Beyond the Constitutive-Representational Dichotomy: The Phenomenological Notion of Intentionality,” Communication Theory 9.1, February 1999, pp. 26–7. 10  The term “adventitia” comes from biology and reflects Percy’s medical background (“Adventitia”). 11  Human beings have the capacity to switch back and forth what they perceive things “as.” Children can see the same cloud “as” an elephant or “as” a turtle. Certain optical illusions invite gestalt switches that change what you perceive something “as” (e.g., the Rubin vase). One of my favorite contemporary examples that demonstrates how symbols resonate in our imagination to construe one thing “as” another is the popular brainstorm/green needle viral video on YouTube, found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1okD66RmktA. As the comments section of the video suggests, you can alter the sound you hear in this video by interiorly saying the word “brainstorm” or “green needle” prior to hearing the sound in the video. YouTube commenter “Edison Le” points out that you can also hear “green stove” and “bring me doom.” Just say these words to yourself before the toy makes its sound. The inner phantasm affects our perception of what we hear. I go into more depth on phantasms and formal signs in Chap. 2.

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can tell? Driven by a mind that symbolizes and therefore knows, the self tries to conceive of itself as something. As a triadic creature, the self must constantly struggle to place itself in the world and repeatedly face these questions: “What am I? Who am I?” Animals in environments suffer from no such solicitousness. Despair follows upon the lie, the identification of the self as something which it is not (i.e., what Sartre calls “bad faith”) (Percy 1991, 390). The self can act in bad faith and succumb to all sorts of impersonations regarding its identity (Percy 1983, 210; Percy 2019, 111). As Percy notes, “The self in a world is rich or poor accordingly as it succeeds in identifying its otherwise unspeakable self” as totem, as God, as creature under God, as transcendent, as immanent (Percy 1983, 122). Immanence/Transcendence Percy uses the terms “immanent” and “transcendent” when describing how the self may experience and understand itself. The immanent is natural and ordinary, whereas the transcendent is supernatural and extraordinary. Immanence is the material environment characterized by becoming, time, and change. At one point, Percy simply refers to the “sphere of immanence” as “matter in interaction” (Percy 1983, 173). When conceived of as a purely immanent creature, the self is nothing more than a brain responding to dyadic signals. The immanent self, dipped in the unending flux of history, has nothing enduring to hold on to at the end of the day. All things change. Impermanence dominates. The purely immanent self assumes the disposition of a consumer in an environment with various material needs, all of which can be satisfied by consulting the appropriate expert (74–75, 113). Transcendence, on the other hand, is characterized by being, atemporality, and permanence. People can have knowledge independent of particular situations thanks to transcendence. Whether you are in China or Texas does not alter the fact that two plus two is four. Thus, transcendence implies knowledge, whether natural or supernatural. Further, acknowledging that existence has a transcendent dimension enables you to recognize immaterial entities as real. Souls, angelic creatures, and God all exist—even though we cannot see, taste, touch, or smell them. Transcendence can result in nothing short of a mystical experience. Deprived of God, individuals seek transcendence in sex, drugs, violence, and war. Individuals will stop at nothing to escape from their predicament, the anxiety inducing inability to place the self in a world of meaning, the

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predicament of not knowing who they are or what they are supposed to be doing. The pleasure of transcendence comes not from finding the self but from losing the self, a type of ecstasy or ek-stasis, a standing outside of one’s self (“Ecstasy”; cf. Percy 1983, 124). Percy likely read about immanence and transcendence in Collins’ (1952) The Existentialists. For Collins, only the Christian faith could “reconcile the immanent tendency to remain loyal to our earthly condition and the equally importunate drive toward transcendence” (Collins 1952, 16). Some may emphasize transcendence at the expense of immanence, placing God and the supernatural beyond experience and the reach of humanity; God in this sense becomes the utterly transcendent and unknowable Other. Some may try to immanentize God, making Him one with the world in a pantheistic unity of the natural and supernatural. The Catholic Church, which Percy eventually converted to, stresses the importance of both immanence and transcendence, the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, the sacramental and “anagogic,” the “holiness of the ordinary” (Percy 1991, 368–370; Percy 2019, 234). Human experience involves both immanence and transcendence, primordial alienation (i.e., the Fall) and periodic transcendence. Catholicism allowed Percy to accommodate both immanence and transcendence in his philosophy. Somehow, symbols can both open up a world of meaning and aggravate a sense of meaninglessness. There is something peculiar about what a human being is that makes him or her vulnerable to experiencing a crisis of meaning that leads to despair. Scientism reduces symbol to signal, triadic event to dyadic event, world to environment, and transcendence to immanence. Nihilism follows from the complete reduction of all transcendence to immanence, in particular. When you find yourself trapped in an immanent realm from which there is no escape, there is no answer as to why you are alive save for that a series of dyadic events have brought you into being. There is no final cause or meaningful end to the cosmos for the nihilist. Such a frightening conclusion is echoed throughout the nineteenth- and twentieth-century existentialist literature (i.e., Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Kafka, etc.).

The Contemporary Crisis of Meaning The current atmosphere of meaninglessness takes root in the centuries-­ long process of immanentization, the slow collapse of the transcendent sphere into the immanent, the supernatural into the natural, the triadic

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into the dyadic. Tracing the full effects of the Enlightenment and gradual disenchantment of the cosmos exceeds the scope of this book. Nevertheless, I can at least indicate some symptoms of the current crisis of meaning. Much of what Percy made fun of in Lost in the Cosmos still, somehow, appeals to people today: New Age movements, televangelists, and goofy TV show hosts still manage to make a living and gain a following. Self-help books and the bizarre accoutrements of what Philip Rieff called the “therapeutic culture” still find an audience (Rieff 2006). Percy would have a field day with 23andme, not to mention other scientific means of discovering your “true self.” I can imagine Percy playfully satirizing fad diets, Netflix binging, and Tinder. The honest person should ask whether we have made much progress since the postwar era when the existentialists attempted to answer the question “Who am I?” Arguably, we have not, and the many ridiculous ways that people try to remedy the crisis of meaning prove this. Our current historical moment enables extraordinary means of escape, not simply from planet earth but also from the body. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk launch rockets into space, while Mark Zuckerberg launches an alternate reality for users to live in, the Metaverse. COVID-19 has provided people with the pretext to cease leaving their homes altogether. If people prefer to do all their shopping online, to complete all their education online, or to work completely online, it is only because the potential for this existed prior to COVID. Alienated individuals delight in the discarnating effects of the electronic media, the total separation of personal identity from the body (McLuhan 2015). The online persona takes on a higher degree of reality than the material user behind the screen. The ability to make your very self into a thing is unprecedented thanks to the advent of new media. We take pleasure in technological discarnation because it provides temporary relief from the crisis of meaning. The word “crisis” comes from the Greek krisis, which referred to the “turning point in a disease” (“Crisis”). Thus, one way to think of the “crisis of meaning” is this: Society as a whole suffers from a grave spiritual disease which, if left untreated or if treated incorrectly, will affect the entire social fabric, including individuals, families, and states. Further, a relatively high degree of uncertainty typically accompanies a crisis situation, wherein no answer to a pressing problem immediately presents itself. An individual in a crisis may not know how to resolve a problem; alternatively, an individual may, to his or her own detriment, respond to a situation in a manner that actually exacerbates the problem. A man suffering from a disease

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may take the wrong medicine. Or he may take the right medicine in the wrong way (e.g., by taking too much, or at the wrong time of day, or in combination with another medication). Similarly, each time someone reaches for the magic wand of science or a book on mental health to remedy the crisis of meaning, that person may inadvertently exacerbate the problem. Why? Because science today concerns itself with natural causes and empirical evidence. But meaning itself, though real, is immaterial and thus insensible. The phenomenon of meaning ought to dictate the remedy prescribed. In many ways, meaning is holistic insofar as it resists operationalization, or the breaking down of a whole into its constituent parts. You cannot understand the meaningful whole of a sentence if you break it down into the marks and squiggles that form the letters on the page. Typically, the sensible marks fade from your awareness when you attend to their meaning. Because the experience of meaning involves gestalt phenomena, you can sense a meaningful whole without necessarily attending to each individual part (cf. Polanyi 1961, 239–242). Moreover, meaning is a communal phenomenon. Individuals participate in shared meaning. As opposed to an unduly psychological understanding of meaning, one which privileges meaning as a private construction of an individual ego, in reality meaning operates in the realm between individuals (Arnett 1981). Words take on meaning in existential engagement with others. From early childhood through schooling and into adulthood, words mean what they do because they issue forth (and have issued forth) from the mouths of others. Meaning is an interpersonal phenomenon that resists a merely biological explanation. The contemporary crisis of meaning contributes to despair, a sense of meaningless, and, for some, an unbearable existential state from which there appears to be no escape. For those caught up in the contemporary crisis of meaning, suicide, self-harm, or drug addiction can appear as legitimate ways of coping with their predicament. A crisis of meaning occurs when most individuals in a collective search for meaning but cannot find it, or search in a manner that aggravates the experience of meaninglessness to the detriment of themselves or others. Meaning is the mortar in the house of civilization, the threads in the tapestry of society, the bond between individuals and their multifaceted worlds. Without it, nothing makes sense. Essentially, we have been looking for a remedy to the crisis in the wrong place. We have turned to biology, sociology,

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psychology, neurology, and so on when we should have turned to the study of that which makes us human, namely communication via the triadic symbol. Ever since human beings have used symbols, the potential for a crisis of meaning has been there. What differentiates today’s crisis of meaning from those of ages past is this: We are no longer in the childhood of consciousness. The ancients longed for transcendent truth. The noble pagans are, at least in the fourth canto of Dante’s Inferno, eternally stuck in Limbo. Today, the world is self-consciously immanent and perhaps even proud of it. Atheism, which amounts to a sort of wholesale rejection of the transcendent, is taken for granted. What differentiates recent centuries from the ancient past is the technological dislocation of the human persons from their bodies, a very real type of discarnation (McLuhan 2015). Discarnated from our bodies, we aim to know the world directly, as the angels do, without any symbolic mediation (Maritain 1944, 183; Percy 1991, 134). Any symbol, no matter how small or humble, mediates something. Peirce himself associated thirdness or triadicity with mediation (Peirce 1992, 248, 254–255, 260, 296). All human knowledge is mediated, and it is not an exaggeration to suggest that a failure to recognize the role of mediation in an account of knowledge will necessarily result in a large-scale crisis of meaning.

Chapter Preview Communication thus turns out to be one of the most crucial fields of study for escaping the contemporary crisis of meaning. After a century of extraordinary insights into how symbols, language, and words shape thought, we nevertheless find ourselves still falling into the assumption that language is a secondary instrument for conveying (or expressing) thoughts. Conventional wisdom dictates that you ought to think before you speak. But if we think in words, which are symbols, then really we ought to say that we should speak to ourselves before we speak to others. When people think of “communication,” they think primarily of a technical art (which it very well can be), a “soft skill” that can be mastered (which indeed some can be better at than others). But communication is something more all-encompassing, something more radical, something that strikes at the very root of our being and puts us into contact with others. To quote just two voices from the twentieth century:

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Communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of another. (Heidegger 1962/2008, 205; cf. Heidegger as qtd. in Peters 1999, 277) Communication, in other words, is not conceived as “expressing” thoughts or feelings, and therefore being secondary to them; and truth itself is ­communicative, it disappears outside communication. (Arendt 1954, 13; cf. Hannah Arendt as qtd in Peters 1999, 280)

If quoting Heidegger and Arendt reflects an unwelcome bias toward continental philosophy, I offer the following quote from the Catholic Church’s document Communio et Progressio, which was issued May 23, 1971: Communication is more than the expression of ideas and the indication of emotion. At its most profound level it is the giving of self in love. Christ’s communication was, in fact, spirit and life. (Holy See 1971, para. 11)

As the quotes above demonstrate, Percy was not alone in making communication itself a focal point of inquiry. From his work in the mid-1950s up through his work in the 1980s, Percy had a sustained interest in understanding meaning and symbols, an interest which finds its way into fiction and non-fiction alike. His tragic childhood undoubtedly set him on a trajectory to understand the appeal of suicide. He wanted to know what symbols had to do with this strange, all-too-human desire for self-destruction. It is a fact, as plain as day, that human beings alone among animals occasionally desire complete self-­annihilation. If Percy had read only analytic philosophers, C. S. Peirce, and even St. Thomas Aquinas, his semiotic realism would look entirely different. It is true that I run a risk by reifying Percy’s way of thinking as “semiotic realism,” for it is easy to consider “realism” as an analytic philosopher’s enterprise. But Percy was a strange combination of scientist and existentialist, and his work consisted of a curious blend of Apollonian and Dionysian sources. Paradoxically, his writings benefited from those who embraced a radical immanence, which, pushed to its extreme, sheds light on otherwise hidden avenues for transcendence. Indeed, it is the Dionysian Nietzsche himself who provides the opening epigraph to Lost in the Cosmos:

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We are unknown, we knowers, to ourselves … Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in our selves we are bound to be mistaken, for each of us holds good to all eternity the motto, ‘Each is the farthest away from himself’—as far as ourselves are concerned we are not knowers.12

Nietzsche articulates here one of the guiding threads in Percy’s semiotic realism: though we may be knowers in one sense, we fail to know ourselves. The second, third, and fourth chapters of this book introduce you to the figures that inspired Percy to think about symbols the way he did. These chapters chart the movement from the glorious breakthrough into the world of the symbol, to the agonizing fall into the “simulacra,” to the gratitude-inspiring arrival of “news from across the seas.” The human condition, which includes the finality of death and the temptation to evil, requires a more all-encompassing hermeneutic for communication than either scientism or nihilism can provide. Percy gives an incredibly robust hermeneutic to us. He was a masterful synthesizer of the best of the analytic and continental traditions. His gift to the twenty-first century is not telling us what to think, per se, but how to think in a fresh way about the human condition. Human beings are neither angels nor beasts but somewhere in between (Percy 1975, 113). It is in the space between traditions that Percy operated. His work calls us to tarry in this in-between realm, the realm of the symbol. We profit by knowing the symbol for what it is and not esteeming it as either infallibly good or irretrievably evil. Each of us may indeed be “farthest away” from ourselves. But it is one thing to be at a loss, and it is quite another to know it. The fifth and sixth chapters consider the importance of truth and love to Percy’s project, respectively. The symbol puts us into contact with existence and gives rise to substantives in language. We may couple real substantives to real predicates through the act of predication to represent the world around us. If we do not predicate aright, we fall into error. Predication operates as a necessary but not sufficient ground for truth. The fifth chapter ultimately considers truth in relation to meaning and meaninglessness as such. The sixth chapter concerns itself with how Percy’s paradigm relates to love and the hierarchy of meaning. Essentially, not all 12  This quote comes from the preface to Nietzsche’s On The Genealogy of Morals. It is not clear to me which translation of Nietzsche’s book Percy used, or whether perhaps he translated it himself.

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meanings are equivalent. Some symbols signify more than others. Some things and people are more saturated with meaning than others. It is the task of the artful rhetorician to identify what signifies and for whom. The chapter includes a semiotic definition of rhetoric inspired by Percy. Essentially, responding to the crisis of meaning will require us to get a handle on language and how real relations in existence find their way into words. If we root ourselves in truth and love, then we can ascend to the height of meaning in the fullest and most sublime sense. Throughout this book, I use Percy’s distinction between C1, C2, and C3 consciousness as a paradigm to structure the conversation about how symbols relate (or fail to relate) to existence. Percy explicitly references C1, C2, and C3 consciousness in Lost in the Cosmos (Percy 1983, 207–218, 211n–212n). Nevertheless, ideas relating to these different types of ­consciousness appear throughout his philosophical works. In Lost in the Cosmos, a comical exchange takes place between a spaceship from Earth and an alien species. Percy has a group of aliens question a human about the nature of their consciousness. An alien asks, “What’s your C-type [consciousness type]? Are you C1? C2? C3? Over and out. Come back” (207). The earthling struggles to articulate an answer, and it slowly becomes clear why the alien wants to know. Hopefully, you, too, will want to find out what symbols have to do with consciousness. Hopefully, after the chapters that follow, you will better understand what is at stake in the shift from C1 to C2 to C3.

References Adler, Mortimer, and Charles Van Doren. 1972. How to Read a Book. New York: Touchstone. “Adventitia.” Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-­webster.com/dictionary/ adventitia. Accessed 27 March 2023. Anton, Corey. 2001. Selfhood and Authenticity. Albany: State University of New York Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1954. Concern with Politics in Recent European Political Thought. Hannah Arendt Papers: “Speeches and Writings File, 1923–1975; Essays and lectures.” Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/resource/ mss11056dig.051140/?sp=1&st=pdf&pdfPage=13. Accessed 26 March 2023. Arnett, Ronald. 1981. Toward a Phenomenological Dialogue. The Western Journal of Speech Communication 45 (3): 201–212. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. The Problem of Speech Genres. In Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, 60–102. Trans. Vern W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Berthoff, Ann E. 1980. I. A. Richards and the Philosophy of Rhetoric. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 10 (4): 195–210. Burke, Kenneth. 1935/1984. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Campbell, Richard. 1987. Securing the Middle Ground: Reporter Formulas in 60 Minutes. Critical Studies in Media Communication 4 (4): 325–350. Caraher, Brian G. 1981. Metaphor as Contradiction: A Grammar and Epistemology of Poetic Metaphor. Philosophy and Rhetoric 14 (2): 69–88. Cleary, James W. 1959. A Bibliography of Rhetoric and Public Address for the Year. Speech Monographs 26 (3): 183–216. Collins, James. 1952. The Existentialists: A Critical Study. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Crawford, Matthew. 2015. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “Crisis.” Online Etymology Dictionary. https://etymonline.com/word/crisis. Accessed 26 March 2023. Desmond, John F. 2000. Walker Percy’s Eucharistic Vision. Renascence 52 (3): 219–231. Dewey, Bradley R. 1985. Walker Percy Talks About Kierkegaard: An Annotated Interview. In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 101–128. University Press of Mississippi. “Ecstasy.” Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/ ecstasy. Accessed 26 March 2023. Engnell, Richard A. 2001. Toward an Ethic of Evocative Language: Contemporary Uses of Holocaust-Related Terminology. Southern Journal of Communication 66 (4): 312–322. Gulledge, Jo. 1985. The Reentry Option: An Interview with Walker Percy. In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 284–308. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Heidegger, Martin. 1962/2008. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. Holditch, W. Kenneth. 1985. An Interview with Walker Percy. In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 12–35. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Holy See. 1971. Communio et Progressio. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ pontifical_councils/pccs/documents/rc_pc_pccs_doc_23051971_communio_en.html. Ketner, Kenneth Laine, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, and Scott Ross Cunningham. 2019. Preface. In Symbol & Existence: A Study in Meaning, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, and Scott Ross Cunningham, vii–xiv. Macon: Mercer University Press. Langer, Susanne K. 1942/1980. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Lawler, Peter Augustine. 1999. Postmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return to Realism in American Thought. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Lawson, Lewis A. 1969. Walker Percy’s Indirect Communications. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 11 (1): 867–900. Lessl, Thomas M. 1989. The Priestly Voice. Quarterly Journal of Speech 75 (2): 183–197. Maritain, Jacques. 1944. The Dream of Descartes. Trans. Mabelle L.  Andison. New York: Philosophical Library. ———. 1948. Ransoming the Time. Trans. Harry Lorin Binsse. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. McDonnell, Rhonda. 2019. Re: Contra Gentiles. Personal Correspondence. Received by Justin Bonanno, 28 September 2019. McLuhan, Eric. 2015. Effects of the Discarnate. In The Sensus Communis, Synesthesia, and the Soul. Toronto: BPS Books. McLuhan, Marshall, and Eric McLuhan. 1988. Laws of Media: The New Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Osborn, Michael M., and Douglas Ehninger. 1962. The Metaphor in Public Address. Communications Monographs 29 (3): 223–234. Palmer, Richard. 1969. Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1992. In The Essential Peirce: Volume 1 (1867–1893), ed. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Percy, Walker. 1954. Symbol as Need. Thought: Fordham University Quarterly 29 (3): 381–390. ———. 1975. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other. New York: Picador. ———. 1983. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. New York: Picador. ———. 1991. Signposts in a Strange Land, ed. Patrick Samway. New York: Picador. ———. 2019. Symbol & Existence: A Study in Meaning, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, and Scott Ross Cunningham. Macon: Mercer University Press. Peters, John Durham. 1999. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Polanyi, Michael. 1961. Faith and Reason. The Journal of Religion 41 (3): 237–247. Rieff, Philip. 2006. The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute Books. Samway, Patrick, ed. 1995. A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ———. 1997. Walker Percy: A Life. Chicago: Loyola Press. ———. 1999. Grappling with the Philosophy and Theology of Walker Percy. U.S. Catholic Historian 17 (3): 35–50.

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Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1959. Course in General Linguistics, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger. Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Shannon, Claude Elwood, and Warren Weaver. 1949. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Singer, Milton. 2017. Signs of the Self: An Exploration in Semiotic Anthropology. American Anthropologist 82 (3): 485–507. Smith, Brian A. 2017. Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer. Lanham: Lexington Books. “Symbol.” Online Etymology Dictionary. Available at https://www.etymonline. com/word/symbol. Accessed 26 March 2023. Tolson, Jay. 1992. Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Walter, Scott. 1993. Out of the Ruins. In More Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 226–235. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Weaver, Richard. 1985/2001. Language is Sermonic. In The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Wilson, Jessica Hooten. 2017. Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Search for Influence. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

CHAPTER 2

C1 Consciousness and the Epiphany of Meaning

In Plato’s Cratylus, Socrates discusses the correctness of names with his interlocutors Hermogenes and Cratylus. The dialogue centers around whether words apply to things by convention or by nature. At one point in the dialogue, Socrates suggests that the pronunciation of the Greek letter lambda has a certain gliding quality to it, such that the word “olisthanein” (“glide”) itself imitates the gliding movement of the tongue (Plato 1921, 427b). Percy uses this example taken from Plato’s Cratylus as an entrance into a discussion on symbolic transformation. Despite the onomatopoetic nature of certain words such as “shaggy” or “limber,” words that seem shaggy and limber, Percy thinks that the likeness between words and things (like the word “olisthanein” and the gliding of the tongue) is an illusion (Percy 2019, 76, 82–83). Words only seem to imitate that which they denote because of the remarkable process of symbolic transformation, whereby a symbol becomes a vehicle of meaning and merges with what it represents (76–81). Words and things interpenetrate but not because words isomorphically resemble the reality denoted. Rather, a relation of analogy, a proportion between likeness and unlikeness, holds between symbol and existence (Percy 2019, 82–90). Through analogy, the word becomes like a thing, so much so that a word’s conventional nature all but disappears from view. Holy and obscene words strike us because they have taken existence up into themselves (81). A pregnant woman may become queasy by the mere

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mention of some foods or objects. For her, the word “freezer” has transformed into a nauseating thing, an icebox smelling of cold air and preserved meals. The word “formaldehyde” stinks of dissection, embalmed frogs, and Mr. Hoover’s seventh-grade classroom.1 But how, specifically, do symbols (words, in this case) transform into things and take existence up into themselves? Where does meaning first appear? The genesis of meaning and thus of consciousness emerges out of the interplay between symbol and existence. In this chapter, I explain the crucial role of existence in the act of knowing. An external world beyond any given individual is an absolute prerequisite for symbolic transformation and thus knowledge.

The Symbolic Breakthrough and the Presence of Others C1 consciousness is “selfless” and faces outward, symbolizing everything other than the self “through intersubjective transactions with others” (Percy 1983, 211n). Percy likens C1 consciousness both to the two-year old child who has just acquired language and to the primitive man who painted animals on the cave walls in Lascaux, France. Both the child and the primitive stand in a type of “preternatural” relation to the world of things and to others, having not yet fallen into the “pit” of themselves (209–210, 211n). The child and the primitive innocently identify symbols with things. The symbolic breakthrough involves the transformation of something sensuous—a vocable, a mark on a page, a smear of paint, a gesture—into a vehicle of meaning. For those experiencing C1 consciousness, the sensuous symbol becomes the thing it represents in an extraordinary, unprecedented way (Percy 1975, 157; Percy 1954, 387). Percy’s second daughter Ann played an important role in his understanding of language acquisition in children. Shortly after Ann was born, Percy and his family went for a walk. Percy’s wife Bunt carried three-­ month old Ann while their other daughter, Mary Pratt, walked alongside them. A snake appeared along the way, which Percy killed with his 1  A more complex symbol, a song by Mumford and Sons, for example, can capture the essence of multiple things or experiences and present these to the imagination as a synesthetic collection. Certain types of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile experience make a Mumford and Sons song what it is; their music has a certain feel, a particular style to it (cf. the note marked by the asterisk in Percy 1975, 167). Imitating a band’s style becomes possible when you consider not only how they sing and play but also the types of aesthetic objects that exist (in alio esse) in their work.

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shotgun. When Ann did not scream or cry at the sound of the gunshot, Bunt feared that something might be wrong with her hearing. Sure enough, Ann suffered from hearing loss. Throughout Ann’s early years, Percy strove to get the best education possible for her, eventually hiring a tutor, Dorris Mirrielees (Tolson 1992, 246–249). Mirrielees’ pedagogical approach to the deaf exceeded the usual education for the deaf at the time. As Tolson writes: While the traditional method reduced the deaf child to rudimentary signaling, using words as signals to satisfy needs, the Mirrielees method brought the full symbolic power of language to deaf children. It taught them to use words as a means of knowing the world and themselves. (249)

Thus, Mirrielees’ approach confirmed the difference between signal and symbol identified by Langer and Percy (Tolson 1992, 249). Symbols enable us to know the world around us rather than simply signal our animal needs. Importantly, if we cannot hear the spoken word and know the world through it, we can still know it through written marks and gestures that we observe. The anecdote of Helen Keller learning language plays an extremely important role in Percy’s understanding of C1 consciousness, too. The story of Helen’s breakthrough into a world of meaning appears in her autobiography The Story of My Life (Percy 1975, 30). Helen became deaf and blind as a result of a childhood illness (Keller 1903, 7). Before emerging into a world of symbolic meaning, Helen responded to and used signals. If Helen wanted a piece of cake, for example, she could spell the word “C-A-K-E” in Miss Sullivan’s hand to indicate her desire (Percy 1983, 95; Percy 1975, 34). Everything changed for Helen, however, one day in the summer of 1887 at a well-house in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Sullivan traced the word “W-A-T-E-R” in one of Helen’s hands while water gushed from a spout over Helen’s other hand. After Sullivan repeatedly spelled the word in Helen’s hand, Helen suddenly realized that the word “water” meant the cool, flowing stream of liquid (Percy 1975, 34–35). Helen recognized that the word was the thing in alio esse, in a different mode of existence. Percy writes, “Helen knows the water through and by means of the symbol” (Percy 2019, 185). Being became intelligible for Helen in a radically unprecedented way because the symbol functions as a “discovery vehicle” for the cosmos (Percy 1983, 104). In her pre-symbolic sentience, Helen had oriented herself toward the water in terms of biological adaptation and did not know what water was.

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After her breakthrough, however, Helen understood the water “as” something (namely, “water”) (Percy 2019, 99). In her moment of realization at the well-house, Helen broke through into language and moved from experiencing the environment as a dyadic creature to understanding the world as a triadic creature. After learning the word for water, Helen set about trying to determine the name of everything else. On an ontological level, Helen wanted to know what everything was (Percy 1975, 173, 203, 259). Percy writes, “This orientation is no longer biological; it is ontological” (Percy 2019, 193). For Percy, Keller’s story illustrates what happens to all children acquiring language in addition to those humans who first used language in a manner otherwise than biological adaptation (Percy 1975, 38, 44). Helen’s breakthrough into thirdness, what Percy called “the Helen Keller phenomenon,” always implies the existence of another person (Percy 1983, 209). In other words, Helen understood the water “as” “water” for both her and Sullivan. Thanks to the symbol’s capacity to mediate existence, Helen could concelebrate the object with Sullivan as “being what it is under the auspices of the symbol” (Percy 2019, 99–100). By knowing the object as something with another, Helen became conscious for the first time in the sense that she could “know with” another, as the etymological root of the word “consciousness” implies (con “with” + scire “to know”) (Percy 1991, 124–125). Percy writes, “Helen Keller’s memorable revelation was the affirmation of the water as being what it is. But an affirmation requires two persons, the Namer and the Hearer. This is water means that this is water for you and me” (Percy 2019, 192). The original naming situation requires two beings: self and other. Helen Keller had Anne Sullivan to teach her symbols just as Ann Percy had Dorris Mirrielees. Anybody who acquires language receives it from others. Left to their own devices, humans cannot create their own language ex nihilo. The case of Victor the “savage of Aveyron,” a figure discussed by both Langer and Percy, demonstrates that learning to speak requires other human beings (Langer 1942/1980, 119–121; Percy 2019, 55–56). Victor survived in the wilderness apart from civilization for the first formative years of his early life. He had nobody to teach him language; hence, he could not speak. However, he did not remain outside civilization forever. A man named Dr. Itard tried to teach Victor to use a word as a signal of want. In particular, Dr. Itard withheld water from Victor and tried to get him to use the word “eau” to obtain it. When Victor failed to use the word “eau” as a signal, Dr. Itard repeated his attempt using milk instead

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of water. Yet, Victor pronounced the word “lait” only after the doctor had poured the milk—not before. Victor also expressed sheer joy at having coupled the word “milk” with the white substance in the cup (Langer 1942/1980, 119–121; Percy 2019, 55–56). That is what it is: lait. As Percy writes, “He [Victor] had hit upon the symbol—the sudden incalculable inkling that the sound ‘lait’ is the white liquid in the glass” (Percy 2019, 56). Victor discovered the symbol with the help of another and experienced wonder as a result. Unfortunately, Dr. Itard had committed himself to the understanding of language as a mere instrument, and he gave up trying to teach Victor language altogether. As Langer writes, “Young children learn to speak, after the fashion of Victor, by constantly using words to bring things into their minds, not into their hands” (Langer 1942/1980, 21). The examples of Helen Keller and Victor of Aveyron both testify to the importance of another human being in language acquisition and to the joy of coupling word and thing. The question emerges as to whether intersubjectivity precedes the act of symbolization or not. Do individuals first intuit the presence of others and then learn to speak? Percy did not think so, and he disagreed with Hocking who posited that humans have a “direct experiential knowledge” of the other without which “the very ideas of ‘sign,’ ‘language,’ ‘other mind’ itself, could not arise” (Hocking 1954, 453; Hocking as qtd. in Percy 2019, 182). Percy pointed out that Hocking relied upon an understanding of intersubjectivity as “a direct unmediated bond” (Percy 2019, 182; emphasis mine). “Hocking suggests that the symbol arises from the direct experiential knowledge that ‘We are.’ But surely it is that the ‘We are’ follows upon and is mediated by the symbolization, the joint affirmation that this is water,” Percy explains (Percy 1975, 281). Percy writes, “Symbolization is of its very essence an intersubjectivity” (281). Indeed, the metaphysics of “We are” depends upon a recognition that this is such and such a thing for you and for me (Percy 2019, 165).2 2  I am not sure if I fully agree with Percy here. It seems obvious to me that Helen Keller was conscious of Anne Sullivan prior to her breakthrough into language. Moreover, a fivemonth-old baby can recognize the presence of another, even if the child cannot speak yet or decipher the meaning of words. A parent can make a baby smile by uttering nonsense. Even dogs have a consciousness of other human beings, albeit one predominantly concerned with food, walks, petting, and so forth. Thus, it is perhaps preferable to avoid saying that Helen, infants, and dogs are unconscious prior to the symbolic breakthrough. Rather, I think it probable that their consciousnesses are characterized by a different type of orientation (one toward things being traced in the hand, the sound of another’s voice, the anticipation of food, etc.).

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The presence of the other stands not only as a “genetic requirement” for language acquisition but the “enduring condition” of consciousness (Percy 2019, 160). Conversation continues all day long, whether in utterances or in thought, interiorly or in the presence of others, until sleep comes. Percy writes, “I can debate with myself, hassle myself endlessly, and be so thoroughly conscious, knowing-with, that I can’t go to sleep. When the dialogue stops, consciousness stops. Sleep ensues” (Percy 1991, 125). All symbolic acts presuppose “a real or an ideal someone else for whom the symbol is intended as meaningful” (160).3 Percy saw the symbol, especially the linguistic symbol, as a way out of solipsism. Percy writes, “[S]emiotics provides an escape from the solipsist prison by its stress on the social origins of language” (Percy 1983, 102n). “The symbol is not only distinct from ego-consciousness, a something else; it implies a somebody else, for whom the symbol is meaningful,” Percy explains (Percy 2019, 236). Idealism, having taken the ego as the starting point for all inquiry, cannot give an adequate account of intersubjectivity. Only a “broad semiotical approach” could account for intersubjective relations and “bring one into the territory of epistemological realism” (186). Such is the importance of the word “semiotic” in Percy’s semiotic realism. Indeed, we stand face-to-face with reality. But in order to know that reality, something must interpose itself between existence and our mind: the symbol. Symbols allow us to say what things are and that they are. Symbols, which presuppose the presence of others, thus have extraordinary epistemological and ontological significance. Any attempt to circumvent the symbol to know reality directly will result in a faulty epistemology and a mischaracterization of how we actually know the world around us. The anecdotes of Ann Percy, Helen Keller, and Victor of Aveyron demonstrate that symbols mediate knowledge of existence. The child and primitive alike receive language and a world populated with meaning from others. While Percy was inspired by these examples of language acquisition, he also learned a great deal from Cassirer (1874–1945) and Langer (1895–1985). Cassirer understood how symbol use differentiated human beings from other animals, and Langer accounted for symbolic transformation through a discussion of analogy. In order to serve as vehicles for conception, symbols must be analogical to that which they re-present 3  For the Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, all of our utterances are addressed to others (Bakhtin 1986, 95).

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(Langer 1942/1980, 60–61). Ultimately, despite the influence that Cassirer and Langer had on Percy’s thought, Percy refused to accept Cassirer’s idealistic functionalism and Langer’s naturalism.4 Instead, Percy opted for semiotic realism.

Cassirer: Philosopher of the Symbol Reference to Ernst Cassirer appears throughout Percy’s work. Percy seems to appreciate all that Cassirer has done to underscore the importance of the symbol (Percy 1975, 202n). Citing Cassirer’s An Essay on Man, Percy explains how Cassirer distinguished between human and animal communication (Percy 2019, 33). Cassirer writes, “The difference between propositional language and emotional language is the real landmark between the human and the animal world” (Cassirer 1944/1972, 30). Cassirer understood that making propositions differs radically from merely responding on a biological level (Percy 2019, 33, 47). Although Percy mostly turns to Langer for a discussion of sign and symbol, Cassirer also utilized these terms, even using Helen Keller as a representative anecdote to illustrate symbol use (Cassirer 1944/1972, 31–34).5 After relating Keller’s symbolic breakthrough, Cassirer argues that “everything has a name—that the symbolic function is not restricted to particular cases but is a principle of universal applicability” (35). Percy would agree (Percy 2019, 98–103). As mentioned above, Cassirer may have even given Percy the inspiration to approach the study of symbols from an anthropological perspective, as a study in what it means to be human (Cassirer 1944/1972, 319; Percy 1975, 11). Without the symbol, human life would consist in nothing more than the fulfilment of biological needs or “practical interests” (Cassirer 1944/1972, 41). Thus, Cassirer played a major role in advancing Percy’s thought on the nature and scope of symbolization.

4  Langer herself seems to eschew any religious commitments. She writes, “That man is an animal I certainly believe; and also, that he has no supernatural essence, ‘soul’ or ‘entelechy’ or ‘mind-stuff,’ enclosed in his skin” (Langer 1942/1980, 40). For his own part, Cassirer came from a Jewish background; despite becoming Rektor of the University in Hamburg in 1929, Cassirer later emigrated with his family in 1933 when the Nazis came to power (Jensen n.d., sect. 1). Nonetheless, Percy focuses his attention primarily on these thinkers’ philosophical commitments: Langer’s naturalism and Cassirer’s idealism. 5  Cassirer does not cite Langer when relating the Helen Keller anecdote in An Essay on Man.

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Nevertheless, Cassirer’s thought on the nature of the symbol remained thoroughly entrenched in German idealism. Referring to Cassirer’s work, Percy writes, “But the empirical insights [into the symbol] are so submerged by the apparatus of German idealism that they are salvaged only with difficulty” (Percy 1975, 202n–203n). Following Kant’s lead, Cassirer proposed to explore the a priori symbolic forms that constitute reality in his The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume One: Language (Cassirer 1923/1975, 73–114; Hendel 1923/1975, 1–12). Not content with “ontological metaphysics,” Cassirer prioritized the study of the “function” of thought over and above any independently existing reality (Cassirer 1923/1975, 79). When the symbol takes absolute priority in the act of knowing, everything else seems to recede from awareness, especially existence (Percy 1975, 32–34). The various “forms” of thought—whether scientific, mythical, or religious—give shape to the world, in Cassirer’s understanding. Thus, Cassirer writes, “[T]hey [the a priori forms] become multiple efforts, all directed toward the one goal of transforming the passive world of mere impressions, in which the spirit seems at first imprisoned, into a world that is pure expression of the human spirit” (Cassirer 1923/1975, 80–81). Without the active shaping of the a priori forms, all experience would consist of chaos and void (107). Cassirer writes: Myth and art, language and science, are in this sense configurations towards being: they are not simple copies of an existing reality but represent the main directions of the spiritual movement, of the ideal process by which reality is constituted for us as one and many—as a diversity of forms which are ultimately held together by a unity of meaning. (107)

Intelligibility emerges only after the a priori symbolic forms have intervened. “Cognition, language, myth and art: none of them is a mere mirror, simply reflecting images of inward or outward data; they are not indifferent media, but rather the true sources of light, the prerequisite of vision, and the wellsprings of all formation,” Cassirer writes (93). Cassirer’s insistence upon how symbolic forms give shape to reality obscures how existence pushes back upon our a priori constructions of the world. The notion of recalcitrance, the stubbornness and concreteness of the world of things and others, seems lacking in Cassirer’s thought (cf. Burke 1935/1984, 255–261; cf. Crawford 2015, 31–206).

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Cassirer found himself responding to rationalists and empiricists alike and perhaps saw Kant as providing a way to reconcile these two opposing approaches to epistemology. Cassirer attributes the axiom “Nihil est in intellectu, quod non ante fuerit in sensu” to sensationalism, a school of epistemology that reduced mental states and reasons for belief to sense perception alone (Cassirer 1923/1975, 110; Audi 1995, 727). This axiom, which translates to “Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses,” undoubtedly belonged to the Scholastics and to the Peripatetic School of Aristotle before any sensationalists may have claimed it for their own (see Adler 1978, 135; Aquinas 2011, q2.a3.arg.19; Aristotle 2001a, 432a5–10). Cassirer’s rejection of the Peripatetic axiom matters because by rejecting it, Cassirer had to find another place to ground knowledge otherwise than existence: the a priori forms of consciousness (Cassirer 1923/1975, 110–111). For Percy, things exist both before and after human consciousness. The existence of real human beings and real referents stands as a precondition for symbolization, and thereby knowledge (Percy 2019, 234). For Cassirer, on the other hand, the “thing in itself,” reality as it is, appears as nothing more than a “fallacy in formulation, an intellectual phantasm” (Cassirer 1923/1975, 111). Cassirer writes, “[F]or the highest objective truth that is accessible to the spirit is ultimately the form of its own activity” (111). If human beings know anything at all, they really only know their own symbolic formulations. “Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself,” Cassirer writes (Cassirer 1944/1972, 25).6 In Cassirer’s view, humans do not know reality but instead know symbols (Percy 2019, 91). If humans only know symbols, then true knowledge of existence is impossible. Contra Cassirer, Percy believes that humans do not know the symbol itself but do in fact know existence through the symbol. Percy writes, “But what is not taken into account [in Cassirer’s view] is that the [symbolic] transformation is above all intentional. The symbol is always a symbol of something and what we know is not the symbol but through the symbol” (Percy 2019, 91). When symbols yield knowledge of existence, the symbol 6  It would be fruitful to consider how much Cassirer’s brilliant insights and yet faulty epistemology find their way into other fields of study related to communication. This exact quote from Cassirer appears in the media ecologist Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (Cassirer as qtd. in Postman 1985/2006, 10).

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serves “as a transparent intentional instrument through which the thing is known” (236). As Sr. Miriam Joseph has explained in her exceptional work on the trivium, the symbol “disappears” before its intentional object in ordinary usage (Joseph 1937/2002, 36–40). As other realists have suggested, the symbol is not that which is known but “that by which” existence is known (Adler 1985/1996, 14–15, 66; Grabowsky 2010, 26; Thompson 2007, 201). Percy thought that Cassirer had asked the right question, namely, “[H]ow can a finite and particular sensory content be made into the vehicle of a general spiritual ‘meaning’?” (Cassirer 1923/1975, 93; Cassirer as qtd. in Percy 2019, 91). Nevertheless, Cassirer offered an unsatisfactory reply to his own question. He failed to describe the actual act of symbolic transformation whereby the sensuous symbol becomes a vehicle for real meaning (Percy 2019, 91). Percy writes, “In Cassirer’s view, nothing is actually transformed: an unknown and unknowable something is merely given its first formulation” (92). Cassirer thinks that the symbol does all the work in the act of knowledge, rendering the otherwise unknowable noumenon meaningful (Cassirer 1923/1975, 80–81; Percy 2019, 91). “In Cassirer’s view, the interpenetration of symbol and thing is almost entirely a one-way street; the thing is specified by the constituting power of the symbol,” Percy explains (Percy 2019, 91). Unlike Cassirer, Percy believed in a “mutual articulation and interpenetration” of word and thing (92). Despite his disagreement with Cassirer’s metaphysics, Percy still called Cassirer “the great German philosopher of the symbol” (Percy 1975, 153). Langer, too, had a great deal of respect for Cassirer. She translated Cassirer’s Language and Myth into English, and in her preface to the first edition of Philosophy in a New Key, Langer calls Cassirer “that pioneer in the philosophy of symbolism” (Langer 1942/1980, xv). Without Cassirer’s Kantian presuppositions, Langer could perhaps better explore and account for the process of symbolic transformation whereby the sensuous takes on supra-sensuous significance.

Langer: Analogy and Symbolic Transformation Among other things, Susanne Langer considered the symbolic transformation of sensuous experience by the mind. According to Percy, both Langer and John of St. Thomas, also known as John Poinsot, identified the unique property of the symbol: “that it in some sense comes to

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contain within itself that which is symbolized” (Percy 2019, 74). Langer writes, “Symbols are not proxy [sic] for their objects, but are vehicles for the conception of objects” (Langer 1942/1980, 60–61). Symbols allow humans to think “about” things rather than simply respond to them (221–223). If you say the word “ball” to a dog, the dog may go and look for their ball, having responded to the word as a signal. But if you say “ball” to your spouse, then he or she might respond, “What about it?” (Percy 1975, 153; see also Langer 1942/1980, 30–31). Indeed, symbols set humans at a distance from the play of dyadic interactions. Langer writes, “Instead of announcers of things, they [symbols] are reminders” (Langer 1942/1980, 31). Symbols allow humans to think about things in the absence of those things. You can think about your food after having eaten it (Anton 2017, 52; Langer 1942/1980, 105, 135). Langer calls symbolization the “essential act of the mind” and “the starting point of all intellection in the human sense” (Langer 1942/1980, 41–42). Humans constantly interpret signs and symbols, the “warp” and “woof” of the conscious experience of reality (Langer 1942/1980, 280). Langer uses dreams and humanity’s historical proclivity for magic as evidence of the constant human “need” to symbolize experience (37–41). Upon going to sleep, the mind continues “actively translating experiences into symbols, in fulfilment of a basic need to do so” (41–42). Contra utilitarian interpretations of the symbol, dream symbols serve “no practical purpose” (37). Through magic and ritual, primitive man transforms experience and thereby makes sense of it (48, 126, 158–159).“Whatever purpose magical practice may serve, its direct motivation is the desire to symbolize great concepts,” Langer writes (49). But certain questions remain, which Percy insists upon answering. Concerning symbolic transformation, Percy asks, “What exactly is changed and into what? How does the change take place?” (Percy 2019, 75). Langer’s understanding of analogy provided Percy with a means for making sense of how symbolic transformation occurs (Percy 2019, 74–94).7 Chapter three of Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key, entitled “The Logic of Signs and Symbols,” highlights the importance of analogy in symbolic transformation. In order for a symbol to serve as a vehicle of meaning, a symbol must not immediately resemble that which it 7  I.A. Richards, too, provided Percy with the requisite vocabulary of vehicle and tenor for making sense of symbolic transformation (see Percy 2019, 85, 87, 217–218, 221).

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represents. Percy invites his reader to consider again the case of Victor of Aveyron. Imagine that instead of trying to get Victor to use the spoken word “lait” to request a glass of milk, Dr. Itard had set a picture of a glass of milk alongside the real thing. According to Percy, Victor would not have made the symbolic breakthrough that he made when he coupled the spoken word “lait” with the liquid in the glass. Instead, Percy suggests that Victor would have seen two glasses of milk (Percy 2019, 82, 86).8 The distinction between univocity (likeness), equivocity (unlikeness), and analogy (a proportion between likeness and unlikeness) becomes important here. In order for symbolic transformation to occur, the symbol must be neither univocal nor equivocal but analogical to that which it symbolizes. In Victor’s case, an iconic copy would have univocally represented the milk. But the spoken word served as an adequate vehicle for conception in this case, as well as in all human language acquisition.9 Percy calls the spoken word “a skeleton waiting to be fleshed” (Percy 2019, 88). “In the vocable, then, the transforming power of the symbolific function is provided a framework of polarities and heterogeneities in which it can detect analogies and on which it can deposit the living flesh of the word,” Percy writes (90). On this point, Langer states, “[W]ords are naturally available symbols, as well as very economical ones,” and she continues, “[T]hey [words] have no value except as symbols (or signs); in themselves they are completely trivial” (Langer 1942/1980, 75).10 Yet vocables, trivial or arbitrary as they may sound, have the intrinsic potential to take on meaning. Langer writes, “The more barren and indifferent the symbol, the greater is its semantic power. Peaches are too good to act as words; we are too much interested in peaches themselves” (75). Arguably, we need vehicles of meaning that do not overconsume our attention, which must be able to pass from the sensuous symbol to that which it 8  One legitimate question to ask is why Victor may not have had the same experience as Helen Keller in her immediate desire to go discover the name of everything else in the cosmos. After she discovered the name “water,” she wanted to know what this or that thing was (i.e., the name of it). Perhaps Victor did not roam about seeking the names of everything else after discovering that “lait” was milk because he lacked encouragement from his teacher, who wanted him to use symbols as signals for needs. 9  A cat or dog, lacking the ability to understand symbols, sees only a canvas instead of a portrait (Langer 1942/1980, 72). Dogs may watch TV, but they will not understand it. Why? Dogs see duplicates of things (e.g., of other dogs) not symbols of them (cf. 68–72). 10  Say a word over and over again, and you can see just how meaningless words really are by themselves (Percy 1975, 156).

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represents. Babbling in children provides the requisite material, the perceptual sounds, for symbolic transformation to occur. Humans instinctively babble, but apes do not (105). The availability and economy of the spoken word, combined with the fact that humans do not have earlids, make the spoken word the readiest medium for human communication (75, 116–117, 129–130). Anything may become a symbol, but due to its economical nature the spoken word works best for transforming one thing (a sight, a feeling, a touch, etc.) into another (a sound) (Percy 2019, 88; cf. McLuhan 1964/2015, 88–89). A nominalist might argue that since all words are conventional and arbitrary, they do not reflect underlying essences in existence. Some say “water,” while others say “agua.” But the semiotic realist would insist that words must be arbitrary in order to serve as vehicles for the conception of something other than themselves. As a general rule, in order for one thing to become a symbol for something else, it must be proportionately arbitrary.

Beyond Idealism and Naturalism If Cassirer was an idealist who claimed that symbols constituted reality, then Langer was a materialist who presumed that human beings had a natural need to symbolize. Indeed, while she may not have fallen prey to German idealism, Langer still gave a naturalistic account of symbol use (Langer 1942/1980, 40–41). For Percy, Langer’s presumption led her to argue in a circle. First, you recognize that humans symbolize, and then you explain this by virtue of an intrinsic need. It is as if to say, “Human beings symbolize because there is in human beings a need to symbolize” (cf. Percy 1954, 389). At the end of the day, you have not really proved anything. For a naturalist, a symbol is a biological adaptation, helping a creature to thrive in a particular environment. Considering symbols from a functionalist perspective means always looking for the need (or function) they satisfy, whether social or natural (Carey 1989, 50–56). But saying that people symbolize for the sake of competitive advantage, for example, differs from saying that people symbolize to discover the truth. Ultimately, Percy parts ways with both Cassirer and Langer because, despite their relative genius, neither thinker recognizes the full significance of the symbolic breakthrough.

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Unlike the idealist or the naturalist, Percy rejects progress or development as adequate criteria for judging symbols. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is something more than simply “a ‘higher form’” of a “native dog dance” (Percy 1954, 387). Symbols do more than simply integrate groups of people. Percy writes, “Thus, the idealist Cassirer would agree with [the] functionalist Malinowski in evaluating myth not according to a true-false scale but by its immanent role in integrating society, in conceiving the world” (Percy 2019, 26). Judging symbolic activity based solely upon its ability to integrate human communities may conceal the fact that symbols can unite people for the worse, as totalitarian states in the twentieth century have proven (28–29). Immanent, functional understandings of symbol use fail to account for the moral dimension of symbolic activity. Human symbolic activity, the instrument for knowing anything at all, cannot be evaluated by anything but the truth itself (Percy 1954, 390). Some symbols are better than others for no other reason than that they are true. Percy claims that the symbol makes truth (and therefore error) possible. Responding to both naturalists and idealists, Percy asks, “If the language symbol is not just a sign in an adaptive schema, and if it does not itself constitute reality but rather represents something, then what does it represent?” (Percy 1954, 389). The answer, of course, is that the symbol represents existence. If a word represents a thing, it is not in the manner of a copy or a duplicate. Rather, the word represents the thing itself in alio esse, in a different manner of existence (Percy 2019, 185). A symbol may serve as a proportionate vehicle to represent something, or it may not. By considering symbolic transformation, Percy shows us that words actually represent things; words have become things, taken existence up into themselves, and disappeared as intentional objects in the process.11 Percy likely came to this understanding of words, a particular species of symbol, by reading and extending upon the work of Jacques Maritain.

11  On this point, one might say that “things” is a word; however, I would also add that the word “word” is a sensible thing on this page (cf. Anton 2011, 44–45). Distinguishing between first intention and second intention, between the use of a word to intend existence and the use of a word to refer back to itself, resolves many of the problems that revolve around confusing things with words and vice versa (Joseph 1937/2002, 36–40).

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Maritain: In Alio Esse Jacques Maritain provided Percy with a way to understand the symbol otherwise than Cassirer and Langer.12 Maritain—a French philosopher and convert to Catholicism—loomed large as one of the most important Thomistic voices in the twentieth century. Maritain wrote a number of important works, including Art & Scholasticism, a Thomistic work on aesthetics.13 For Maritain, art does not traffic in mere emotions but also involves the intellect (Maritain 1930/2016, 10, 21). Art may produce emotions but only as a consequence of aiming at the truth (58–59, 65, 97n4–98n4, 128, 171–173). In like manner, in his essay “Symbol as Need” Percy argued for art as a form of making and appreciation as a form of knowing, “intellectual but peculiarly distinct from discursive knowing” (Percy 1954, 384). Maritain taught Percy that true art does not neglect the intellect but in fact relies upon it (383). After publishing “Symbol as Need,” Percy wrote another philosophical essay utilizing Maritain’s ideas, which did not seem to find its way into print until the publication of Symbol & Existence. Percy sent his essay, which concerned the relationship between the symbol and “magic 12  Maritain, Langer, and Cassirer wrote key works that influenced Percy between 1920 and 1950, making these thinkers contemporaries. Indeed, these thinkers prepared the way for Percy’s work on the relationship between symbol and existence, which began in the 1950s (Ketner et al. 2019, vii). Percy seems to have concentrated his attention on Langer’s and Maritain’s insights, especially in his first published essay “Symbol as Need,” which appeared in print in 1954. However, Cassirer published Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Volume One in 1923. Thus, Langer and Maritain themselves were responding, at least in part, to Cassirer. Langer acknowledged her debt to Cassirer in the preface to the first edition of Philosophy in a New Key, written in 1941 (Langer 1942/1980, xv, 21). In his introduction to “Sign and Symbol,” Maritain suggested that someone should write a treatise linking medieval theories on the sign and symbol with contemporary developments of his time, including the insights of the Warburg school of thought (Maritain 1948, 217). Percy, with his interest in John of St. Thomas and Cassirer, could be seen as responding to this call. Cassirer presented studies and lectures on symbolic forms in the early 1920s at the Warburg Library in Hamburg, Germany (Friedman 2022, sect. 4). Roughly 20 years later, Cassirer wrote An Essay on Man in 1944 to make his writings on symbolic forms more accessible to a wider audience (Cassirer 1944/1972, viii). “Sign and Symbol,” which later appeared in Maritain’s (1948) Ransoming the Time, was first published in the inaugural July 1937 issue of the Journal of the Warburg Institute (see Maritain 1937). 13  Percy cites a number of Maritain’s works including Ransoming the Time, A Preface to Metaphysics, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, and Art & Scholasticism (Percy 1954; Percy 2019). Tolson identifies Maritain’s The Dream of Descartes as an important book for Percy (Tolson 1992, 237).

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cognition,” to Maritain, who responded favorably to Percy (Tolson 1992, 244). If the original essay Percy sent to Maritain appeared anything like the two chapters on “magic cognition” found in Symbol & Existence, then it likely included insights derived from Maritain’s “Sign and Symbol.” In “Sign and Symbol,” Maritain highlights the importance of signs and symbols in the process of knowing anything at all. Importantly, Maritain does not draw upon Langer or use the language of dyadic and triadic to distinguish signs from symbols.14 Rather, Maritain follows the Scholastics in defining the “sign” as “that which makes present for knowledge something which is other than itself” (Maritain 1948, 218).15 A sign operates as a “substitute or a vicar” to make something else known: “it takes the place” of something else (218). Recall here the importance of distinguishing between various authors’ definitions of “sign” and “symbol.” Maritain does not use the term “sign” in the same negative sense as Langer and Percy’s early work, which considers it a dyadic phenomenon. Maritain distinguishes between instrumental signs and formal signs. Two things differentiate instrumental from formal signs: time and matter. Instrumental signs precede that which they signify, and they are composed of sensuous elements. Formal signs operate simultaneously on the intellect as they signify, and they are immaterial entities. An instrumental sign is that which is known “beforehand” and leads to knowledge of something else (Maritain 1948, 222). The instrumental sign of an orange sky on the horizon heralds the coming of the sun and the disappearance of night. A formal sign, on the other hand, is that by which something else is known (223). Like instrumental signs, formal signs still function as vicars for their objects, but they themselves disappear as intentional objects and thereby make knowledge of other things possible (Maritain 1959, 119; Maritain 1948, 223). In The Degrees of Knowledge, Maritain writes: A formal sign is a sign whose whole essence is to signify. It is not an object which, having, first, its proper value for us as an object, is found, besides, to signify another object. Rather, it is anything that makes known, before being 14  Maritain defines the symbol as “a sign-image (at once Bild [image] and Bedeutung [meaning]): something sensible signifying an object by reason of a presupposed relationship of analogy” (“Bedeutung”; “Bild”; Maritain 1948, 219). 15  For Maritain, the speculative sign “makes manifest something other than it is,” while the practical sign “communicates a stimulation, an appeal” (Maritain 1948, 253). Unlike speculative signs, practical signs do not make known an object but signify “an intention and a direction of the practical intellect” (224).

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itself a known object. More exactly, let us say it is something that, before being known as object by a reflective act, is known only by the very knowledge that brings the mind to the object through its mediation.16 (119)

Mediation stands at the heart of how formal signs function. In this case, formal signs function as mental entities that mediate knowledge of existence: Concepts in the memory and images in the imagination operate as formal signs (Maritain 1948, 222). My memories of my wedding, for example, function as formal signs. I do not know my memory itself. Rather, I know the actual past through the mediation of memories (Maritain 1959, 120). Thus, the use of signs does not imply mere “inference and comparison” but rather the real presence of the signified in the sign (Maritain 1948, 220). To reiterate, the signified is in the sign in alio esse (220). The intentional object of thought present to the mind and the actual, existing object intended by the sign do not result in two separate entities but rather one and the same entity in two different modes of existence (Maritain 1959, 121–123). The knower is really and truly simultaneously united to the known not on a material plane but on an immaterial plane thanks to the mediation of formal signs (117–118). Importantly, formal signs operate on the level of formal causality as opposed to efficient causality. The adjectives “formal” and “efficient” derive in this case from the Aristotelian and later Thomistic vocabulary for making sense out of how something comes to be what it is.17 When Maritain states that the formal sign operates on the level of formal cause as opposed to efficient cause, he means that the form of the object intended by the sign takes its place in the intellect of the knower, which yields real knowledge of the thing itself (because the thing itself is present to the mind in alio esse) (Maritain 1948, 219). Maritain writes, “The [formal] sign does not even produce as an efficient cause the knowing of the signified” (219). Rather, according to formal causality, the sign “takes the place of the object” and presents it to the cognitive faculty (219). Formal causality facilitates the simultaneous, immaterial union of knower and known incomprehensible in terms of efficient causality, stimulus and response, antecedent cause and subsequent effect. On this point, 16  Maritain uses the term “presentative form” and the Scholastic term “species” to refer to “formal signs” (Maritain 1959, 119). 17  For more on Aristotle’s four causes, including formal and efficient cause, see Adler, Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy, Ch. 6.

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Percy writes, “Knowing is not a causal sequence but an immaterial union. It is a union, however, which is mediated through material entities, the symbol and its object” (Percy 1975, 263–264). Here, Percy skips over the idea of formal signs as purely mental entities and instead emphasizes the sensuous, material nature of symbols capable of mediating immaterial knowledge. Nevertheless, the difference between formal causality and efficient causality remains important here because Percy does not believe that symbols operate in a dyadic manner (i.e., according to the order of efficient causality). What happens if we understand symbols solely in terms of efficient causality instead of formal causality? Instead of instruments of knowledge, symbols become mere efficient causes, the means for making things be at the exclusion of making things known (Maritain 1948, 233–234). Undoubtedly, signs can function in a practical manner to exhort, tell, command, request, and even bring about certain social arrangements (224). Yet, signs do not and cannot remain merely on the level of efficient causality because they belong to a different ontological plane (234–235). This confusion between efficient causality and formal causality, Maritain thinks, helps to explain sympathetic magic in primitive peoples, the use of spells, incantations, and rites as causes to bring about desired effects (233–234). Thus, Maritain influenced Percy’s understanding of magic, as well as how words come to contain things in alio esse. All throughout “Sign and Symbol,” Maritain stresses the utmost respect for primitive man, emphasizing that our intelligence does not differ in nature but rather in state from the primitive (Maritain 1948, 236–237, 252). In primitive cultures, the signified becomes totally and absolutely interpenetrated with the signifier.18 Maritain writes: In the formal-objective order the sign is thus something most astonishing, whereat the routine of culture alone prevents our wonder. And this marvelous function of containing the object—with respect to the mind—of having present in itself the thing itself in alio esse, is fully exercised in primitive man.

18  Note that Maritain does not use the word “signifier” in “Sign and Symbol.” Rather, Maritain talks about the interpenetration of sign and signified (Maritain 1948, 235). I have utilized signifier in lieu of sign in this paragraph to more closely align my interpretation of Maritain with Percy’s appropriation of Saussure in Lost in the Cosmos: the sign is a composite of signifier and signified, each of which appear in the triadic relationship along with a person.

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Words are not anemic or colorless, they are overflowing with life—with their life as signs—for primitive man. (232)

And yet, the glory of such a lived participation in existence belies a danger. The primitive does not readily distinguish between signifier and signified; rather, these two become one, “a physical interchangeability, a physical fusion, and a physical equivalence” (232). A confusion emerges between words and things. One can take the place of the other. Indeed, words appeared to do things that today we know they cannot (e.g., to the earth, to the sky, etc.). Magic appears when the imagination usurps the proper function of the sign, and formal causality becomes “denatured by the imagination” (235, 251). Essentially, magic signs operate as practical signs, which signify “an intention and a direction of the practical intellect” (224). Maritain acknowledges the dangers of magic signs, while admitting that poetic thought, poetic creation, and works of art imply “a kind of magical sign” (252–253). The genius of great art lies in its capacity to fuse signifier and signified, to present essences to the intellect, to capture the senses of things in an altogether real way. Thus, the imagination plays a crucial role in the acquisition of knowledge, which children, primitives, and poets all bear witness to. Aristotle and Aquinas agreed that, without the imagination, knowledge is not possible (Percy 2019, 96). In De Anima, Aristotle states, “The soul never thinks without an image” (2001a, 431a15–20). Aristotle does not mean that humans know images themselves. Rather, humans know by means of images, or formal signs (Aquinas 1920/2017, I.Q85.A2). Commenting on Aristotle’s De Anima, Aquinas writes, “In the present state of life in which the soul is united to a passible body, it is impossible for our intellect to understand anything actually, except by turning to the phantasms [images]” (1920/2017, I.Q84.A7). Phantasms reside in the imagination, and the intellect abstracts forms from these phantasms (Adler 1978, 134). Idealism has no place in a realist epistemology because the intellect thinks the thing itself in alio esse with the help of the phantasm (Aristotle 2001a, 431b5; Aquinas 1920/2017, I.Q85.A1). Frederick Wilhelmsen, whom Percy relies upon in Symbol & Existence, writes, “The philosopher must go through the phantasm to reach being” (Wilhelmsen 1954, 40; Wilhelmsen as qtd. in Percy 2019, 96). Wilhelmsen continues: To say this is to say, in effect, that being is usually approached indirectly. We do not, as a matter of fact, directly plunge into an intuition of metaphysical

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truth simply by being confronted with an existing reality. We sidle up to being, as it were, and approach the terrain of metaphysics by way of a long ride through back country trails. (Wilhelmsen 1954, 40)

Indeed, these “back country trails” are paved with symbols. As a matter of fact, these trails are symbols. Wilhelmsen understood a symbol as “a phantasm intending or representing intelligibility” (Wilhelmsen 1954, 40n3). For Maritain, a phantasm functions as a formal sign, not “that which is known” but rather “the means by which” we know something (Maritain 1948, 223). Percy considered the symbol distinct from but related to the phantasm (Percy 1975, 263; Percy 2019, 96, 185). While some Scholastics and Thomists might focus on the phantasm as a mental entity, Percy wanted to investigate the symbol in its sensuous, empirical existence. A symbol has both material and immaterial facets, and both merit consideration. While formal signs contain their objects in alio esse, in an intentional mode of existence, so do sensuous symbols, Percy argued (Percy 2019, 185). Like Maritain’s formal sign, the sensible symbol itself disappears from awareness and allows the object intended to appear (236). Humans conceive the world by means of phantasms, concepts, and symbols, which mediate all existing intelligible forms.19 Only Christ could know certain things without the aid of phantasms; for us mere mortals, knowledge knows no other route (Aquinas 1920/2017, III.Q11.A2). In the end, call Percy what you will but do not call him a rationalist. In the primitive as in the modern, the symbolic imagination takes its place  At least one question in particular may arise at this point: Is every phantasm necessarily symbolic? Wilhelmsen does not appear to think so. Wilhelmsen writes, “Existence is attained immediately in the judgment; but judgments necessarily entail the use of phantasms, and, except in direct judgments of existing material things, the phantasms employed are symbolic” (Wilhelmsen 1954, 40; Wilhelmsen as qtd. in Percy 2019, 96; emphasis mine). Thus, whereas the large majority of phantasms may be symbolic, the “direct judgments of existing material things” do not appear to require symbolic phantasms to know them. In other words, standing before a cup, Wilhelmsen might suggest that I do not need a symbol of that cup to know it. My intellect can abstract the form from the non-symbolic phantasm delivered by way of my senses. Percy appears to suggest otherwise, arguing that symbolization involves the application of one sensuous thing to another (e.g., an audible vocable to a visible cup), not the application of a phantasm to an existing thing (Percy 1975, 263). Even in the presence of a cup, a child cannot know what it is until someone else names it for him and calls it a “cup” (Percy 1975, 42–44; Percy 1983, 102n). 19

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not as a “crutch” in the act of knowing but as “the very soul and life of the human way of knowing” (Percy 2019, 96). The symbol, which enters the imagination laden with form, makes both truth and error possible (96). As it pertains to the practical implications of this understanding of the symbol, moderation is key. The imagination must not usurp the dominion of the intellect any more than the intellect can bypass the imagination in seeking direct contact with reality. Throughout Symbol & Existence, Percy makes clear that humans do not have direct, unmediated knowledge of essences. Rather, humans know through the mediation of something else: the sensible symbol. Contemporary man faces two temptations: (1) to return to a primitive mindset governed by the rule of the imagination alone and (2) to gain knowledge without the assistance of the imagination (Percy 2019, 126–127; Langer 1942/1980, 290–294). The latter of these temptations, what Maritain called “angelism,” afflicts all those who try to acquire knowledge without the mediation of sensible symbols or phantasms. Angelic intelligences do not require the mediation of sensible things, symbols or phantasms. As Maritain remarked concerning Descartes’ “angelic self”: “Its substance is the very act of thinking” (Maritain 1944, 183). In his critique of the Catholic art of his time, the literary critic Allen Tate explains that even the Catholic artist has fallen prey to abstract modes of thought, forsaking the concrete for the angelic (Tate 1952, 261–262). Percy, who had read Tate’s essay, would have realized the implications of Tate’s insight. Percy’s novels seek to convey the intelligibility of existence through the mediation of sensible symbols, and rightly so. Thus far, I have tried to stress the role of the formal sign and the symbol in the act of knowledge—in Helen Keller, children, primitives, and, generally speaking, all those acquiring language. But I have said nothing about what Maritain calls the “reverse sign,” which reveals something about its user. Maritain writes, “But even in normal thought the signs of which a man makes use to signify things (direct signs) also signify him (reverse signs)” (Maritain 1948, 254). In a sense, all direct signs are reverse signs, and any sign that a man uses will reveal aspects of himself to others. Contrasting his position with Freud’s, Maritain suggests that Freud considered symbols only in this reverse aspect (253). Psychology usurps metaphysics when all symbols simply and only reflect the subjectivity of their users. Recall here all those that confuse language use, power, and subjectivity, neglecting that symbols can in fact signify realities external to the self.

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Both the direct and reverse aspects of symbols matter, of course. C1 consciousness deals in direct symbols, but C2 consciousness becomes curiously enrapt by symbols’ reverse function, seeking to get at the hidden core of the self. Does the self really exist? Can the symbol formulate its essence? For now, it is enough to recall with both Percy and Maritain that the symbol can signify objects and the symbol user, too. Symbols can reveal something about the inner life, the subjectivity, of a person (Maritain 1953, 128; Percy 1954, 383). Christ Himself said: “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Lk 6:45 DRA). The way you speak reflects who you are, your personhood and very interiority. Words carry within them the reality of a living, breathing person, an immaterial soul. Is it any wonder, then, that incongruities between speech and action, between saying and doing, activate our moral sense? For when people say that which is not true, their direct signs emphatically function as reverse signs. Liars attempt to make known that which is not and, in the process, make themselves into what they are not by saying what is not. Their external speech betrays their inner corruption, if only indirectly.

Implications for the Crisis of Meaning The aforementioned discussion of how symbolic transformation occurs yields insight into the limits of skepticism. Humans do not merely impose a priori symbols onto existence, as the skeptic might suggest. Rather, humans know existence through the symbol, which yields real knowledge. Moreover, at least as it pertains to auditory media like the spoken word, the symbol must be proportionately arbitrary in order to serve as a vehicle of meaning in the first place. It is no weakness that the spoken word does not sound like that which it represents (save for perhaps in the case of onomatopoeia). We can make and discover new meaning if we recognize the centrality of analogy as a path between iconic univocity and ambiguous equivocity.

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Good rhetoricians and poets begin with existence and use analogical metaphors to convey meaning.20 In his essay “Metaphor as Mistake,” 20  Take, for example, the problem of naming a new business. Suppose that I want to start a used bookstore. I could begin by thinking about the right name for the business and cycle through a logical list of names to impose on the reality that I want to create. Such an approach treats the name, whether consciously or not, as a quasi-magical, efficient cause. Through the name, I attempt to bring a new reality into existence. But suppose that instead of beginning with a name, I focus my attention on capturing some aspect of existence as representative of my new business. If I want to name a bookstore, I want to somehow capture the reality of reading good books, the thrill of discovering another’s ideas, the smell of the pages and the feel of the covers, quiet mornings, the taste of coffee, and so forth. I want to somehow translate this real experience of reading good books into a name, a sensuous “word-thing” that I can then share with others (Percy 2019, 227). I want to capture a feeling and share that with others. I begin with reality instead of silent thought—with words, things, and word-things instead of wordless a priori forms (Gilson 1935/2011, 84–92, 94–95; cf. Ong 1967/2000, 145–146). I aim for words already saturated with meaning, words pregnant with the sensations I am trying to evoke, and I draw upon these to shape the name of my business. Importantly and above all, I begin the naming process by first considering the world beyond my head (Crawford 2015). Consider also the task of naming a child (cf. Percy 1983, 237, 249). More recently, many parents begin by starting with a name, especially a novel one, to see what sticks. Parents can consult dictionaries filled with a variety of different names for children. Like the idealist, some parents can attempt to go from wordless, non-symbolic thought directly to things (Gilson 1935/2011, 84-92, 94-95). Parents emphasize picking a name that will allow their son or daughter to be a true individual, completely unlike the others. This approach may obscure the fact that, in reality, regardless of his or her novel name, a newborn child is already a person utterly unlike any other that has come before. When a child is conceived, a new soul enters into existence. Contrast this approach to finding novel names with an older approach, one that looks to tradition for names of holy and virtuous people. Mary and her friend also named Mary differ from one another at the existential level, even if the ordinariness of their names appears commonplace. Certain proper names undoubtedly appear stronger than others, but only because those who bore these names in the past really and truly embodied desirable characteristics. A strong proper name carries with it real existential characteristics of those that came before. Naming a new business or a saint-to-be necessitates beginning with the desired end in mind. Names can have a performative aspect to them; they can indeed function like magic signs and have a practical effect on the world. When you name someone Joseph after St. Joseph, you are indeed saying: “Go and be like him.” A good name is a eulogy to the person that previously bore it (Aristotle 1984, 1367b30–1368a5.). Only, a semiotic realist must insist that existence dictates the limits of such performativity and intention. I can call myself Joe Biden on Halloween or during a comedy skit or in a funny conversation. But I cannot call myself Joe Biden and expect you to treat me like the president. I can say that my coffee shop has the “world’s best cup of coffee,” but you (and others) will find out the truth of that statement after you have had your first cup. The realist insists that ends really exist in nature. You do not make an acorn into a peach by calling it one any more than you can make yourself into a British citizen by calling yourself one.

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Percy discusses what makes for a good metaphor, which lies between univocity and equivocity, between sameness and difference. Percy tells a story about a time when as a boy he went hunting with his father and a black guide. Percy writes, “At the edge of some woods we saw a wonderful bird. He flew as swift and straight as an arrow, then all of a sudden folded his wings and dropped like a stone into the woods” (Percy 1975, 64). Percy asked the guide what the bird was. The guide replied that the bird was a “blue-dollar hawk.” Later, Percy’s father offered a correction and stated that the bird was actually a “blue darter hawk.” Percy writes, “I can still remember my disappointment at the correction” (64). The correction disappointed the young Percy because “blue darter” was too univocally alike that which it was applied to. The word “darter” tells us what the bird does (it darts) not what it is (71–72). In like manner, a shoddy poet might call a cloud “fleecy.” Percy writes, “You have told me nothing. Fleecy cloud, leg of a table, are tautologies, a regurgitation of something long since digested” (Percy 2019, 221). Having identified that univocal metaphors do not reveal anything new, some go to the opposite extreme and stress equivocity. Percy identifies the equivocal with the obscure and ambiguous. The surrealists often attempted to yield meaning through bizarre associations (Percy 2019, 216–217). A surrealist poet might associate a rifle with a stick of gum or a Billy goat with earwax. None of these associations readily make sense. The symbol and thing represented are too equivocal, too unlike, too ambiguous (87). The paintings of Salvador Dalí exemplify the wholly strange tactics that the surrealists employed. Why is this clock melting? Why does this elephant have such long legs? The surrealist might get away with their exercise in equivocity for a period of time; after a while, however, as Percy writes, “[T]he jig is up” (Percy 2019, 217). The surrealist poet relies upon the “stored up energies of words” to achieve their effects (217). Yet, if the poet does not know what he or she means, or if the audience does not think that the poet knows what he or she means, then intersubjective communion cannot succeed (217). Thus, good metaphors involve “unlike-but-analogous” symbols (Percy 2019, 84, 120). Analogical metaphors excel because analogies inhere in the things themselves. As Langer suggests, true propositions express real relations in existence (Langer 1942/1980, 68). Consider for a moment the example of classical music. Bach did not invent or create music ex nihilo but rather discovered scales and melodies in reality. He invented pieces of music in the original sense of the term “invention,” from the

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Latin invenire, which means to find or discover. Real proportions hold between notes on a scale. The third and the fifth note do in fact relate to the root note in a pleasing way. On this point, Allen Tate writes, “Nature offers the symbolic poet clearly denotable objects in depth and in the round, which yield the analogies to higher syntheses” (Tate 1952, 262; Tate as qtd. in Percy 2019, 206). The mind delights in analogies because, through analogy, we discover new facets of existence (Percy 2019, 85, 222). “All men by nature desire to know,” Aristotle writes in the opening passage of his Metaphysics (Aristotle 2001b, 980a). Analogies help consummate this desire to know, which amounts to nothing less than a desire for contact with reality itself.21 Altogether, symbols have the potential to represent things as they really are for other people. Symbols may fall short in conveying something meaningful; they may be too univocally alike or too equivocally different from that which they represent. Nevertheless, the implications for the crisis of meaning are plain. If symbols can represent real things, it is not a stretch to think that sometimes they do. Words do not function as mere human constructs atop a chaotic void, an unreachable and ominous noumenon. Rather, words mix mind and matter, form and content, to convey real knowledge of that which is, was, or might be. Alain de Lille’s poetic verse attests to the importance of analogy in the cognitive process and in creation: Omnis mundi creatura      All of the world a creature quasi liber & pictura       like a book and a picture nobis est & speculum;       and a mirror, it is for us; nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis,    our life, our death nostri status, nostrae sortis     for us having been set, our lot fidele signaculum.        a trustworthy sign. (Lille as qtd. in McLuhan 2011, 22; translation mine)

To scholars of old and those of a medieval mindset, the world itself stands as a fidele signaculum, a trustworthy sign, filled with patterns and forms open to the discerning mind. Recognition of such patterns tempers the impulse for humanity to make and remake itself in its own image. Humans do not know existence directly but “mediately, through the very thing the 21  As Simone Weil puts it: “Truth is not the object of love but reality. To desire truth is to desire direct contact with a piece of reality. To desire contact with a piece of reality is to love” (Weil 1949/2002, 250–251).

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world is made of” (Percy 2019, 236–237). Humans know through sensuous media: “the sensuous symbol, the sound, the gesture, the icon” (236). Humans know existence through existence. Those having passed into C1 consciousness suffer an epiphany. The world as such is meaningful. Individual communicative exchanges may be meaningful, true. You may or may not understand me when I say, “This is water.” But what is more (and this is truly remarkable) is that the world as a whole may also appear as meaningful. Matter (all matter) itself has the potential to carry meaning, and that fact in itself is meaningful. The whole world not only contains symbols but is itself symbolic. If the world itself is symbolic, then who made it? And what does the world itself re-present? C1 consciousness peers outward, bearing witness to and concelebrating the strange mystery and splendor of being with others, not yet having been lured by the seductions of the autonomous self.

References Adler, Mortimer J. 1978. Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy. New York: Touchstone. ———. 1985/1996. Ten Philosophical Mistakes. New York: Touchstone. Anton, Corey. 2011. Communication Uncovered: General Semantics and Media Ecology. Fort Worth: Institute of General Semantics. ———. 2017. Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Synergism: Notes on ‘Lanigan’s “Encyclopedic Dictionary”’. Atlantic Journal of Communication 25 (1): 48–63. Aquinas, St. Thomas. 1920/2017. Summa Theologiae. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 2nd and Revised edition. New Advent, ed. Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/. Accessed 27 March 2023. ———. 2011. Quaestiones Disputatae De Veritate. Trans. Roberto Busa. Leonine edition. Corpus Thomisticum, Fundación Tomás de Aquino, Enrique Alarcon. http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/qdv02.html. Aristotle. 1984. Rhetoric. In The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle, Trans. W. Rhys Roberts, 1–218. New York: The Modern Library. ———. 2001a. De Anima. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon and Trans. J.A. Smith, 535–603. New York: The Modern Library. ———. 2001b. Metaphysica. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon and Trans. W.D. Ross, 689–926. New York: The Modern Library. Audi, Robert, ed. 1995. Sensationalism. In The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 727. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Trans. Vern W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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“Bedeutung.” Collins Dictionary. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/german-english/bedeutung. Accessed 27 March 2023. “Bild.” Collins Dictionary. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/german-english/bild. Accessed 27 March 2023. Burke, Kenneth. 1935/1984. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carey, James W. 1989. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. New York: Routledge. Cassirer, Ernst. 1923/1975. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume One: Language. Trans. Ralph Manheim. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 1944/1972. An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Crawford, Matthew. 2015. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Friedman, Michael. 2022. Ernst Cassirer. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cassirer/. Accessed 27 March 2023. Gilson, Étienne. 1935/2011. Methodical Realism: A Handbook for Beginning Realists. Trans. Philip Trower. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Grabowsky, Eric. 2010. Russell Kirk and the Rhetoric of Order. Duquesne University, PhD dissertation. Hendel, Charles W. 1923/1975. Introduction. In The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume One: Language, Trans. Ralph Manhiem, 1–65. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hocking, William Ernest. 1954. Marcel and the Ground Issues of Metaphysics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 14 (4): 439–469. Jensen, Anthony K. n.d. Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource. https://www.iep.utm.edu/ cassirer/. Accessed 28 March 2023. Joseph, Sister Miriam. 1937/2002. In The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric: Understanding the Nature and Function of Language, ed. Marguerite McGlinn. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books. Keller, Helen. 1903. The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company. Ketner, Kenneth Laine, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, and Scott Ross Cunningham. 2019. Preface. In Symbol & Existence: A Study in Meaning, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, and Scott Ross Cunningham, vii–xiv. Macon: Mercer University Press. Langer, Susanne K. 1942/1980. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Maritain, Jacques. 1930/2016. Art & Scholasticism with Other Essays. Tacoma: Cluny Media. ———. 1937. Sign and Symbol. Trans. Mary Morris. Journal of the Warburg Institute 1 (1): 1–11.

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———. 1944. The Dream of Descartes. Trans. Mabelle L.  Andison. New York: Philosophical Library. ———. 1948. Sign and Symbol. In Ransoming the Time, Trans. Harry Lorin Binsse, 217–254. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ———. 1953. Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry. New York: Pantheon Books. ———. 1959. The Degrees of Knowledge. London: Geoffrey Bles. McLuhan, Marshall. 1964/2015. In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, ed. W. Terrence Gordon. Berkeley: Gingko Press. McLuhan, Eric. 2011. Francis Bacon’s Theory of Communication and Media. In Theories of Communication, ed. Eric McLuhan. New York: Peter Lang. Ong, Walter J. 1967/2000. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. Albany: SUNY Press. Percy, Walker. 1954. Symbol as Need. Thought: Fordham University Quarterly 29 (3): 381–390. ———. 1975. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other. New York: Picador. ———. 1983. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. New York: Picador. ———. 1991. Signposts in a Strange Land, ed. Patrick Samway. New York: Picador. ———. 2019. Symbol & Existence: A Study in Meaning, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, and Scott Ross Cunningham. Macon: Mercer University Press. Plato. 1921. Cratylus. In Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12, Trans. Harold N.  Fowler. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. http://www.perseus.tufts. edu/hopper/text?doc=Plat.+Crat. Accessed 27 March 2023. Postman, Neil. 1985/2006. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books. Tate, Allen. 1952. The Symbolic Imagination: A Meditation on Dante’s Three Mirrors. The Kenyon Review 14 (2): 256–277. Thompson, Ewa M. 2007. Ways Out of the Postmodern Discourse. Modern Age: A Quarterly Review 45 (3): 195–207. Tolson, Jay. 1992. Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Weil, Simone. 1949/2002. The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind. Trans. Arthur Wills. London: Routledge. Wilhelmsen, Frederick D. 1954. The Philosopher and the Myth. The Modern Schoolman 32 (1): 39–55.

CHAPTER 3

C2 Consciousness and the Unspeakable Self

Have you ever listened to yourself on a video or an audio recording and wondered why your recorded voice sounded so strange (Percy 1983, 7)? Perhaps the sound of your voice made you cringe. But here is the question: Does your recorded voice sound like you? If not, why not? A standard scientific answer might suggest that your recorded voice sounds different because you usually hear your voice from both the inside and the outside rather than from just the outside, as in a recording (Hullar 2009). Physics and physiology seem to explain the matter in a relatively satisfactory way, no? It makes perfect sense that the vibrations from inside your head—the rattling of the vocal cords, the trembling of the skull, the movements of the delicate mechanisms within the ear, and so on—change the perception of the sound. However, how do you account for the relative dissatisfaction that you experience when you hear your recorded voice? Is it simply because your recorded voice does not conform with your expectations of how you should sound (Jaekl 2018)? Anyway, for that matter, how should you sound? Why does it make a difference whether you speak in a high-pitched or a low-pitched voice? There must be some evolutionary explanation here (e.g., lower-pitched voices attract mates, threaten rivals, warn predators, etc.) to account for this, no? As it turns out, I suspect that my voice has something to do with my identity, who I think I am, and how I conceive of myself.

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In the previous chapter, I explored C1 consciousness, wherein symbols function as vehicles for the conception of objects and yield knowledge of the real world. In this chapter, I will explore C2 consciousness, that stage of consciousness where symbols fail to enlighten and inspire as they do in C1. For C2, the novelty and joy of naming have worn off. Passive, a priori symbolic constructions of the world dominate this stage of consciousness (Percy 2019, 131). Further, C2 faces the predicament of having to find an adequate symbol to construe the self, an impossible task. Below, I review some of the primary characteristics of C2 consciousness and then discuss how Jean-Paul Sartre and Gabriel Marcel informed Percy’s understanding of it. After that, I consider Martin Heidegger’s influence on Percy’s semiotic realism. Reviewing the thought of these existentialists leads to a better appreciation of Percy’s resistance to scientism. While many scientific and Enlightenment-minded individuals acknowledge the dangers of eschewing objectivity, perhaps too few realize the pitfalls of neglecting the subjective dimension of human experience, which existentialism thematized and explored so well (cf. 7). The incongruence between symbol and existence, between what we think is the case and what actually is, between what we want to be and what we are (or what others tell us we are) can cause intense dissatisfaction. People aim to find one, overarching symbol to rest in. However, existence can impinge on the many images we hold dear about ourselves. The curse of King Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold, seems a propos here. Instead of gold, however, everything becomes a symbol—even oneself. This chapter concerns the limits of symbol use and the fixing of oneself into a thing, which symbols enable you to do. In this chapter, we will travel through the murkier territory of ignorance, self-­ deception, and error.

The Unspeakable Self If the joyful concelebration of existence with others characterizes C1 consciousness, then boredom, ignorance, anxiety, shame, and alienation belong to C2 consciousness, a falling into the “pit” of the self (Percy 1983, 34–35, 70–72, 78, 104–105, 108, 209–213). For C2 consciousness, the names of things, and thus the world, have become devastatingly familiar. Boredom ensues when everything already has a name (Percy 2019, 100). That is just a “book,” a “university,” a “bed,” a “desk,” an “egg,” a “bird,” and so on. Habitualization strips away the magnificent

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particularity of existence and impedes wonder (Percy 2019, 105; Shklovsky 1965, 12). Reality undergoes a thingification, the decomposition of existence into simulacra, instances of things already known (Percy 2019, 104–105). As Percy explains, “The very means by which we know are the same means by which we fall prey to ignorance” (105). Humans know through the mediation of symbols. But these same symbols later degenerate, obscuring existence and inducing ignorance. As discussed previously, sensible words become things in alio esse and mediate knowledge of existence. However, when the novelty of naming fades, things appear as mere instances of their respective symbols (Percy 1983, 104–105). Through usage and familiarity, a symbol may become a “semantic husk serving rather to conceal than to disclose what it designates” (Percy 1975b, 206). Furthermore, since everything already has a name, anxiety follows when something truly strange appears that resists being construed as an instance of this or that thing previously known (Percy 2019, 101). You see an indistinct mass in the middle of the road. Is it a bag? A bottle? What is it? Alas, it is just a plastic fruit container.1 If this anxiety applies to external objects that we see but cannot adequately name, how much more does it apply to the self with whom we must constantly live? For Percy, the only alien in the cosmos is the self who uses symbols, the true stranger and anxiety-inducing existent that resists symbolic formulation (Percy 1983, 164, 253). The self, uncertain of how to place itself in the world, longs for a permanent “semiotic habiliment for itself” (108).2 But symbols offer no such enduring respite. As a person matures and grows bored with naming things in the world, she turns her attention toward formulating herself through symbolic means. Percy observes how seven-year-old children experience shame and radical self-consciousness in a manner completely foreign to four-year-old children (Ames et al. 1979, 38–39; Gesell and Ilg 1946, 320–321; Percy 1983, 107n–108n). An older child, having named and thus placed everything in the world, must now contend with the problem of how to place herself in the world. Yet, Percy thinks it is impossible to know one’s own 1  When introducing students to phenomenology, Dr. Erik Garrett would give the example of mistaking a tire for a snake, an error that could have real-world consequences (e.g., I leap into oncoming traffic to avoid the snake that is actually just a tire). Living in a tropical environment, I often see snakes that are not snakes. 2  The word “habiliment” is a propos insofar as “habiliment” refers to clothing, weapons, and/or ornaments that the self uses to protect itself (Joseph 1937/2002, 25). In the mystery of its own presence, the self can feel unhidden, undisguised, unclothed, unarmed.

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self through the mediation of the symbol (Percy 1983, 211n, 248). When you do not have an answer for what something is, especially when that thing is the closest possible thing to you (i.e., your very self), shame ensues. Percy writes, “The self perceives itself as naked. Every self is ashamed of itself” (108). The unknowability of the self follows from its unspeakability (Percy 1983, 106–107). The self cannot render itself presentable, formulable, or darstellbar through the mediation of the symbol (Percy 1975b, 283, 286; Percy 2019, 75).3 The self resists conceivability not because no symbol applies. Rather, all symbols may apply. “[O]ne’s self exists for oneself on a semantic ∝ to—∝ axis, the best and the worst, the blessed and the damned, and is capable of temporary fixation on any position on this axis,” Percy writes (Percy 1983, 212). Everything from personality tests to self-help books attests to the self’s attempt to place itself in the world “as” something: as a go-getter, as timid, as self-confident, as an INFJ-T personality type, and so on (“Advocate Personality”). Percy illustrates how someone can identify with many different and even contradictory symbols. Lost in the Cosmos begins with a satirical critique of astrology. Percy invites you to imagine reading a horoscope for your particular astrological sign (e.g., Cancer, Gemini, and Taurus). As you read, imagine that you identify with what the horoscope has to say about you. “Hm, you say, quite true. I’m like that” (Percy 1983, 6). However, later you realize that you had read the wrong horoscope, one for a different astrological sign. You go on to read the horoscope for your actual astrological sign, but this horoscope, too, seems to describe you. Why, Percy asks, do people consider both the first and the second horoscope as accurately describing themselves (5–6)? The reason lies in the tendency of the self to function like a vacuole, an amoeba, a nought that desperately tries to place itself in the world as something and inform its own nothingness (20–26, 210). This description may sound extreme, but the biological metaphors that Percy uses (“vacuole” and “amoeba”) help to drive home the consumptive nature of this process. The self, in Percy’s words, is “referentially mobile,” moving futilely from signified to signified to inform its own nothingness (211n–212n). In previous centuries, the self might identify as an animal (in a totemistic sense), as Nature (in a pantheistic sense), or even as under God (in a 3  The Freudian term “darstellbar” appears in Langer’s Feeling and Form, which Percy references in Symbol & Existence (Langer 1953, 241; Percy 2019, 75).

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Judeo-Christian sense) (Percy 1983, 109–112). In the current historical moment, conventional wisdom invites you to invent yourself however you like, to embark on a causa sui (self-caused) project (Anton 2010, 19–28; Becker 1973/1997). Such a project cannot but end in despair. Too many symbols apply to you, and no one ultimate authority can tell you which is correct. You and I and everyone else have become the authorities on what constitutes correctness. Percy tries to help his readers, those afflicted by the contemporary crisis of meaning, by hinting at the limits (and folly) of using symbols to find your “true” self. The modern autonomous self does not simply attempt to be a law unto himself, as the words “autos” (“self”) and “nomos” (“law”) imply (Guthrie 1971, 55–57). Rather, the autonomous self attempts the impossible: to be the ultimate self-namer, to name himself once and for all. When Percy insists on the unknowability of the self, he inverts modern agnosticism. Instead of saying that we cannot know God, Percy insists that we cannot know the self (Percy 1983, 107). This inversion is fitting because the modern autonomous self has not simply killed God but taken His place (Genesis 3:5 DRA; Nietzsche 1974, 181–182). With the help of symbols, the intellect may become and hence know many things (Aristotle 2001, 431b20–432a5). But the self cannot know itself qua itself through the symbol. Such is the irony of the semiotic predicament.

Unspeakability: A Semiotic (and Existential) Predicament The word “predicament” frequently turns up across Percy’s writings. Percy states, “The motto of the symbolic (and existential) predicament is: This is a chair for you and me, that is a tree, everything is something, you are what you are, but what am I?” (Percy 1975b, 284). Every individual self must answer this question: “[B]ut what am I?” Evolutionary science may try to help answer this question by suggesting that you are nothing but an animal with a particular set of needs. Everyone, they might suggest, needs food, water, sex, companionship, interpersonal relationships, self-­ actualization, and so on. Recall here Maslow and his hierarchy (Arnett and Arneson 1999, Ch. 6). But the predicament of a human being in a world is not the same as that of an animal in an environment. Even after having satisfied all the various needs delineated by modern science, the self may still experience a type of dislocation (Percy 1983, 80–82, 122; Percy

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1975b, 111). The wealthy but alienated suburbanite exemplifies this dislocation (cf. Percy 1980). The sciences cannot speak to an individual’s predicament because they understand particulars in terms of general theories or laws (Percy 1975b, 22; Percy 2019, 7). Those who abstract themselves from their concrete circumstances in the name of “objectivity” (e.g., scientists) fail to recognize their own predicament, which results in perhaps the direst situation of all (Percy 1975b, 111, 130). Modern science, for all the glorious knowledge it can yield about quasars, pulsars, viruses, and nuclear fusion, cannot help the self to pick the right symbol. Science can provide authoritative pronouncements about dyadic phenomena, but it does nothing to help the self in search of a symbol to represent itself. Science cannot calm the tumult caused by the referential mobility of the semiotic self. Following Kierkegaard, Percy suggests that only those who recognize their despair can hope (Percy 1975b, 115). A passage from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death, which appears as the opening epigraph to Percy’s The Moviegoer, reads: “[T]he specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair.”4 In other words, you must understand that you are in a predicament. The first step in consciously resolving any problem is to acknowledge that it is, in fact, a problem. Content consumers who amuse and distract themselves with endless rounds of entertainment may see no need in trying to understand why they are alive and what the meaning of life is (Percy 1975b, 115; Postman 1985/2006). Their answer to the crisis of meaning is to deny its presence, divert themselves, or accept the conventional wisdom to define for themselves who they are. Without knowing their predicament, C2 consciousnesses cannot seek a remedy (Percy 1983, 215). Percy defines a consumer as precisely that sort of passive entity in a highly technological society who consumes experiences without pausing to question his or her very existence (Percy 1975b, 61, 115). A traveler unaware that she has lost her bearings will not strive to put herself back on course. The modern self, or C2 consciousness, does not know that he or she is truly lost in the cosmos (Percy 1983). If C2 consciousnesses knew their predicament, they might await “news from 4  The 1946 edition of Walter Lowrie’s translation of The Sickness Unto Death appears in Percy’s library at UNC Chapel Hill. In the 1941 edition, this passage reads: “[T]he specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unconscious of being despair” (Kierkegaard 1941, 71).

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across the seas,” a message in a bottle, a transcendent sign of deliverance from beyond themselves (Percy 1975b, 119–149). In order to return home, C2 consciousnesses must somehow circumvent idolatry—the ultimate identification of oneself with a symbol (Percy 2019, 118). Despite the inability to find our true selves in a symbol, we try to, anyway. Indeed, we can easily adopt a consumptive attitude toward the symbols of technics and state. Percy explains how an individual in a technical society can thoroughly identify with his profession. For example, someone who has become a medical doctor has undergone a type of transformation and “has participated in another identity” (Percy 2019, 127–129). After graduating from medical school, a roentgenologist, a specialist in radiology, can seem to possess magical powers, such as the ability to cure a patient by making “a scientific pass with his paraphernalia and his ray” (Percy 1975b, 206). In today’s world, a doctor becomes an authorized dealer of powerful efficient causes capable of saving, and in some cases ending, lives. In primitive tribes, totemism involves the identification of the self with something in the surrounding milieu, such as an animal, whereas in the contemporary world totemism appears as role-modeling, the identification of the self with an exemplary individual or professional (Percy 1983, 109).5 It is what the doctor is that incites a desire for imitation. Many people want to be doctors, but perhaps they have no love for the practice of medicine or helping others. Similarly, many people want to be writers, but they hate writing. This sort of ultimate identification of oneself with a profession may seem benign, but it can have disastrous consequences. A certain tragic irony applies to the successful doctor, novelist, or lawyer who has finally “made it” but who nevertheless feels an intense and inarticulate dissatisfaction with his life, even to the point of wanting to end it. Complete submersion in a technical identity can blind you from recognizing your semiotic predicament. Identification with a profession, and even supreme accomplishment within it, cannot fulfill an individual’s deepest desire (i.e., unending happiness and eternal peace). The autonomous self can also fall prey to and identify with myths of the state (Percy 1983, 157, 189–191; Percy 2019, 126–127). Totalitarian governments in 5  Compare the tribesman who says, “I am a parakeet” with the modern autonomous self who says, “I am a doctor.” Both utterances couple the self with some other immanent entity within the cosmos (parakeet, doctor, etc.) (Percy 1983, 110–111; Percy 2019, 128). The symbol makes this ontological coupling possible.

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the twentieth century provided all-encompassing worldviews that clearly delineated the place of an individual within society. Whatever he or she may have had, the Nazi did not have an identity crisis; the heinous Nazi narrative provided a symbolic reservoir that individuals could draw upon to alleviate the anxiety of their predicament, much to the detriment of those outside their community. Beyond the myths of technics and state, C2 consciousness can try to remedy its semiotic predicament by buying things. The desire to have a particular consumer good may easily become idolatrous. Percy writes, “The proper conjuration of technical man is not Tiger! Tiger! But Jaguar! Jaguar!” (Percy 2019, 126). The modern, immanent consumer may identify with his new car (a Jaguar) like a tribesman identifies with a particular animal (a jaguar). Neither the tribesman nor the consumer recognizes the supernatural as a realm distinct from the natural. The anthropologist Levy-Brühl, whom Percy cites in Symbol & Existence, indicated that the totemistic cultures he studied did not have an awareness of the supernatural (122). In like manner, the modern consumer lives in the immanent realm of sheer human fulfillment (Percy 2019, 124, 129, 133; Taylor 2007, 18–20, 142–145, 623). Ironically, the attempt to inform one’s own nothingness through the consumption of goods only ends up emptying those same goods of their significance. Symbols cease to resonate once their novelty wears off, and the same process occurs with consumer goods. The new bike, the new toy, or the new appliance gradually becomes insignificant.6 Like participation in a technical identity or the myths of the state, such immanent consumption ultimately fails to inform the self (Percy 1975b, 284). Two caveats apply to Percy’s hypothesis on the unknowability and unspeakability of the self. First, as mentioned in the previous chapter, “reverse signs” can reveal something about your inner life, a particular aspect of your self. Someone looking to advance in the spiritual life must know her dominant faults and weaknesses. Individuals have particular habits and dispositions built up over time that make them more or less likely to act virtuously (Aristotle 1998, 1103a– 1103b). Nevertheless, even knowing one’s habits and dispositions calls for the presence of others who can recognize aspects of your character that you may fail to notice. 6  In Lost in the Cosmos, Percy comically reviews the “emptying out” of various consumer goods and experiences, including antiques, fashionable clothing, and travel (Percy 1983, 20–26, 183).

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Thus, seeking counsel from others can help inform your practical reason on how to make decisions because others can know you in a different (if not better) way than you know yourself.7 Second, even if we cannot fully know ourselves through symbols, they nevertheless enable us to know at least some aspects of one another (i.e., to know each other as friendly, offensive, kind, generous, mean, nice, dogmatic, open-minded, etc.) (Percy 1983, 7–8). Percy writes, “You are Ralph to me and I am Walker to you, but you are not Ralph to you and I am not Walker to me” (107). Martin Buber might describe this sort of sizing up as a degeneration from an “I-Thou” to an “I-It” relation (Buber 1923/2010; Percy 2019, 164). Buber’s relational ontology privileges relationships with other persons over and above relationships with mere objects. In an interpersonal context, it can be incredibly helpful to know who you are dealing with (e.g., an angry person and someone with a history of trauma). However, Percy also recognized the dangers of relating to others in this manner. A doctor may see her patient merely as an instance of a certain disease; a reification can occur wherein the patient disappears, and the disease comes to the forefront of the doctor’s attention.8 The theory of the disease takes on a higher degree of reality than the existent person standing before the doctor. The great physician, according to Percy, can focus on both the disease and the patient in his unique particularity (Percy 2019, 103–104).9 In lieu of allowing the truly novel to appear, the symbol will work to construe the other as one thing or another. To do otherwise would result in an intolerable anxiety, an inability to place the other in the world (101, 195–196). 7  On the supernatural level, Aquinas teaches that counsel is a gift of the Holy Ghost that corresponds to prudence (Aquinas 2017, II-II.Q52.A1-2). Who can know you better than God Himself? And given that perfect knowledge, who can better direct you regarding how to act than God Himself? Elsewhere, Aquinas writes, “The counsels of a wise friend are of great use, according to Proverbs 27:9: ‘Ointment and perfumes rejoice the heart: and the good counsels of a friend rejoice the soul.’ But Christ is our wisest and greatest friend. Therefore His counsels are supremely useful and becoming.” (I-II.Q108.A4). 8  Alfred North Whitehead’s fallacy of misplaced concreteness relates to the problem of reification (Whitehead 1925/1967, 51–59). This fallacy refers to “mistaking the abstract for the concrete” (51). Percy writes, “It [the fallacy of misplaced concreteness] is the mistaking of an idea, a principle, an abstraction, for the real. As a consequence of the shift, the ‘specimen’ is seen as less real than the theory of the specimen” (Percy 1975b, 58). 9  Not only the doctor but also the patient runs the risk of giving the disease more reality than it deserves, identifying with her disease and letting it obscure her very own existence (cf. Elliott 2000; Percy 1975b, 185).

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Thus, while recognizing the capacity of the symbol to yield knowledge, Percy’s semiotic realism remains attuned to the mystery of the other. The realist, if he is not to fall prey to reification and scientism, must remain attuned to the significance of mystery. Other people are mysterious. The other’s gaze, especially, escapes symbolization and stands over against the self. Percy writes, “It [the other’s gaze] is not formulable. In the exchange of stares, everything is at stake” (Percy 1975b, 285). The other’s gaze may reveal to the self its own unformulability as well as the self’s dependence on the other for a world of meaning (Percy 1983, 101; Percy 1975b, 285–286). At this point, I have reviewed some basic characteristics of C2 consciousness. C2 consciousness may cease to encounter existence through the symbol and instead encounter mere reifications.10 However, existence does not cease to exist for C2 consciousness; rather, an awareness of its mystery and splendor fades. If the previous chapter revealed the merits of science by indicating how the symbol can yield knowledge, then this chapter, and especially the next two sections, seeks to give the existentialists their due for recognizing the importance of subjective existence in the crisis of meaning.

Sartre: Being-in-Itself and Bad Faith At first glance, Percy and Jean-Paul Sartre, a French existentialist and atheist, might seem to have little in common. Percy committed to Catholicism, whereas Sartre was an atheist. In his systematic review of Sartre’s philosophy, Fr. James Collins, whom Percy utilized to understand the work of the existentialists, suggests that Sartre presupposes atheism from the onset of his philosophy (Collins 1952, Ch. 2). Essentially, Collins considers Sartre’s account of being in-itself and the absurdity of existence as inextricably bound to Sartre’s atheism (46–47, 60, 87). As a believing Catholic, Percy would have been obliged to believe in the goodness of creation, which Sartre saw as fundamentally chaotic, absurd, and irrational (Sartre 1956, lxvi).11

10  Percy’s essay “The Loss of the Creature” treats of how symbolic reifications can obscure being (1975a). 11  To be more precise, Sartre saw “being-in-itself” as chaotic, absurd, and irrational. I will define and explain this technical term below.

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Nonetheless, at least in some regards Percy and Sartre would have found common ground. Both Sartre and Percy reject psychological determinism, which Sartre dismisses as an “attitude of excuse” (Sartre 1956, 40). The individual who believes in psychological determinism attempts to flee from the anguish of freedom (28–40).12 A dyadic, entirely immanent science (e.g., behaviorism) could explain away human freedom and thereby dispense an individual from taking responsibility for his or her actions. Like Percy, Sartre aims to describe human nature. Sartre asks, “What must man be in his being in order that through him nothingness may come to being?” (24). Sartre suggests that man must be freedom, which perpetually negates being-in-itself (24–25). An existentialist par excellence, Sartre placed existence before essence (Barrett 1958/1990, 244; Sartre 1956, 25). Indeed, Sartre describes the self as nothing, what Percy calls the “nought.”13 Understanding the self as nought requires a brief review of Sartre’s ontological distinction between being-in-itself (l’être-en-soi) and being-for-itself (l’être-pour-soi) (Sartre 1956, lxiii). You can think of being-­ in-­itself as everything that is not human consciousness. Sartre describes being-in-itself as “thing-like,” “blind,” “opaque,” and “filled with itself” (lxv–lxvi, 73). According to Sartre, “Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is” (lxvi). Nothing exists beyond being as it appears (xlvi, xlviii, lxi). In Sartre’s novel Nausea, the main character Roquentin encounters the absurdity of being-in-itself. Roquentin describes the surrounding milieu and himself as de trop, or superfluous.14 Roquentin states, “We were a 12  For Sartre, fear differs from anguish insofar as the latter concerns human freedom. With fear, you are a passive object in the cosmos, which something might happen to. With anguish, you are an active subject that might do something, especially to yourself. Sartre gives the example of someone walking along a precipice. This person might feel fear at what might happen to him (e.g., he might slip on a rock), but he also might feel anguish at what he might do (e.g., he might throw himself off the edge) (Sartre 1956, 29–30). Sartre writes, “Vertigo is anguish to the extent that I am afraid not of falling over the precipice, but of throwing myself over” (29). As it pertains to fear, Sartre writes, “I am given to myself as a thing, I am passive in relation to these possibilities; they come to me from without; in so far as I am also an object in the world, subject to gravitation, they are my possibilities” (30). Fear relates to a dyadic universe, whereas anguish pertains to the triadic and properly human. 13  So far as I can tell, the word “nought” does not appear in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Percy nevertheless seems to use the term “nought” as a synonym for Sartre’s “nothing” in Hazel Barnes’ translation of Being and Nothingness. Thus, I use “nought” and “nothing” synonymously here and elsewhere throughout this chapter. 14  Flynn refers to the French “de trop” as “in excess” (2011, sect. 6).

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heap of living creatures, irritated, embarrassed at ourselves, we hadn’t the slightest reason to be here, none of us; each one, confused, vaguely alarmed, felt de trop [superfluous] in relation to the others” (Sartre as qtd. and translated by Barnes 1956, xvi–xvii).15 In Being and Nothingness, Sartre writes, “Uncreated, without reason for being, without any connection with another being, being-in-itself is de trop [superfluous] for eternity” (lxvi). Being-for-itself, on the other hand, refers to human consciousness. For Sartre, human consciousness exists by negating being-in-itself. Being-for-­ itself can exist precisely by not being being-in-itself (Collins 1952, 62). Consciousness thus appears amid being-in-itself as a “decompression of being” (Sartre 1956, 74). “Thus nothingness is this hole of being, this fall of the in-itself toward the self, the fall by which the for-itself is constituted,” Sartre explains (79). Human consciousness emerges as a nothing within being-in-itself (79). Per Sartre, “Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being—like a worm” (21). Collins does a fine job unpacking the oftentimes difficult terminology employed by Sartre: It is only by not being the being of the In-itself that consciousness can give rise to the world we experience. This process of ‘nothing-ing’ is required because of the nature of being in-itself. The latter is a dense, viscous, cohesive mass which enjoys the self-identity of opaque and sunless matter. (Collins 1952, 62)

Here, Collins’ use of the term “nothing-ing” captures the ongoing process whereby consciousness (being-for-itself) emerges from within the darkness of being-in-itself. Sartre considers being-for-itself as the “nihilation” of being-in-itself (Sartre 1956, 96, 617–618). Like “nothing-ing,” 15  In her translator’s introduction to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, Barnes explains how she translated this passage from Sartre’s Nausea, which includes the use of the phrase “de trop.” In making her translation, Barnes used Sartre’s (1938) La Nausée in addition to another English translation of the novel by Lloyd Alexander. Barnes writes, “I have used with some changes the English translation [of Nausea] by Lloyd Alexander: Nausea. London: New Directions. 1949” (Barnes 1956, xvi n.7). In the 1964 New Directions Paperback edition of Sartre’s Nausea translated by Lloyd Alexander, this passage reads, “We were a heap of living creatures, irritated, embarrassed at ourselves, we hadn’t the slightest reason to be there, none of us, each one, confused, vaguely alarmed, felt in the way in relation to the others” (Sartre 1969/2007, 128). Note that the phrase “de trop” does not appear here. Nevertheless, Sartre himself uses the phrase “de trop” in La Nausée, which Barnes simply leaves untranslated in her own translation (Sartre 1938, 180–181).

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the term “nihilation” refers to the perpetual negating of being-in-itself by being-for-itself. Of course, human experience involves both being-in-itself and being-for-itself, being and nothingness. Though the body exists as the seat of consciousness (being-for-itself), it nevertheless may be treated like an object or thing (being-in-itself) (Barnes 1956, xviii; Sartre 1956, 262, 288, 302). Despite rejecting Sartre’s ontology, Percy still appreciated Sartre’s phenomenological description of the deterioration that occurs when C1 consciousness falls into C2 consciousness (Percy 2019, 111). Percy writes, “Sartre’s dichotomy of being, the being-for-itself, the Nought, the passion inutile, and the Being-in-itself, the sodden passivity of things, is thus not really an ontology but a masterly analysis of a term of deterioration” (111). In other words, for Percy, Sartre’s phenomenological description of being-­ for-­itself amid being-in-itself adequately captures what happens when the symbol fails to mediate existence. You can (and should) read Sartre not because of his metaphysics but because of his description of what happens to individuals caught in C2 consciousness. Elsewhere, Percy states, “I exist as a nought in the center of the picture-book world of the en soi [in-itself]” (194). Percy’s metaphor of the “picture-book world” conjures up the feeling of feverish flatness and boredom experienced in C2 consciousness. Like Sartre’s notion of the self as a “nothing,” Percy also appreciated Sartre’s description of “bad faith.” People act in bad faith when they attempt to escape their predicament by treating themselves like any other thing in the world. Acting in bad faith means fleeing from anguish, or the responsibility that freedom imposes on being human. Those who act in bad faith attempt to merge themselves with being-in-itself by becoming thing-like (Sartre 1956, 44, 47–70, 73). Sartre gives the example of a waiter who plays at being a waiter in a café. The waiter carries the tray, makes gestures, and attends to patrons in such a way that betrays his role-playing (Sartre 1956, 59). Sartre writes, “We need not watch long before we can explain it: he [the waiter] is playing at being a waiter in a café” (59). The waiter pretends to be a waiter, and he takes his place in a world of meaning as a thing among other things. As another example, Sartre describes a soldier who stands at attention and “makes himself into a soldier-thing”; the expectations of others would seem to necessitate acting in bad faith (59). How strange it would be for a waiter to abandon his role, curse out the customers, and begin dancing

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on a table! Yet, such a possibility always exists. The waiter could choose to not come to work the next day (60). The soldier could vacate his post. Sartre writes, “The goal of bad faith, as we said, is to put oneself out of reach; it is an escape” (65). In short, bad faith means hypostatizing one’s essence and eschewing freedom. People engage in bad faith to remedy the anxiety that follows from the unspeakability of the self and, as Percy might suggest, when trying to find a permanent semiotic habiliment (Percy 1983, 106–109; Percy 2019, 101, 195–196). Consider here the difference between wanting to be a writer and the oftentimes grueling, humiliating, and painful process of writing. The person who seeks the former without doing the latter falls prey to bad faith, a symbolic construction lacking existential ground. Percy writes, “Sartre’s various descriptions of bad faith in role-playing are marvelous phenomenological renderings of this quest of the self for some, any, kind of habiliment” (Percy 1991, 390). Despite Sartre’s descriptions of bad faith, Percy claims that Sartre, too, fell prey to bad faith. Sartre describes the self as nothing. Ironically, by labeling the inconceivable self as “nothing,” Sartre still identifies it as something. Thus, Percy accuses Sartre of “hypostatizing the unformulability of [the] self” (Percy 1975b, 286). Sartre makes the self into a thing (albeit a no-thing). Percy finds evidence of Sartre’s hypocrisy in Sartre’s novel The Reprieve, in which the main character discovers that nothing lies within himself (Sartre 1945/1960, 280). Percy writes: The telltale sign is his [Matthieu, one of Sartre’s characters] elation, his sense of having at last discovered his identity. He is something after all— Nothing! And in so doing, is he not committing the same impersonation which Sartre so severely condemns in others? If the structure of consciousness is intentional, to be of its essence directed toward the other, as being-­ towards, then the ontologizing of this self-unformulability as Nought is as perverse as any other impersonation—really a kind of inferior totemism. (Percy 1975b, 286)

Here, Percy underscores the other-directedness of consciousness, which will become more important in discussions below concerning authenticity and the importance of intersubjectivity. For now, it is perhaps enough to suggest that the self cannot escape its predicament by identifying as “nothing,” which, ironically, makes the self into something.

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Marcel: Simulacrum and Homo Viator Sartre’s thought can be profitably compared to that of Gabriel Marcel, a Catholic existentialist of the mid-twentieth century and another major influence on Percy. Like Sartre’s notion of the self as “nothing,” Marcel thought of the self as a type of “wound,” an “empty void,” a “vulnerable” and “highly sensitive enclosure” (2962, 16; Percy 1975b, 283–284). According to Marcel, the self always turns to the other for its “final investiture” and confirmation (Marcel 1962, 16; Percy 2019, 19). Marcel writes, “I can affirm nothing about myself which would be really myself; nothing, either, which would be permanent; nothing which would be secure against criticism and the passage of time” (Marcel 1962, 16). The self that exists in time remains incomplete and capable of change. No reification of the self as one thing or another can last forever. Percy himself acknowledges the affinity between Sartre and Marcel regarding the self’s unformulability: “That which symbolizes remains at the center of things as a gaping hole among forms: the aching wound of self (Marcel), the Nought (Sartre)” (Percy 2019, 111). Both Sartre and Marcel seemed to have intuited something about the semiotic, existential predicament of the self. Yet, Sartre and Marcel differ in many important respects, too. Marcel took issue with Sartre’s immanentism, materialism, and atheism. In Homo Viator, Marcel admits the importance of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness and acknowledges the “admirable analysis of bad faith” contained therein, an analysis that reveals “the existence of a being so constituted that it is not exactly or fully what it is” (Marcel 1962, 166–167). Nevertheless, Marcel refers to being-in-itself as “grossly materialistic,” and he considers Sartre as trapped in a web of immanence (178–180, 183–184). Sartre reduces the soul to the body (Marcel 1962, 178; Sartre 1956, 310). Further, Sartre explains how another’s absence can appear as a presence except in the case of death (Sartre 1956, 278–279). According to Marcel, Sartre thus denies the communion of the living and the dead, even from a “phenomenological point of view” (Marcel 1962, 178). Despite Sartre’s affirmation of the importance of freedom, Marcel still finds parallels between Sartre’s ontology and the ontology of the epiphenomenist school, which considered the mind as a byproduct of material causes (Marcel 1962, 179; Marcel 1950, 52; Audi 1995, 598; cf. Collins 1952, 74). Perhaps it is enough to say that like Percy, Marcel could momentarily set aside his philosophical and religious differences with Sartre to appreciate

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his phenomenological descriptions, especially his account of bad faith. Indeed, Sartre’s account of bad faith complements Marcel’s description of the simulacrum. Marcel describes how simulacra, or representations of reality, threaten to conceal the existence of the self to itself as well as the existence of the other to the self. In the first volume of The Mystery of Being, Marcel explains a simulacrum as an illumination of reality that has hardened over and taken the place of the original experience. A simulacrum appears as a shell of reality that threatens to usurp reality’s place. Anything that reveals existence—from a work of art to a landscape—threatens to deteriorate into a mere simulacrum (Marcel 1950, 53). Marcel also describes a simulacrum as a locum tenens, a holding place meant to temporarily take the place of existence, which always threatens “to free itself from its proper subordinate position and to claim a kind of independence to which it has no right” (53). As Percy might suggest, the symbol necessarily mediates knowledge of existence in C1 consciousness. But a symbol can devolve into a simulacrum and lead to error, ignorance, and idolatry (Percy 2019). The simulacrum is what a symbol becomes when it induces ignorance and detachment from reality. Consider Percy’s example of the young child naming a sparrow, which over time becomes merely a “husk” of a sparrow (Percy 1983, 104–105; Percy 1975b, 206; Percy 2019, 103). Through the repeated use of language, the symbol “sparrow” degenerates into a mere simulacrum that no longer inspires wonder: “That is only a sparrow” (Percy 1983, 104; emphasis mine). The particularity of the bird vanishes, and boredom ensues, which involves a “weakening of the sense of being” and the “disappearance of joy” (Marcel 1950, 38). Whereas Marcel does not necessarily use Percy’s language (i.e., of the symbol), he nevertheless describes what happens when someone encounters reality at one remove in the simulacrum. Marcel suggests that bad philosophers in the past have dealt with “a waste product of experience that had taken experience’s name” (54). Such a “waste product” is nothing less than a simulacrum, which may obscure the existence of the self or the other. As it pertains to the unknowability of the self, Marcel almost certainly had a powerful influence on Percy. Marcel explains “how difficult it is to succeed in getting a direct glimpse of whatever it is that we mean by self” (Marcel 1950, 52). Even when we ask another person for an adequate appraisal of who we are, he or she might reply with a mere simulacrum, a reification of our personality. Consider the presuppositions that friends from high school may have of you. Are you still the same person you were

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back then? Of course, you are, but you are also different. The question remains as to whether old friends can encounter you in the fullness of your being in this moment in time (i.e., whether they can see through their simulacra of you). If we want an honest appraisal of who we are, we might ask for a third-party opinion. Nevertheless, we choose this or that person to judge us, who may love us or hate us, and thus we cannot escape the quandary of having a say in our own appraisal (148–149). When we get to choose the person who judges us, in a certain way, we get to choose how we judge ourselves.16 With regard to the simulacrum obscuring the other’s existence, Marcel gives the scenario of having to provide a character testimony for an acquaintance. The simulacrum that we possess may alter our attitude or behavior toward him or her for the worse (Marcel 1950, 54). If someone bullied you in high school, perhaps you will be less likely to be kind to her at a class reunion. But perhaps she has changed in a most fundamental way. Perhaps she has entered the religious life, having pledged to do penance for all of the pain she has inflicted on others. Thus, when you run into her at the class reunion, the question is whether you are encountering a simulacrum of her or whether you are encountering her in her full existential particularity (i.e., in her personhood). Marcel did not think that the question “Who am I?” admitted of an easy answer. “‘Who am I?’ … is a riddle that, at the human level, simply cannot be solved: it is a question that does not imply, and cannot imply, any plain answer,” Marcel writes (1950, 149). So long as an individual lives, he might become something more or something less than he already is. He may, in fact, become something other. The words “at the human level” in Marcel’s quote above suggest that only God can know the answer to this question. For Marcel, a human being is a “‘being on the way’ (en route)” with an exigence for transcendence (Marcel 1950, 39n; Marcel 1951, 3; Marcel 1962, 11). We are headed toward or away from God, Who is transcendent and exists outside of time. Contrasting his definition of transcendence with Sartre’s, which involves “transcendence in immanence,” Marcel writes, “I would rather cling to the traditional antithesis between the immanent and the transcendent as it is presented to us in 16  Even if we pick a person who will then choose someone else to appraise us, we still have a hand in our own self-evaluation, albeit more remotely. We first appoint that person who will then select someone else, and this initial appointment will have consequences on who ultimately gets chosen, whether we like it or not.

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textbooks of metaphysics and theology” (Marcel 1950, 39; Sartre 1956, 34).17 Unlike Sartre, Marcel does not find being de trop. Instead, mystery permeates existence and calls out for participation (Collins 1952, Ch.4; Marcel 1950, 111, 125, 211–219). The soul—neither mind nor brain alone—does the journeying in this life, seeking signs of deliverance (Marcel 1962, 10–11). Further, the soul never travels alone. Life implies fellow travelers. For Marcel, egotism cuts the self off from communion with others (Marcel 1951, 7–8, 17). The self can only understand itself by “starting from the other, or from others, and only by starting from them” (8). The other does not stand over against the self as an obstacle in the way of the self’s freedom. Rather, the other makes love possible, including agape (self-sacrificing love) and philia (friendship) (Marcel 1951, 9; Lewis 1960/2012, 57–90, 116–141). The more a man turns inward on himself, the more he loses contact with being (Marcel 1951, 16–17). Thus, Percy formulated his anthropology with the help of Marcel’s homo viator, or man the traveler. Percy could have settled on a scientific or Marxist description of the human being as a locus of immanent needs or byproduct of history (Percy as qtd. in Carr 1985, 63–64; Percy 1983, 81). Instead, Percy accepted homo viator as more satisfactory for understanding the true essence of humanity.18 Note how this definition of man as a traveler differs from Sartre’s self as “nothing” insofar as it implies a soul becoming something other than itself. As you travel, you change, for better or for worse. Travel implies an end, something towards which you tend. For the Christian, traveling toward God means becoming more like Him on the journey. Homo viator thus accounts for the real existential particularity of an actually existing self; it works change into an understanding of who we are. In addition to homo viator, Percy used the 17  Marcel’s conception of transcendence invites consideration of the vertical, the theological, and the timeless. Sartre, on the other hand, considers transcendence in relation to various future projects in this world (Marcel 1950, 39). Despite his acknowledgment of the reality of the supernatural, Marcel nevertheless insists that transcendence does not occur “beyond all experience” (47–48). 18  For Percy, the novelist must consider his or her main characters “in transit,” “in a fix,” in a predicament, or on a journey (Percy as qtd. in Carr 1985, 64; Percy as qtd. in Forkner and Kennedy 1985, 231–232). The main character in Percy’s The Last Gentleman, for example, journeys throughout the United States on a quest for meaning (Percy as qtd. in Cremeens 1985, 29; Percy 1966). The character’s geographical movements parallel his spiritual development. For Marcel, life itself appears as a drama, a story that presupposes exile and redemption, the latter of which homo viator must await with an “availability of soul” and openness toward transcendence otherwise known as hope (Marcel 1962, 10, 67).

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terms “seeker,” “wayfarer,” and “pilgrim” when describing the human being, all of which have religious connotations (Percy 1991, 290–291). Thus far, I have compared some of Sartre’s and Marcel’s ideas to better understand what Percy means by C2 consciousness. Sartre’s descriptions of the self as “nothing” and bad faith shaped Percy’s thoughts on the unspeakability of the self and the self’s quest for a permanent semiotic habiliment. Percy drew upon Marcel’s idea of the simulacrum when accounting for the fall from C1 consciousness in C2 consciousness. Individuals in C2 no longer encounter existence but rather existence at one remove, which eventually results in boredom and a loss of joy. Moreover, Marcel’s homo viator inspired Percy’s anthropology. Rather than reifying the self as a static entity, a thing, homo viator makes room for a self en route toward something greater (Marcel 1962, 11). In both Percy’s and Marcel’s case, homo viator searches for an encounter with the living God. Transcendence does not move away from experience and into simulacra (Marcel 1950, 53–54). Rather, transcendence implies intersubjective communion and movement away from the self (Percy 1983, 121, 124). Thus, the prospect of symbolically induced ignorance described in this section means that homo viator needs something beyond itself to help shatter its symbolic reifications, recover existence, and experience transcendence once more. In the next chapter, I review various means for contending with (and breaking up) symbolic reifications. Before moving onto that, however, I first need to review the role that Martin Heidegger played in Percy’s thought. Anyone seeking to further understand C2 consciousness would do well to consider what Percy learned from Heidegger, who, like Sartre and Marcel, often received the label “existentialist.”

A Partial Overview of Heidegger’s Being and Time Martin Heidegger, a German existential phenomenologist, exerted a notable influence on Percy’s thought. Like Sartre and Marcel (and unlike most empirical scientists), Heidegger sought to describe the experience of the self, or Dasein, in the world. Percy drew largely upon Heidegger’s famous Being and Time, which first appeared in 1927. Since Being and Time is a relatively difficult text, and because it contains a number of novel phrases and philosophical ideas, I need to unpack some of that book first before moving onto a discussion of how Percy appropriated Heidegger’s ideas. In Being and Time, Heidegger questions the meaning of Being. What does Being mean? Some consider the meaning of Being self-evident,

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indefinable, or universal. Yet, for Heidegger, the question of the meaning of Being merits attention because, among other things, it lacks an answer and because philosophers have forgotten about the question. Since Being is not an entity in the world like other entities, Being cannot be defined like other entities within the world (Heidegger 1962/2008, 21–24). Accordingly, Heidegger proposes to investigate the question of the meaning of Being by analyzing Dasein, or the “being” that is “there,” the being there (Heidegger 1962/2008, 21–67, 227; Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 113). Heidegger writes, “We are ourselves the entities to be analyzed” (Heidegger 1962/2008, 67). According to Heidegger, Dasein finds itself “thrown” (Geworfenheit) into a world of meaning (174, 174n1). The world appears laden with meaning, and Dasein “comports itself understandingly” toward entities in the world (78, 182–195). Even before conscious reflection takes place, Dasein always already understands the world and the possibilities within it in a given way (Heidegger 1962/2008, 185; cf. Anton 2001, 24–36).19 Further, things appear in the world “as” one thing or another. A hammer, for example, appears as a manipulatable something to hammer with (Heidegger 1962/2008, 98, 189). Heidegger writes, “What we ‘first’ hear is never noises or complexes of sounds, but the creaking waggon [sic], the motor-cycle. We hear the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling” (207). Heidegger preoccupies himself with the way Being conceals or reveals itself to Dasein, as well as how Dasein comports itself toward its possibilities in the world. Regarding the concealment of Being, Heidegger thought of truth as aletheia, an unconcealment of Being wherein entities reveal themselves as one thing or another to Dasein (56–60). Heidegger writes, “Truth (uncoveredness) is something that must always first be wrested from entities. Entities get snatched out of their hiddenness” (265). Elsewhere, Heidegger states, “Once entities have been uncovered, they show themselves precisely as entities which beforehand already were” (269). Such disclosed entities might include anything 19  The distinction between “environment” and “world,” Umwelt and Welt, appears in Being and Time (Heidegger 1962/2008, 83–84, 92–95). Nevertheless, Percy suggests that his own understanding of world does not necessarily rely “on Heidegger or any other philosophical anthropology” (Percy 1975b, 203n). Percy suggests that while his understanding of environment and world relates most closely to Ludwig Binswanger’s account of Umwelt and Welt, the empirical event of naming, as evidenced by children learning to speak and the “Helen Keller phenomenon,” provide enough proof that humans inhabit a world substantially different from an animal’s environment (203n).

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from Newton’s laws to the principle of contradiction. By implication, Dasein discovers entities in the arts and sciences alike, and, importantly, these uncovered entities need Dasein to come to light (269). Discourse, or Rede, a characteristic mode of Dasein’s Being-in-the-­ world, uncovers entities and allows them to be perceived as what they are (Heidegger 1962/2008, 56, 203–210). Heidegger rejects an overly rationalistic interpretation of the ζῷον λόγον ἔχον (zoon logon echon), Aristotle’s “rational animal” or “animal with logos,” and instead prefers a description of the human being as simply the “entity which talks” (47, 47n, 74, 208). “Authenticity” figures as a key term for Heidegger because Dasein may talk and comport itself either in an authentic or in an inauthentic manner. In the existentialist tradition of giving freedom priority over a priori essences, Heidegger believes that authenticity presupposes Dasein’s openness to its own possibilities for Being (67–68, 232). Inauthenticity, on the other hand, presupposes a fall into the world of the “they,” or Das Man (164, 220, 220n1). “They” conceal Being from Dasein and contribute to Dasein’s inauthenticity. Heidegger uses “they” in both the singular and the plural to indicate a sort of monolithic, irresponsible, anonymous mass. They demand “averageness” of interpretation and a type of “‘levelling down’ [Einebnung] of all possibilities of Being” (Heidegger 1962/2008, 164–165). They refuse to make distinctions: “[I]t [the ‘they’] is insensitive to every difference of level and of genuineness” (165). They do not like distinctions because they already understand everything (212). In his description of the consumptive attitude that Dasein may take toward the “they,” Heidegger writes: We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they [man] take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find ‘shocking’ what they find shocking. The ‘they,’ which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of being of everydayness. (164)

The fall into “everydayness” involves the consumption of judgments prescribed by them. Even today the mass media, characterized by a continuous news cycle on TV and websites, dictate the proper judgments for Dasein to consume. Thus, Dasein ingests “their” pre-filtered interpretations and construes its own possibilities for Being in an inauthentic

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manner. Being cannot reveal itself in its full plenitude and inexhaustibility to a Dasein captivated by the “publicly interpreted” meanings of the “they” (Heidegger 1962/2008, 264). Heidegger suggests that “they” deprive Dasein of its answerability, its responsibility for its own decisions. The “they” is a no one or a nobody (165–166). Discourse has its own inauthentic modes, including idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. Idle talk, or Gerede, a type of superficial understanding, does not admit of any inquiry or disputation but instead appears as gossiping, passing along, and unreflectively consuming average interpretations (Heidegger 1962/2008, 211–214, 217). Curiosity, a type of concupiscent desire to know, seeks novelty, distraction, and knowledge of things “just in order to have known” them (214–217). The proliferation of the average, public interpretations of the “they” leads to ambiguity, wherein it “becomes impossible to decide what is disclosed in a genuine understanding and what is not” (217). Rather than considering the fall into the “they” as something that only uncultivated dupes suffer from, inauthenticity remains possible for each and every Dasein (223–224). In fact, Heidegger writes, “The Self, however, is proximally and for the most part inauthentic, the they-self” (225). “Far from determining its nocturnal side, it [falling into the “they”] constitutes all Dasein’s days in their everydayness,” Heidegger reminds us (224). Inauthenticity and everydayness appear more like the rule rather than the exception. For Heidegger, anxiety is a summons rooted in the structure of Being to call Dasein out of its familiarity, everydayness, and inauthenticity. “[T]he publicness of the ‘they’ suppresses everything unfamiliar,” Heidegger explains (Heidegger 1962/2008, 237).20 Anxiety involves an uncanniness and unfamiliarity that presses in upon Dasein in such a way that it cannot “flee into the ‘at-home’ of publicness” (233–234). Anxiety is not necessarily a psychological phenomenon requiring suppression; rather, it can serve as a call for Dasein to realize its own authentic possibilities for being (228–235). A man asking a woman to go out on a date can invite horrible anxiety. “Will she say yes? What will I say?” When you go in for a job interview, uncertainty can surround what others or you might say. Yet in both instances, a person might be on the verge of something wonderful. Anxiety can foreshadow a new, desirable state in life: a new 20  The “they” conceals perhaps the most anxiety-inducing event that Dasein can (and will) experience: death. Indeed, “they” hide the certainty of death from Dasein and instead invite distraction (Heidegger 1962/2008, 296–304, 302–303).

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spouse, potentially, or a new job, perhaps. Should someone flee from this anxiety into the comfort of the “they,” that person might be robbed of something truly great.

Heidegger: The “As,” the “They,” and the “Reverse Phenomenon” Some of Heidegger’s ideas contributed to Percy’s understanding of C2 consciousness and its attendant alienation. In particular, Percy considered Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein as an alternative approach to anthropology, much like Marcel’s homo viator (Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 114). Whether or not you like or agree with Heidegger, he provided a way of thinking about the human predicament outside of naturalistic, scientific categories. Humans do not behave simply like other animals in an environment but rather live and move in a world of meaning. Percy acknowledged the usefulness of Heidegger’s term “Dasein,” which he thought of as roughly equivalent to the “self” (Percy 1983, 86n). In a manuscript that he sent to Kenneth Laine Ketner, Percy explained that Heidegger’s term “Dasein” bears no semantic freight; it simply signifies what it says; a being there, and better still, as Heidegger explicates it, a being there in the world—and by the world he means Welt, all that is out there and that we name, and not Umwelt, the environment. (Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 113)

Percy knew that words can become charged with meaning over time, especially the word “self”; by contrast, the word “Dasein” “bears no semantic freight.” Thus, “Dasein” helps to avoid the psychological connotations typically associated with “self.” Dasein does not appear as some sort of isolated entity in the void, a Cartesian res cogitans over against the res extensa. Rather, Dasein always stands in relation to something or someone. Heidegger also influenced Percy’s understanding of phenomenological intentionality. Typically, intentionality refers to how consciousness is always of something, whether mind or matter. You are aware of what you need to do tomorrow, of what happened last night, of the breeze on your face, of the water on your feet, of another’s voice, of what you would like to say, of what you already said, and so on. Intentionality indicates that consciousness always has an object, something or someone that it is attached to. However, Percy thinks that consciousness is not only always

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of something but also of something as something. I think it is reasonable to suggest that Heidegger set Percy on the path for coming to this conclusion, even if Percy did not explicitly recognize Heidegger’s influence in this regard. Heidegger repeatedly describes Dasein’s encounter of entities in the world “as” one thing or another, and he even refers to the “as-­ structure of interpretation” (Heidegger 1962/2008, 189, 200–202, 207, 266). Percy writes, “To amend the phenomenologist: It is not enough to say that one is conscious of something; one is also conscious of something as being something” (Percy 1975b, 272–273; emphasis mine). Percy may have amended the phenomenologist, but Heidegger did so before him. In any case, the importance of the of/as structure of consciousness cannot be understated because this presupposition grounds Percy’s belief in the pervasiveness of symbols. You perceive everything and everyone “as” something or another, because you perceive everything under the auspice of its symbol (Percy 1975b, 272–273). Perhaps above all, Heidegger’s account of the “they” remains absolutely central to the experience of C2 consciousness. Heidegger describes the “falling,” or Verfallen, of Dasein into the everydayness of the “they” (Heidegger 1962/2008, 219–220). In Symbol & Existence, Percy discusses Heidegger’s Verfallen alongside Sartre’s “Nought” and Marcel’s “wound” (Percy 2019, 111). Percy writes: In what can only be described as a fall, a falling prey to (Heidegger’s Verfallen), I, who in my most authentic relation to the world, am a co-­ celebrant of being, become a despairing specter, a that-which-does-notknow-­ what-it-is, an emptiness amid a world of replete entities. (Percy 2019, 111)

In this quote, Percy indicates how Heidegger, like Sartre and Marcel, captures the symbolically induced alienation that characterizes C2 consciousness. The fall into the “they” involves a falling prey to a priori symbolic constructions, or the “publicly interpreted” world so well described by Heidegger (Heidegger 1962/2008, 264; Percy 2019, 131). The “they-­ self” takes comfort in what the experts have to say about his or her predicament (Heidegger 1962/2008, 225; Percy 1975b). Conversations in everyday life attest to the reign of the “they” anytime someone appeals to what “they” say. “They” say this, or “they” say that. Who are “they,” after all? Who is this anonymous, shadowy group of elite knowers that you or I may appeal to at any time and in any place? Heidegger

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might reply: “no one,” “nobody” (Heidegger 1962/2008, 165–166). The “they” seeks to heal the “wound” described by Marcel and fill the “nothing” described by Sartre. But can they? Ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the meaning of death, and even the meaning of Being (Heidegger’s question) get swept away by the current of the “they.” When the self falls prey to the “they,” it ceases to take joy in actively naming existence and settles into the passive habit of preferring representations over reality. The “they-self” understands the world according to the dictates of established opinion (225). The “they” prescribes interpretations for Dasein (167). Dasein’s scientific, artistic, or even religious prejudices might come exclusively from “them.” The fall into inauthenticity implies its dialectical counterpart: authenticity, a much-contested term that for Percy means nothing less than the restoration of intersubjective communion. Percy uses Kafka as an example of an artist who reveals truth by naming a pre-existing predicament that others recognize (Percy 1983, 120–121). Percy explains how Kafka escapes the predicament of C2 consciousness “by seeing and naming what had heretofore been unspeakable, the predicament of the self in the modern world” (120). Kafka reveals truth by articulating the hitherto unarticulated. This act of unconcealment reverses the alienation of C2 consciousness, if only temporarily (Percy 1975b, 5). Why? Because true naming, which results in the disclosure of existence as it is, results in intersubjective communion. Kafka’s readers can truly exclaim, “Yes! that is how it is!” (83). The artist and scientist alike can name in an exemplary manner, one that can restore intersubjectivity and result in a “partial recovery of Eden, the semiotic Eden” (Percy 1983, 124). The ability to name in an authentic manner, which the good artist exemplifies, is a distinctly human capacity. Percy writes: 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. (Percy 1975b, 158)

According to Jay Tolson, one of Percy’s biographers, this passage from The Message in the Bottle “could not have come much closer to an explicit statement of the metaphysical and even religious direction of his [Percy’s] language philosophy” (Tolson 1992, 266). It is true that Percy thought of man as more than a mere organism in an environment. And indeed, man

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is called to find a name for Being. However, Percy and Heidegger had very different metaphysical and religious presuppositions.21 In particular, Percy and Heidegger disagreed on the meaning of authenticity. For Percy, authenticity has more to do with the restoration of intersubjectivity and an openness to the Thou than with individual self-realization (Percy 2019, 161).22 Without question, the term “authenticity” comes with significant philosophical baggage. Some have seriously and rightfully criticized authenticity as an ideal to aim for (Lasch 1979/1991, 166–167; Potter 2011). Oftentimes, people will speak about the individualistic pursuit of becoming your “authentic” and “true” self. The preceding account of C2 consciousness supports the idea that Percy would not advocate for such an individualistic ideal. How can a self that cannot truly know itself become its true and authentic self? Like Percy’s treatment of Sartre, Percy takes what he likes in Heidegger’s work, especially his phenomenological descriptions, and leaves the rest, especially his ontology. Heidegger’s individualistic understanding of authenticity involves the openness of Dasein to its “ownmost” possibilities for Being (Heidegger 1962/2008, 308). Instead of echoing Heidegger’s individualism, Percy leans more on Buber and Marcel. Percy uses the term “authentic” to describe Buber’s I-Thou relationship, which Percy contrasts with the “deteriorated” I-It relationship (Buber 1923/2010; Percy 2019, 161). Buber’s dichotomy of I-It and I-Thou relations may not be perfect, but at least it affords a proportionate appreciation for the importance of the other in human experience. For Buber, Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein abstracted the human being from all of its essential relations with others and made solitariness the rule rather than the exception (Buber 1947/2002, 200, 215). Percy would likely agree with Buber’s statement that “Man can become whole not in virtue of a relation to himself but only in virtue of a relation to another self” (199). Marcel, too, acknowledges the primacy of 21  Percy appreciated Scholastics like Aquinas as well as John of St. Thomas and did not eschew the religious implications of the human predicament, whereas Heidegger sought to destroy the “history of ontology” and to avoid any considerations about the Fall of Man (Collins 1952, 168–210; Heidegger 1962/2008, 44, 74, 126, 224, 272). While Percy and Heidegger may have had different metaphysical and religious presuppositions, this chapter demonstrates how Percy still learned a great deal from him. 22  Like Sartre, Percy did not think that Heidegger had avoided falling into solipsism. If Being discloses itself through Dasein, then what becomes of the Other? Does the Other need Dasein in order to be? If so, how can the Other be anything but a figment of Dasein’s imagination (Percy 2019, 148; Sartre 1956, 246–248)?

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the intersubjective relationship and the metaphysic of “we are” over and above the solitary “I think” (Marcel 1951, 9). Percy holds out hope that someone who has fallen into the “they” can begin to live authentically as a seeker and wayfarer, much like Marcel’s homo viator in communion with “fellow-travelers” (Marcel 1951, 17; Percy 1991, 290).23 Percy indicates that ego consciousness is a “myth” or “deterioration” of intersubjectivity (Percy 2019, 164, 237). Percy considered intersubjectivity as desirable and even normative (161, 193).24 The importance that Percy gives to intersubjectivity, then, becomes one way of separating his thought from others’, especially Heidegger’s.

Implications for the Crisis of Meaning The crisis of meaning in this historical moment stems from the failed attempt to resolve the semiotic predicament of the self. Marcel once described “metaphysical unease” in the following way: It “is like the bodily state of a man in a fever who will not lie still but keeps shifting around in his bed looking for the right position” (Marcel 1950, 7). And so it goes with people today. Many do not know who they are or what they are supposed to be doing. The primary issue with C2 consciousness is reification, the hardening of a symbol into a thing. Reification of the self promises relief from the semiotic predicament, but in the end it leads to ignorance and despair, the picture-book world of being-in-itself (Percy 2019, 194). The colorless, tasteless world of C2 consciousness flattens the contours of existence into a painful monotony. Those seeking deliverance from symbolically induced alienation have at least two options. One option is to believe “I ultimately get to decide on who I am.” With this choice, everyone gets to define themselves as they wish. However, this option leads nowhere because, as indicated above, 23  In Collins’ generous interpretation of Heidegger, Collins explains that, unlike Sartre, Heidegger does not believe in the absurdity of being-in-itself. Rather, Heidegger understands Dasein as “there” for being to disclose itself through (Collins 1952, 201). Collins also suggests that Heidegger’s understanding of the role of the philosopher has much in common with Marcel’s homo viator. Collins writes, “The philosopher’s function as a ‘wanderer,’ a homo viator (in Marcel’s terms), is both to respect the incomprehensibility of being and to offer guidance to his fellow men” (1952, 195). 24  Compare Percy’s stance on normative evaluations with the position of Heidegger, who sought to avoid normative evaluations when discussing Dasein’s “falling” into the “they” (Heidegger 1962/2008, 219–220, 264–265).

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you cannot know your true self through symbolic means. Further, while you can call yourself whatever you like, you cannot force others to perceive you as you perceive yourself without doing them violence. The second option is to let someone else tell you who you are. This abdication of responsibility may come easier than radical self-definition insofar as it requires less effort. The passive consumer receives a ready-made identity from on high. While it is true that we need others in order to find and make meaning, by the same token, we must be wary of consuming identities from the “they,” whether these ready-made identities (and the symbols that mediate them) proceed from scientific experts or career politicians. The therapeutic culture embodies a noxious combination of both the first and the second option. The idea of the “therapeutic culture” comes from Philip Rieff’s The Triumph of the Therapeutic, wherein he explains how, in a postreligious age, psychology usurps the place previously held by religion in prescribing what to do and what not to do. The quest for health and normalcy in the immanent world replaces the transcendent journey toward salvation (Han 2015, 18, 50–51; Lasch 1995, 217; Rieff 2006, 43). Homo normalis supplants homo viator. Rieff provides a succinct description of “therapeutic” when he writes: By this time men may have gone too far, beyond the old deception of good and evil, to specialize at last, wittingly, in techniques that are to be called, in the present volume, ‘therapeutic,’ with nothing at stake beyond a manipulatable sense of well-being. This is the unreligion of the age, and its master science.25 (2006, 10)

Comfort, rather than “the old deception of good and evil,” takes center stage in a therapeutic culture, where individuals employ techniques put forward by experts to manipulate their sense of well-being (10, 19). The therapeutic culture is a comfortable self-deceit certified by the “they.” Elsewhere, Rieff writes, “Well-being is a delicate personal achievement” (41; emphasis mine). Attending to one’s own sense of “well-being” takes precedence over communal concerns (15–16, 43, 55–65).

 Rieff uses “therapeutic” as an adjective here. Later in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Rieff refers to the therapeutic as a character type (Rieff 2006, 202). 25

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The therapeutic culture thrives upon a cult of the self and emotivism, or decision-making by personal preference (Arnett and Arneson 1999, 62–67). When individuals in a therapeutic culture make decisions based on personal preference, they may neglect to attend to where these preferences come from. Preferences still come from somewhere. Where do such preferences hail from, then? “They” prescribe them, of course. Experts shower down information on the masses so that the latter might live more enriching, immanent lives (Taylor 2007, 18–20, 142–145, 623). Psychologists can play the role of transcendent experts, but other social scientists, too, can assume the posture of knower and priest (Lasch 1979/1991, 154–186; Lasch 1984, 29). The media, especially the news, creates the opportunity for experts to influence the public consciousness. The therapeutic culture flourishes in a highly technological age that invites the manipulation of identity. Don’t like your face? Photoshop your nose. Better yet, get plastic surgery. Don’t like the way your voice sounds? Sing through a vocoder. Percy knew that people delight in encountering themselves in different media. Why? Perhaps because technology allows the self to fix itself (and the other) into a relatively static entity, a thing among other things. The reification of self allows it to be dealt with. Percy asks why individuals search for themselves first when viewing a photograph (Percy 1983, 7). Arguably, the photograph reifies the self into a fixed form, something conceivable. On this point, consider Instagram and Facebook profiles today, where you can post pictures of yourself and others. The question arises while one carefully selects which images to display and what to write: Is this my true self? Someone likes your picture or comments on your post, and having another confirm your mediated self elicits joy (cf. 120–121). If nobody likes or comments, then what? You may start searching for a new thing to post, a new symbol, a new thing to be. Despair and anxiety might set in. Since social media invite the reification of the self, it is a milieu rife with bad faith. Percy hints that the primacy of sight may have something to do with the inability to know oneself. The alien in Lost in the Cosmos questions the astronaut about his state of consciousness: “C2 selves don’t know who they are.* Perhaps your difficulty comes from the sensory mode which you call ‘seeing.’ You ‘see’ things. But can you ‘see’ yourself? Who are you?” (Percy 1983, 211). Of course, the self can see itself in visual forms: mirrors, photographs, videos, and so on. But, by default, the eyes face outward, not inward. Brain scans, for all of their usefulness, do not reveal the self qua self.

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Fr. Walter Ong, whom Percy corresponded with, discusses how the various senses relate to self-perception in The Presence of the Word.26 Ong writes, “Sight registers the stars, billions of light-years away. What could be less myself, more ‘other’?” (Ong 1967/2000, 171). Compare Ong’s question with Percy’s subtitle for Lost in the Cosmos: “Why it is possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with yourself all your life” (Percy 1983, 1). The eye thingifies self and other (cf. Marcel 1950, 49). Indeed, sight objectifies (Ong 1967/2000, 74, 128–130, 288–289). But sound registers the actuality and presence of the self and the other like no other sense. Voice manifests the interiority and mystery of a person (163, 174). Perhaps this is why, as mentioned at the opening of this chapter, we come to feel that our voice is an expression of who we are, and thus we can feel a sort of repulsion at hearing it reified and played back in a recording. The ultimate task to overcome the crisis of meaning is to stand in relation to mystery without reducing it to a thing. We need some way of opening ourselves to mystery without conceding to unreflective symbolic formulation. While it may sound romantic, it is true (Berlin 1999/2001, 102–104). Cultivating a proper attitude toward mystery requires a conscious awareness of how symbols shape our expectations, perceptions, and understanding of the world. All idealists, social constructionists, and constructivists who hold more esteem for the symbol than for reality deal in a “waste product of experience” (Marcel 1950, 54). These individuals rightly emphasize the importance of the symbol in human experience, but they do not always account for its inadequacies. The symbol matters, but it emerges first (and finds its ultimate fulfillment) in relationship to the other. By focusing on the ego, idealists exacerbate the solipsism at the center of C2 consciousness. Escaping the vortex of C2 requires something in addition to self and symbol, something that resists reification, something that is not a thing at all.

26  Ong cites Percy in Hopkins, the Self, and God while discussing names and the pronoun “I.” Ong suggests that although the self cannot have a name, it can have a pronoun: “I” (Ong 1986, 33–37). For more on the correspondence between Percy and Ong, see the Walker Percy Papers at UNC Chapel Hill.

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References “Advocate Personality.” 16Personalities. https://www.16personalities.com/infjpersonality. Accessed 27 May 2023. Ames, Louise Bates, Clyde Gillespie, Jacqueline Haines, and Frances Ilg. 1979. The Gesell Institute’s Child from One to Six. New York: Harper & Row. Anton, Corey. 2001. Selfhood and Authenticity. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2010. Sources of Significance: Worldly Rejuvenation and Neo-Stoic Heroism. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Aquinas, St. Thomas. 1920/2017. Summa Theologiae, Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 2nd and Revised edition. New Advent, ed. Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/. Accessed 27 March 2023. Aristotle. 1998. The Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. David Ross and Revised J.L. Ackrill and J.O. Urmson. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2001. De Anima. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon and Trans. J.A. Smith, 535–603. New York: The Modern Library. Arnett, Ronald C., and Pat Arneson. 1999. Dialogic Civility in a Cynical Age: Community, Hope, and Interpersonal Relationships. Albany: State University of New York Press. Audi, Robert, ed. 1995. Philosophy of Mind. In The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Barnes, Hazel E. 1956. Translator’s Introduction. In Being and Nothingness, ed. Jean-Paul Sartre and Trans. Hazel E.  Barnes, viii–xliii. New York: Philosophical Library. Barrett, William. 1958/1990. Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy. New York: Anchor Books. Becker, Ernest. 1973/1997. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press Paperbacks. Berlin, Isaiah. 1999/2001. In The Roots of Romanticism, ed. Henry Hardy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Buber, Martin. 1923/2010. I and Thou. Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith. Mansfield Centre: Martino Publishing. ———. 1947/2002. Between Man and Man. Trans. Ronald Gregor-Smith. London: Routledge. Carr, John C. 1985. An Interview with Walker Percy. In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 56–71. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Collins, James. 1952. The Existentialists: A Critical Study. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Cremeens, Carlton. 1985. Walker Percy, The Man and the Novelist: An Interview. In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 16–35. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

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Elliott, Carl. 2000, December. A New Way to Be Mad. The Atlantic. https:// www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/anew-way-to-bemad/304671/. Accessed 15 April 2020. Flynn, Thomas. 2011. Jean-Paul Sartre. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/sartre/. Accessed 27 March 2023. Forkner, Ben, and J. Gerald Kennedy. 1985. An Interview with Walker Percy. In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 226–244. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Gesell, Arnold, and Frances Ilg. 1946. The Child from Five to Ten. New  York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. Guthrie, W.K.C. 1971. The Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Han, Byung-Chul. 2015. The Burnout Society. Stanford: Stanford Univeristy Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1962/2008. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. Hullar, Timothy. 2009. Why Does My Voice Sound So Different When It Is Recorded and Played Back? Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-does-my-voice-sound-different/. Accessed 15 April 2020. Jaekl, Philip. 2018. The Real Reason the Sound of Your Own Voice Makes You Cringe. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/ jul/12/the-real-reason-the-sound-of-your-own-voice-makes-you-cringe. Accessed 15 April 2020. Joseph, Sister Miriam. 1937/2002.  The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric: Understanding the Nature and Function of Language, ed. Marguerite McGlinn. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books. Kierkegaard, Søren. 1941. The Sickness Unto Death, Trans. Walter Lowrie. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Langer, Susanne K. 1953. Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed from Philosophy in a New Key. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Lasch, Christopher. 1979/1991. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ———. 1984. The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ———. 1995. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Lewis, C.S. 1960/2012. The Four Loves: An Exploration of the Nature of Love. Boston: Mariner Books. Marcel, Gabriel. 1950. The Mystery of Being: I.  Reflection & Mystery, Trans. G.S. Fraser. London: The Harvill Press Ltd. ———. 1951. The Mystery of Being: II.  Faith & Reality, Trans. René Hague. South Bend: Gateway Editions Ltd.

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———. 1962. Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, Trans. Emma Craufurd. New York: Harper & Row. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1974. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. Ong, Walter J. 1967/2000. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. Albany: SUNY Press. ———. 1986. Hopkins, the Self, and God. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Percy, Walker. 1966. The Last Gentleman. New York: Picador. ———. 1975a. Loss of the Creature. In The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other, 46–63. New York: Picador. ———. 1975b. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other. New York: Picador. ———. 1980. The Second Coming. New York: Picador. ———. 1983. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. New York: Picador. ———. 1991. Signposts in a Strange Land, ed. Patrick Samway. New York: Picador. ———. 2019. Symbol & Existence: A Study in Meaning, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, and Scott Ross Cunningham. Macon: Mercer University Press. Postman, Neil. 1985/2006. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books. Potter, Andrew. 2011. The Authenticity Hoax: Why the “Real” Things We Seek Don’t Make Us Happy. New York: Harper Perennial. Rieff, Philip. 2006. The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute Books. Samway, Patrick, ed. 1995. A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1938. La Nausée. Gallimard. ———. 1945/1960. The Reprieve. Trans. Eric Sutton. New York: Bantam Books. ———. 1956. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library. ———. 1969/2007. Nausea. Trans. Lloyd Alexander. New York: New Directions Paperbook. Shklovsky, Victor. 1965. Art as Technique. In Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, Translated and edited by Lee T.  Lemon and Marion J.  Reis, 3–24. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Tolson, Jay. 1992. Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1925/1967. Science and the Modern World. New York: The Free Press.

CHAPTER 4

C3 Consciousness and the Defamiliarization of the God-Man

Caravaggio’s The Calling of St. Matthew depicts the moment when Christ calls Matthew, the tax collector. In the painting, five men gather around a small table. Three sit while an older man and a boy stand. All five look well dressed. Christ appears in the doorway with an outstretched hand pointing in the direction of someone in the room. Who is he pointing at? A bearded man, perhaps Peter, stands by Christ’s side, pointing in the same direction, imitating Christ. The two men furthest away from Christ keep their heads down, engrossed by counting the money that lies before them on the table; these two do not even see the shadowy figure at the door. Perhaps they heard someone enter, but the coins soak up their attention. An open window above Christ’s faintly haloed head lets in a cone-shaped beam of light that brightens the upper half of the wall behind the group. A shutter hanging on the adjacent wall blocks part of the beam, allowing only a small stream of light to land squarely on the face of one man, who looks wide-eyed in the direction of Christ. The wide-eyed man holds up his own index finger, ambiguously pointing either at himself or at the man next to him.1 That leaves three fingers hanging in midair—Christ’s, Peter’s, and the wide-eyed man’s. If paintings could speak, this painting 1  The Calling of St. Matthew admits of multiple interpretations regarding precisely who Matthew is in the painting, whether the wide-eyed man or the man counting coins at the end of the table (Varriano 2006, 111).

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might ask, “Who is Christ calling here? Who is being pointed at? Is it the wide-eyed man? Is it the man counting coins? Is it you?” Even though Percy thought faith in Christ remedied the semiotic predicament of the self, he avoided making direct assertions about the Good News of eternal salvation. Why? Because most everyone knows God loves them. Everyone has heard the Good News. And having heard it, they have turned on the television to find something to watch (cf. Percy 1991, 322–323). As Percy suggests, nowadays there is “an indifference more subversive than hostility” (322). All too often, symbolic simulacra relegate the crucifix or the Caravaggio painting to the realm of the merely “religious,” a realm where significance wanes (Percy 2019, 108–109). The simulacra that cloud C2 consciousness and contribute to the general cheapening of the vocabulary of Christendom make it difficult to recognize the shadowy figure on the other side of the room, the God-Man. Some insist that there are no transcendent answers to the ultimate questions. Why are we here? A random evolutionary process produced us. Where are we going? The abyss, the grave, and so on. What am I? A highly intelligent ape, not much different (ultimately) from a chimpanzee. When Percy mocked responses like these, he did not do so from the perspective of a Christian fundamentalist. He mocked Christian fundamentalists, too. Rather, Percy’s semiotic realism provides good reason to believe in the immateriality of the soul—even if we cannot see it. A variety of phenomena are real but nevertheless invisible (e.g., being as such, time, and the soul). The coupling between words and things is invisible. Yet, such a coupling is nevertheless real. The primary object of contemplation in this chapter is C3 consciousness, how to end up in it, and how to stay there. Defamiliarization, the process of the unthingifying of the world, results in a reversal of reification and opens a path to C3 consciousness. Once we have passed into C2 consciousness, we cannot simply return to C1. Perhaps we can become like little children, but without God’s help, we cannot stay like that for long (Luke 18:17 DRA). Nevertheless, we can recognize the dangers of reification and attempt to recognize the limitations of symbol use. This chapter will take us through the explicitly religious dimension of Percy’s thought.

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Defining C3 Consciousness Let us begin with what C3 consciousness is not. Percy describes several types of “quasi-C3” consciousness (Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1993, 90–91). You can momentarily escape C2 consciousness by reestablishing intersubjective communion, either through naming well or by somehow shifting the focus of attention away from the self. You avoid having to find one overarching symbol for yourself by forgetting yourself, even if only for a short time. Nowadays, there are many avenues available for losing yourself. You can forget yourself playing a game. You can lose yourself at the bottom of a bottle. You can divert yourself endlessly with your phone or Netflix. So, paradoxically, while you may never find yourself, you can always lose yourself. Scientists act in a manner that presupposes a community of other scientists, whom they hope will understand and confirm their work (Percy 1975, 210). Scientific discoveries imply intersubjective communion and revelatory insight. Albert Einstein or Karl von Frisch, the famous scientist who studied bees, may get so lost in their studies as to forget the predicament of C2 consciousness (Percy 1983, 13, 143). Percy also explains how good art can name alienation and, by so doing, lead to the reversal of alienation (Percy 1983, 120–121; Percy 1975, 97). As Percy suggests, the alienated commuter reading a novel about an alienated commuter is in better shape than his non-reading counterpart (Percy 1975, Ch. 4). The reading commuter has someone to share his predicament with (Percy 1983, 121). “Art reestablishes community, even if you’re reading a book alone. If it’s a great book, there is a community established between you, the writer, and the words he’s using,” Percy explains (Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1993, 91). A great book can articulate something hitherto unarticulated about existence (Percy 1983, 120). Through the mediation of poetry, fiction, and other forms of art, an alienated individual may come to recognize his or her predicament via another’s portrayal of it (Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1993, 90–91). Even music without any lyrics can symbolize a predicament and express something about the inner life that the musician and listener share in common (Langer 1942/1980, 204–245; Percy 1954, 381–382). Post-rock, a musical genre characterized by layered instruments and no singing, still conveys feeling. Nevertheless, like other types of “quasi-C3” consciousness, the “salvific effect of art” does not endure (Percy 1983, 121). Science and art thus both involve the momentary escape from C2 consciousness via intersubjective communion.

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Percy also highlights sports, media, recreational sex, drugs, and travel as activities for escaping the solitary predicament of C2 consciousness. These “modes of recreation” afford varying degrees of communion, transcendence, and self-forgetfulness in a secular age (Percy 1983, 180–181). These “quasi-C3” avenues lead to diversion rather than (religious) conversion (Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1993, 91).2 With the possible exceptions of doing drugs and traveling, the solitary self finds temporary respite from its isolation and encounters others in these recreational activities. For example, the identification between members of a sports team and the agonism inherent to athletic contests enable players or fans to temporarily forget the predicament of the self (Percy 1983, 180). For better or for worse, players and spectators alike can lose themselves in a contest. Percy writes, “Ask a Bororo tribesman: Who are you? He may reply: I am a parakeet. (Ask an L.S.U. fan at a football game: Who are you? He may reply: I am a tiger.)” (11). The identification between self, symbol, and other is complete, albeit taken for granted. The media facilitate intersubjective transactions between otherwise isolated selves (Percy 1983, 180–181). Some watch CNN. Others watch Fox. The identification between members of the same media tribe and the antagonism toward those of a different persuasion oftentimes resembles a sporting contest, an agonistic conflict with winners and losers (Strate 2014, 94–95). Percy never lived to see the advent of social media, but if he had, he would have likely considered it as another form of “quasi-C3” consciousness insofar as it, like other forms of media, enables the momentary establishment of intersubjective communion. Recreational sex offers autonomous selves in a post-religious, therapeutic age yet another avenue for intersubjective communion. Percy writes, “A further possibility, too, for temporary redemption is making love. That provides a real, concrete, human C3 community—but again a temporary one” (Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1993, 91). By “community,” Percy means in this case the encounter of one isolated self with another. Percy describes sex as “the cheapest, most readily available and pleasurable mode of intercourse with other selves and the only mode of intercourse by which the self can be certain of its relationship with other selves” (Percy 1983, 181). Yet, Percy parodies the futility of recreational sex to inform C2’s nothingness (Percy 1983, 44, 189; Percy 1975, 100). Like the other alternative 2  Irving Babbitt writes, “The whole of life may, indeed, be summed up in the words diversion and conversion” (Babbitt 1924, 268).

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means of escaping the predicament of the self, the transcendence experienced does not last. Autonomous selves may do drugs or travel to find release from their alienation.3 The self does not necessarily escape its isolation when doing drugs but rather forgets it. An alcoholic drinks to lose himself—not to find himself (Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1993, 91). Partying today has more to do with annihilating the self and less to do with festival and the celebration of community (Percy 1983, 180–185). Further, Percy believes that people may travel to a new location after their current location has been devalued, used up, or consumed by the commonplace; new places promise new identities (Percy 1983, 148, 181, 183; Percy  1991, 5). But, again, the exciting novelty of a new place always wears off. Just give it time. “After a sojourn in the desert, memories of Louisiana green become irresistible,” Percy writes (Percy 1991, 5). Altogether, the effects of all these attempts to escape the predicament of C2 consciousness do not endure. Questions of immorality aside, the trouble with the aforementioned quasi-C3 alternatives to true C3 consciousness lies in the transience of the transcendence that they afford, which leads to what Percy calls “reentry problems” (Percy 1983, 121–124, 142, 146–159). The game ends. The drugs wear off. The tour concludes. Perhaps it would be less problematic if there was no pain involved with going from one diversion to another. But there is pain, significant pain, what Percy calls “the spectacular miseries of reentry” (124). The lows of self-consciousness and alienation will follow the highs of self-forgetfulness and intersubjective communion. Everydayness sets in. Consider the case of the talented artist. Percy writes, “How do you go about living in the world when you are not working at your art, yet still find yourself having to get through a Wednesday afternoon?” (145). A good novelist spends several months and maybe even years working on a book, says something real and true about the human condition that others can recognize, and then perhaps wins an award. But then what? What does that novelist do afterward? The novelist has to drink to soften the blow of an ordinary Wednesday afternoon (123, 147–148).

3  This list of quasi-C3 alternatives is not exhaustive. Violence and war offer a perverse kind of community and self-forgetfulness (Burke 1950/1969, 22; Percy 1983, 157, 191–192; Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1993, 97). Percy also thought of psychoanalysis as a secular avenue for escaping the predicament of the self, “a kind of redemption” that can lead to a “quasicommunity” between the patient and analyst (Percy as qtd. In Hobson 1993, 93–94).

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The quotidian nature of everyday life does not compare with the exaltation of naming and knowing in scientific and artistic modes (Percy 1983, 143). If scientists, artists, and their audiences face reentry problems, then, rest assured, the other types of quasi-C3 consciousness also involve reentry problems. People develop a hunger, an addiction, even, for sports, media consumption, sex, drugs, and travel. The self can turn to these activities more and more to assuage the unspeakability of the self. But the self always remains as a leftover following each transcendent episode. Wherever you go, there you are. You are your very own ball and chain. You are your own everlasting leftover in an endless procession of symbols, each one competing with another to stand in for you. All attempts to escape the predicament of the self by the aforementioned means cannot but end in despair. Religious conversion affords the only “viable mode of reentry” (Percy 1983, 156–157, 159). Such an option may seem drastic and unpalatable to the modern mind. But, given that every other immanent mode of resolving the semiotic predicament fails, it is entirely reasonable. Percy indicates that Kierkegaard and Blaise Pascal recognized religious conversion as the only way to escape C2 consciousness and to reenter the concrete world of place and time despite the “strange abstractions of the twentieth century” (156–157). In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard writes, “Faith is: that the self in being itself and in willing to be itself is grounded transparently in God” (Kierkegaard 1941, 132). The word “transparently” is key for Percy. He describes Simone Weil, Martin Buber, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as exemplary souls who “have become themselves transparently before God and managed to live intact through difficult lives” (Percy 1983, 157). Those who live “transparently before God” do not necessarily live sinless lives. Only, such souls have no need to resort to semiotic disguises to conceal their own nothingness (152–154). To live transparently before God means, if I may venture a visual metaphor, to look through and beyond yourself to fix your attention on God. In his Pensées, Pascal identifies the futility of all attempts to find happiness outside of God. To know yourself, truly, is a paradox. To know yourself is to know your own nothingness. Pascal writes, “[T]his infinite abyss [in man] can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself [sic]” (Pascal 1995, 45). Nothing can satisfy the longing for the eternal except the eternal. Nothing can truly extinguish the desire to be someone else save for Someone Else. Thus, via a sort of via negativa, we arrive at the way to properly contend with C2 consciousness and hence the crisis of meaning. Once we

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recognize the futility of all other attempts to remedy the problem, we can move toward the real answer. Percy puts the following into the mouth of the alien in Lost in the Cosmos: “A C3 consciousness is a C2 consciousness which has become aware of its predicament, sought help, and received it” (Percy 1983, 212). The temptation faced by C2 consciousness to choose one symbol for itself to prop itself up remains an enduring temptation for C3 consciousness. Yet, C3 has somehow realized that no symbol can adequately capture who or what it is. If C2 involves a solitary self trying in vain to find an adequate symbol for itself, then C3 implies a redemption from this state (Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1993, 90–92). More specifically, with C3 consciousness a messenger arrives with “news from across the seas” bearing upon C2’s semiotic, existential predicament (Percy 1975, 119–149). Percy writes, “C3 is redemption—it’s the Good News” (Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1993, 90). Who or what are you? The apostle answers this question, and the Church transmits his answer through the ages (Percy 1975, 140, 149, 284). You are a fallen creature in need of help. Intervention into the predicament of C2 consciousness comes from without, from a transcendent source. The timeless God has entered into time, and the eternal has become historical (Kierkegaard 1944, 188). God became Man to save man from himself, and He has left a Church in His wake to save souls (Percy 1983, 247–248). The apostle’s transcendent message finds its way across space and time, to the ends of the earth and to future generations. Unlike C2 consciousness, which does not know what to do with itself, C3 has an answer: know, love, and serve God (“Lesson 1: The End of Man,” Q. 126; Percy 1983, 211). C2 reifies the self into one thing or another, while C3 acknowledges the centrality of relationship and communion with the Divine. Various obstacles make the path of C3 consciousness less persuasive to C2. First, the obnoxiousness of some believers turns others away from the path of religion. Percy pokes fun at media preachers or televangelists with “blown-dry hairdos” (Percy 1983, 156–157, 180). The irony of certain religious appeals lies in the fact that they all too often accomplish the opposite of their intended effects. The billboard on the side of the road threatening Hell may make more unbelievers than believers (Percy 1991, 180). Second, scientists may posit God as simply one more entity among immanent entities within the cosmos (Percy 1983, 156). Yet, God is not an immanent being within the cosmos but rather existence itself (Aquinas

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1920/2017, I.Q4.A2; Exodus 3:14 DRA).4 God is not a being but rather the perfect and subsistent ground upon which everything else depends in order to be. Despite its manifold usefulness in other spheres of life, the objective and empirical scientific method cannot grasp this notion of God as the ground of all existence. Third, simulacra hinder the existential encounter with the Church, the sacraments, and Christ Himself. Identifying something as “religious” means relegating it to a particular symbolic realm where it can be dealt with accordingly (i.e., forgotten or disposed of). A “religious” person is easily dealt with. Percy’s novels were attempts to address the third obstacle, the simulacra that hinder religious perception. Indeed, C2 consciousness benefits from a hearty clearing away of those simulacra that seal off the splendor of God from the solitary self.

Defamiliarization via Art Defamiliarization refers to the process of recovering existence from the veil of simulacra, the symbolic reifications at one remove from reality.5 I use the term broadly here to describe both the symbolic and non-symbolic means for accomplishing such a recovery. Percy himself described both art and ordeal as two options for breaking the simulacra and encountering being as being (Percy 1983, 105; Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 68–69). Percy learned about defamiliarization from the Russian literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky (Percy 1983, 105n). In the last decade of his life, Percy took a greater interest in Shklovsky’s writings, as Percy’s letters to the semioticists Kenneth Laine Ketner and Thomas Sebeok attest (Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 26, 68–69, 174–177, 180–181). In a 1986 letter to Sebeok, only a few years before Percy’s death in 1990, Percy explains how Shklovsky “is onto something with his notion of the evolution and ‘devolution’ of the esthetic symbol, and an esthetic device which he calls priëm ostrannenja which Eco 4  Whereas some may differentiate between “being” and “existence,” I use these terms interchangeably throughout. 5  Lemon and Reis (1965) translate Shklovsky’s ostranenie as “defamiliarization,” whereas Sher translates ostranenie as “enstrangement” (Gratchev and Mancing 2019, 89n1; Shklovsky 1965, 4; Sher 1990, xviii–xix). Note that Sher deliberately writes “enstrangement” not “estrangement.” Sher indicates that Shklovsky himself had coined a neologism and so feels inclined to follow in Shklovsky’s footsteps and to coin a neologism of his own. For the sake of this book, I use the term “defamiliarization” because it keeps with Percy’s usage. Interestingly, Sebeok suggests that Shklovsky’s ostranenie relates to Bertolt Brecht’s German word Verfremdung, which translates to “alienation” (Sebeok as qtd. in Samway 1995, 176).

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translates as the ‘device for making strange,’ others as ‘fresh’” (174).6 Good art can puncture through the symbolic simulacra to “make the stone stony” again (Shklovsky 1965, 12). The symbol once again operates as a conduit to mediate existence, which temporarily liberates C2 consciousness from the thingified world of being-in-itself. According to Percy, Shklovsky understood the devolution of the symbol that occurs in C2 consciousness and its subsequent renewal, or defamiliarization, through art (Percy 1983, 105n; Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 180). Though Percy learned about defamiliarization and Shklovsky’s theories later in life, Percy had long written about how art and ordeal can restore the sense of existence (Percy 1975, 83–100; 2019, 110). Shklovsky merely articulated for Percy what Percy had already thought about the power of art and ordeal to slough off the simulacra and recover being. Like Percy, Shklovsky believed in the power of art to transform and enliven the ordinary perception of reality. Art renders the commonplace uncommon and the mundane magnificent. Art defamiliarizes experience. Shklovsky suggests that, by nature, perception becomes automatic and habituated. Shklovsky invites his readers to consider the first time that they wrote with a pen or spoke in a foreign language (Shklovsky 1965, 11–12). Undertaking these activities for the first time may induce a certain amount of discomfort, but over time you gradually learn to use a pen and speak a language with greater facility and ease. Eventually, speaking a language becomes second nature, tacit, and taken for granted (Polanyi 1966, 17–18, 29, 45).7 In many ways, the automatization of perception makes life easier (Percy 2019, 224–225; Shklovsky 1965, 11–12). Consider the case of typing on a computer. Imagine having to relearn your home row keys every time you sat down to type. The hunt and peck method of visually finding each key one at a time, a less economical way of typing than using the home row keys, puts the typist at a disadvantage. The complexity of reality demands some level of habituation and automatization. For better or for worse, a priori symbolic constructions, the simulacra, help us to contend with day-to-day life. Art, however, deliberately upsets the ease and facility with which we process reality. Shklovsky writes, “The 6  Eco refers to Shklovsky’s “priëm ostrannenja,” or “the ‘device for making strange,’” in his A Theory of Semiotics (Eco 1976, 264). 7  Reading in a foreign language can defamiliarize. Eric McLuhan relates that his father Marshall McLuhan used to read the New Testament every morning in several different languages (McLuhan 1999a, xxi). Reading a Bible passage in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin can invite renewed appreciation for the many layers of meaning contained therein.

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technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged” (Shklovsky 1965, 12). In other words, art delays and disrupts the automatic recognition of familiar objects or events (13, 19–21). In “Art as Device,” Shklovsky sets forth several different artistic techniques for delaying and disrupting the automatism of perception, including using a different rhythm or language (22–24).8 Withholding the commonplace name for something and instead naming “corresponding parts of other objects” also contributes to defamiliarization (13).9 Shklovsky uses an example from one of Tolstoy’s stories to illustrate this point. Tolstoy writes about the act of stripping someone, throwing him to the floor, and lashing his backside with birch rods. In this case, Shklovsky suggests how Tolstoy described flogging as if seeing it for the first time, which contributes to its defamiliarization. The description of what was then a commonplace yet humiliating practice has a powerful effect on the reader (Shklovsky 1965, 12–13; Tolstoy 1895/1899). A change in perspective can defamiliarize, too. Shklovsky gives the example of Tolstoy’s use of perspective in the story “Kholstomer,” wherein Tolstoy examines the nature of private property through the point of view of a horse (Shklovsky 1965, 14–15). In this story, the horse reflects upon what it means for something to belong to another, which indirectly invites the reader to consider the nature of private property (Tolstoy 1886/1985, 449–450). For his own part, Percy advocates a shift in perspective and describes his tactic of taking a “Martian view” (Percy 1975, 11). Percy writes, “[O]nly a Martian can see man as he is, because man is too close to himself and his vision too fragmented” (11). In Lost in the Cosmos, Percy literally takes a Martian view: He has an alien actually talk to a human being about the differences between C1, C2, and C3 consciousness, among other things. The Martian view helps clear away the simulacra that might prevent Percy’s object of study, the human being, from appearing. 8  Shklovsky refers to poetry as “a difficult, roughened, impeded language” (Shklovsky 1965, 22). Prose, on the other hand, is “economical, easy, proper” (23). Shklovsky thus differentiates poetry from prose in terms of economy and ease of use. Poetry’s roughness contributes to the defamiliarization of language, which might otherwise fall beneath the level of awareness in its prosaic form (22, 24). 9  In like manner, Aristotle’s advice for making your style impressive involves withholding commonplace names; Aristotle writes, “Describe a thing instead of naming it: do not say ‘circle,’ but ‘that surface which extends equally from the middle every way’” (Aristotle 1984, 1407b25–30).

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Words, just like any other perceptible phenomena, lose their potency through repetition and overuse.10 For example, take the word “love.” For Percy, sentimental television soap operas and sappy movies, among other forms of mass media, devalue the word “love” (Percy 1991, 161). The word “love” becomes a thoughtless simulacra, a symbol degraded through its unreflective application to nearly everything and anything.11 A man loves his wife. And he also loves hunting, HBO, and hamburgers.12 Other cheapened words include “truth, beauty, brotherhood of man, life, and so on” (161). Even the most vulgar of curse words lose their “semantic charge” through careless repetition (Percy 1983, 191). Percy believes religious words such as “God,” “grace,” “sin,” “redemption,” “salvation,” “Jesus,” and even “religion” have been devalued (Percy 1991, 180, 306). Indeed, the “old words of grace” have become “worn smooth as poker chips” (Percy 1975, 116). Such words no longer reveal anything about the underlying sacred dimension that they refer to. Thus, the artist who believes has the job of reanimating the language. Percy writes, “One of the tasks of the saint is to renew language, to sing a new song” (Percy 1991, 306). Psalm 91 reads, “Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth” (Ps 96:1 NABRE). Percy believes that the Psalmist provides insight into the importance of coining new words (Percy, as qtd. in Bunting 1985, 41). Given the devaluation of religious symbols, Percy asks, “How does he [the Christian novelist] set about writing, having cast his lot with a discredited Christendom and having inherited a defunct vocabulary?” (Percy 1975, 118). Elsewhere, Percy writes, “He must use every ounce of skill, cunning, humor, even irony, to deliver religion from the merely edifying” (Percy 1991, 306). Percy knew that the 10  Percy explains how Heidegger and Marcel dealt with the problem of simulacra and the devaluation of words. “Being is elusive; it tends to escape, leaving only a simulacrum of symbol. … This is why new names must be found for being, as Heidegger thinks, or the old ones given new meaning, as Marcel thinks,” Percy writes (Percy 1991, 135). Consider here Heidegger’s intimidating array of neologisms and concatenated strings of words: Dasein, being-in-the-world, and so on (Heidegger 1962/2008). For his own part, Marcel sought to give new meaning to old terms such as “being” and “having” (Collins 1952, 155–160). 11  The Christian apologist C. S. Lewis defamiliarizes the word “love” in his book The Four Loves, which reviews several different understandings of love and makes occasional use of Greek terms: storge (affection), philia (friendship), and eros (erotic love) (Lewis 1960/2012). Arguably, Lewis’ use of Greek terminology helps to circumvent the simulacra that have formed around the notion of love and allows for new meaning to emerge. The final chapter of this book will put Lewis’ work in conversation with Percy’s paradigm. 12  I am grateful to Anthony Wachs’ Interpersonal Communication class at Duquesne University for this insight into the devaluation of the term “love.”

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“merely edifying” would have no effect on his audience. “The fictional use of violence, shock, comedy, insult, the bizarre, are the everyday tools of his trade,” Percy writes (Percy 1975, 118). Percy notes how Flannery O’Connor’s (1955/2007) The Violent Bear It Away portrays baptism through its exaggeration; many today might consider baptism on par with “taking the kids to see Santa” (Percy 1975, 118). O’Connor fictionally portrays it in a manner aimed to jolt the reader into a religious mode.13 Beyond the fictional use of violence, satire can defamiliarize. Percy writes, “There may be times when the greatest service a novelist can do his fellow man is to follow General Patton’s injunction: Attack, attack, attack. Attack the fake in the name of the real” (Percy 1991, 161). The satirist, above all, attacks in a deliberately subversive way. Nevertheless, Percy insists, “Satire is always launched in the mode of hope” (182). Why? Because satire always “attacks one thing in order to affirm another” (182). For example, Percy satirizes the self-help genre in Lost in the Cosmos for the sake of really helping others.14 For all of its genius, the scientific method cannot help you find out who you are. With the assistance of a talking extraterrestrial, Percy aims to move his readers toward a recognition of the limits of the scientific method as well as their own predicament.

Defamiliarization via Ordeal and the Postapocalyptic Paradoxically, artistic symbols can undermine already calcified symbolic constructions. During an ordeal, on the other hand, the recalcitrance of reality itself impinges upon a priori symbolic reifications (cf. Burke 1935/1984, 255–261). In the language of Saussure’s semiotics, art concerns how the signifier refreshes the signified. In an ordeal, the signified 13  Even though Percy condones the fictional use of violence, he rejects the pornographic and sexually explicit (Percy 1991, 214). Pornography operates on the dyadic plane as opposed to the symbolic and therefore triadic (362–363). 14  Percy wrote Love in the Ruins as a satire, too. The futuristic setting of Love in the Ruins allows Percy to caricature the worldviews of his historical moment, including those of the political left and right. Percy writes, “It [the futuristic novel] gives you a chance to speak to the present society from a futuristic point of view. Then you can exaggerate present trends so that they become noticeable and more subject to satire” (Percy as qtd. in Bunting 1985, 45).

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revivifies the signifier. Thus, ordeal, catastrophe, disaster, and crisis defamiliarize.15 Percy describes the alienated commuter who has a heart attack on the train and then sees his own hand “for the first time” with “wonder and delight” (Percy 1975, 4, 41, 60, 88, 109). Percy also repeatedly uses the example of Prince Andrei from Tolstoy’s War and Peace, who wondered at the grandeur of the clouds while lying wounded after combat (Percy 2019, 110; Percy 1975, 41, 99; Tolstoy 1993, 164–167). Disaster clears away “the simulacrum of everydayness and of consumption” (Percy 1975, 60). Even “bad news” of a catastrophe has a way of calling someone back to reality (Percy 1983, 60; Percy 1975, 20). Why do people remember exactly what they were doing when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor or when terrorists drove planes into the World Trade Center on 9/11 (Percy as qtd. in Tolson 1997, 269; Percy as qtd. in Olesky 1993, 81; cf. Percy 1983, 58)? On September 11, I watched the burning buildings on a small television set in Mr. Hoover’s seventh-grade classroom before being driven home by a family friend. Where were you? Why does memory become so vivid, distinct, and concrete when recalling a disaster (Percy 1983, 57–58)? Why does reality seem more real during a crisis? Even getting shot at can “dispense” someone from the commonplace (Percy 1983, 62–63). Percy’s novel The Second Coming begins with an alienated suburbanite taking a bullet while standing in his own garage (Percy 1980, 15–21). Will Barrett, the protagonist, lays on the garage floor after getting hit, “speculating on the odd upsidedownness of the times, that on a beautiful Sunday in old Carolina, it takes a gunshot to restore a man to himself” (18). Suffering, pain, and even nausea can “knock everything else out of one’s head, lofty thoughts, profound thoughts, crazy thoughts, even lust” (223). Ordeal takes individuals out of themselves, for better or for worse, and it can end the solitary preoccupation with the self, even if only momentarily. Percy put both art and ordeal in the service of moving others toward C3 consciousness. Percy thought the novelist could make “vicarious use” 15  Percy hints at other tactics of defamiliarization that I do not cover in this chapter, including apprenticeship to a great figure. According to Percy, the great figure, such as a true scientist or artist, disdains specialist jargon and instead takes a sincere interest in the object of study (Percy 1975, 60–61). In other words, the great figure attends more to existence itself than simulacra, the symbolic constructions at one remove from reality.

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of catastrophe to bring readers to themselves (Percy 1975, 118). The postapocalyptic novel functions as a supremely powerful tool for rendering the commonplace unfamiliar because it combines the defamiliarizing effects of art and ordeal.16 Percy’s Love in the Ruins takes place in a postapocalyptic scenario, where vines have begun to sprout and overtake the buildings (Percy 1971, 9, 88, 115). The book begins with an account of how the protagonist Tom More, a psychiatrist, treats one of his patients, Ted Tennis, for “angelism,” the abstracted and aloof state of solitary C2 consciousness (32–37). In order to cure Ted of his angelism, More has him walk through a swamp in order to get home, instead of having him take the more commonplace commuter route. Ultimately, Ted’s ordeal clears away his simulacra for the better and takes him out of his abstracted state of mind (37). Love in the Ruins attempts to reanimate the word “love” by literally depicting love in the ruins of a postapocalyptic world.17 Percy’s Lancelot, by contrast, seeks to restore meaning to the word “sin” (Percy 1977, 52, 138; Percy 1991, 383). Though written in a far more serious tone than Love in the Ruins, Lancelot bristles with a sense of the apocalyptic. Lancelot, the main character in the novel, compares the revelation that his wife has been cheating on him and that another man has fathered his daughter to a scientist who has discovered that an asteroid will strike the earth (Percy 1977, 19–20, 27–33). Later in the book, Lancelot prophesies, “This country [the US] is going to turn into a desert and it won’t be a bad thing” (156). In Love in the Ruins, the world goes to ruins. In Lancelot, the main character’s life goes to ruins (Percy 1985, 179–180). In both cases, the catastrophic has a way of rendering reality more real. Both Love in the Ruins and Lancelot end by implying the significance of perhaps the most concrete and real of all phenomena for Catholics: the sacraments. The seven sacraments include baptism, holy orders, holy matrimony, confirmation, extreme unction (or anointing of the sick), confession, and the Eucharist (“Lesson 13: On the Sacraments in General,” Q. 577). Love in the Ruins ends with a depiction of ordinary, domestic life in a marriage (Percy 1971, 402–403). Lancelot hints at the importance of 16   The etymology of the word “apocalypse” implies an uncovering or disclosure (“Apocalypse”). What gets peeled away in an apocalyptic event? The simulacra. What gets revealed through ordeal? Existence. 17  Percy describes “ruin” as an exemplary “word-soul,” a pleasurable word worth savoring for itself (Percy 2019, 225).

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holy orders and confession. By the end of Lancelot, the priest, who has remained silent throughout the whole book, finally begins to speak. Lancelot asks the priest, “Is there anything you wish to tell me before I leave?” The priest replies, “Yes,” and the novel ends (Percy 1977, 257). Only the priest as a priest, and not as a psychiatrist or anything else, can possibly help Lancelot at the end of his confession (4–5, 11). Only a priest has the authority to grant absolution to Lancelot. Farrell O’Gorman notes how the novel ends with “a real dialogue and therefore the possibility that Lance’s encounter with Percival [the priest] might become a saving confession after all” (O’Gorman 2013, 140). Despite the heinous deeds Lancelot has committed, he does not lie beyond all hope (Percy 1991, 385–386). Percy leaves the reader with a sense of the importance of the sacraments in other novels, too. The Last Gentleman involves a character receiving the sacrament of baptism (Percy 1966, 405–407). In the last few pages of The Moviegoer, the reader learns that Lonnie, the half-brother of the main character Binx Bolling, received extreme unction before passing away (Percy 1960/1989, 240). Percy thus hints at the incredible importance of the sacraments without explicitly stating as much. The “aesthetic limitations of the novel form” and the devaluation of the language of Christendom in this historical moment hinder any sort of direct utterance about the truths of revealed religion (Percy 1991, 386). Non-religious individuals can consciously find value in art or ordeal for their own sake. Nevertheless, the revelation of being that occurs after the simulacra have vanished may induce horror rather than joy. Catching sight of your own hand, “which can only be called a revelation of being,” results in either wonder or revulsion, depending on your religious persuasion (Percy 1975, 109). In contrast to the awestruck commuter, Percy explains how the atheist Sartre’s character Roquentin notices his hand with disgust. Roquentin’s hand looked like a “great fat slug with red hairs” (109).18 Roquentin’s reflections on his hands begin the novel, and he writes in his journal, “[T]here is something new about my hands, a certain way of picking up my pipe or fork” (Sartre 1969/2007, 4). A short bit later in the same journal entry, he reflects, “This morning in the library, 18  While I found no reference to a “slug” in Nausea, Sartre does have Roquentin compare his hand to a crab (Sartre 1969/2007, 98–99).

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when the Self-Taught Man came to say good morning to me, it took me ten seconds to recognize him. I saw an unknown face, barely a face. Then there was his hand like a fat white worm in my own hand. I dropped it almost immediately and the arm fell back flabbily” (4). The image of a hand turning into a crawling thing makes for a rather eerie, feverish effect. Not all defamiliarization ends in joy. Sometimes it ends in the fear of God. Sometimes it ends in horror. With regard to the non-religious pursuit of defamiliarization, reentry problems will always accompany art and ordeal when individuals seek these things as ends in themselves. The quest for sheer artistic transcendence of the human predicament may culminate in aestheticism, or art for art’s sake. As with art, people can chase the transcendent high of ordeal as an end in itself. Free solo rock climbers climb hundreds of feet into the air without anything to catch them. Why on earth would someone put themselves on the edge of death in this way? Without question, the proximity and possibility of death revivify experience. Risking death destroys boredom. The only danger is that you might actually die. War stands as another example of ordeal that can result in the recovery of existence (Percy 1983, 44, 124). In the 2008 film The Hurt Locker, the main character, a specialist in defusing bombs, struggles with reentry problems when returning home from combat. In one moment, the protagonist prevents a bomb from exploding. In another, he cleans out his gutter back home. Ordinary life cannot and does not compare to the thrill of defusing a bomb. Some contend with boredom by risking life and limb. But how long can you realistically tempt death? Ultimately, people sin to escape the predicament of C2 consciousness. Violence renders the concrete infinitely real (Percy 1977, 163–164, 242–243). Sex results in momentary ecstasy and transcendence (Percy 1966, 279–280). But the visceral oscillations between sex and violence wreak havoc on the world and peoples’ lives (Percy 1977, 138–139; Percy  1983, 44, 175–192; Percy as qtd. in McCombs 1993, 200–201; Percy 1980, 271). The person seeking true redemption from C2 consciousness requires enduring relief. Only someone with authority, an apostle, could possibly deliver epic news of a peace that lasts. Two men influenced Percy’s understanding of the role of the apostle and the faith he brings: Søren Kierkegaard and St. Thomas Aquinas.

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Kierkegaard: The Apostle’s Transcendent Authority As I noted previously, Percy acknowledges that Kierkegaard’s essay “The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle” had more of an influence on him becoming Catholic than any other writing (Percy as qtd. in Dewey 1985, 110). Percy, of course, notes the irony in a Protestant having such an impact on him: “Here I am a Catholic writer living in Louisiana, and yet the man to whom I owe the greatest debt is this great Protestant theologian” (127). Kierkegaard’s indirect mode of communication, his understanding of rotation and repetition, and his categories of the aesthetic, ethical, and religious shaped Percy’s ideas.19 Kierkegaard also investigated the phenomenon of the trial. Percy explains how a trial “absolutely transcends the objective-empirical” and thus stands outside the domain of scientific investigation (Percy 1975, 86).20 A trial can strip away the simulacra that prevent you from perceiving God’s presence. Perhaps above all, Percy appreciated Kierkegaard’s critique of idealism. Kierkegaard vigorously attacked the Hegelianism and system building of his time. Like Marcel, Kierkegaard sought to combat idealism (Collins 1952, 135). Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, an attack on the German idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and speculative philosophy, provided Percy with one of the primary entrances into Kierkegaard’s work. At first, Percy did not quite understand the significance of Kierkegaard’s attack on Hegel, but later Percy realized he could extend this attack to scientism in general (Percy as qtd. In Dewey 1985,

19  For a more detailed account of Kierkegaard’s indirect method of communication, see Kierkegaard’s The Point of View for My Work as An Author: A Report to History (Kierkegaard 1962). 20  For an example of a trial in the work of Kierkegaard, see Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which reflects on the story of Abraham’s call to sacrifice his son Isaac (Kierkegaard 2003).

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107, 117).21 Paraphrasing Kierkegaard, Percy referred to Hegel as he who “knew everything and said everything, except for what it is to be born and to live and to die” (Percy as qtd. In Dewey 1985, 109; cf. Percy 1991, 188, 343). Concluding Unscientific Postscript, written by Kierkegaard under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, appeared in 1846. The pseudonym Johannes Climacus represents a young man, not yet a Christian, contemplating how to become a Christian (Lowrie 1944, xiv–xvii). Indeed, the whole problem animating the text is how to become a Christian (Kierkegaard 1944, 20). Speculative philosophers have tended to treat the problem from an “objective,” disinterested posture (23–24). Kierkegaard insists on the insignificance and unhelpfulness of this objective posture in becoming Christian, and he associates the life of the passionate Christian 21  Kierkegaard attacks Hegel on several fronts. First, Kierkegaard takes issue with Hegel’s rejection of the either/or, which Kierkegaard finds essential to the Christian leap of faith. Hegel writes, “Neither in heaven nor in earth, neither in the world of mind nor nature, is there anywhere such an abstract ‘Either—or’ as the understanding maintains” (Hegel 1929a, 147). Kierkegaard states, “Hegel is utterly and absolutely right in asserting that viewed eternally, sub specie aeterni, in the language of abstraction, in pure thought and pure being, there is no either-or” (Kierkegaard 1944, 270). From an abstract and idealistic perspective, you can do away with the either/or. However, Kierkegaard understands faith in terms of the either/or. Either you have faith or you do not, and in the end, you must decide one way or another. Existence insists upon the either/or, and if you do away with the either/or, you must also do away with existence (23, 271, 273). Hence, the abstract dialectician ends up trapped in his or her own mind, constantly contemplating and never deciding between two mutually exclusive propositions. Second, Kierkegaard takes issue with the skepticism baked into Hegel’s dialectical method. According to Kierkegaard, Hegelian idealism teaches the notion of truth as a product of an ongoing dialectic or “world process” as well as the relativity of truth, which, according to Kierkegaard, “cannot help any living individual” (34n). The individual bewitched by the Hegelian method can only know the truth of preceding generations, or in retrospect, and never the truth of his or her own generation, which hinders any sort of personal commitment to the truth of Christianity (34n). The Hegelian dialectic presupposes that every particular, individual truth gets contradicted and subsumed into the larger whole (Loewenberg 1929/1957, xii–xv). As Hegel writes, “The truth is the whole. The whole, however is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development” (Hegel 1929b, 16). However, you cannot decide once and for all in favor of Christianity if the world spirit keeps unfolding. Kierkegaard writes, “When the subject does not put an end to his reflection, he is made infinite in reflection, i.e. [sic] he does not arrive at a decision” (Kierkegaard 1944, 105). Ultimately, the question remains open as to when the world historical process will actually come to an end (or if it ever will) (16–17). If the dialectic never ends, the individual remains trapped in inquiry without deciding.

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with subjectivity, inwardness, and inner transformation (Ch. 1). Kierkegaard writes, “Christianity is spirit, spirit is inwardness, inwardness is subjectivity, subjectivity is essentially passion, and in its maximum an infinite, personal, passionate interest in one’s eternal happiness” (33). By treating the question of how to become a Christian as something objective, the idealist tends to suck all of the vigor, passion, and decisiveness out of the Christian life. Speculation about the truth of Christianity does not necessarily translate to the interested “appropriation and assimilation” of it (Kierkegaard 1944, 23). If you want to become a Christian, you must make the Christian truth your own, in a sense; you must adopt it and act on it. The objective approach tends to delay indefinitely the decision to become Christian (28). The ideal of objectivity may work in other disciplines, especially the “strict scientific disciplines,” but such an objective posture cannot help with the problem of how to become Christian (42).22 Kierkegaard attacks abstract thinking because it operates “sub specie aeterni,” under the aegis of eternity, while it neglects the existential, temporal, and concrete (75, 267, 271). For Kierkegaard, idealism neglects the “predicament of the existing individual” (267). Percy would have likely latched onto precisely this disregard for the individual as a defining trait of scientism. Science can understand everything under the sun except for the individual qua an individual. It is precisely for the individual in an existential predicament that the apostle carries news “from across the seas” (Percy 1975). Kierkegaard’s essay “The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle” differentiates between the genius and the apostle and offers a reflection on the nature of authority.23 The essay begins with a critique of those who admire St. Paul for the aesthetic beauty of his writings. According to Kierkegaard, the aesthetic merit of St. Paul’s writings cannot compare with that of Shakespeare or Plato. With all due respect to St. Paul, Kierkegaard suggests that the latter are geniuses, while the former is an 22  Having taken into consideration Kierkegaard’s idealistic milieu, Percy sympathized with Kierkegaard’s attack on “objectivity,” but Percy also thought that Kierkegaard’s emphasis on subjectivity tended to obscure the importance of intersubjectivity (Percy as qtd. in Dewey 1985, 119). 23  Elsewhere, Kierkegaard’s essay appears titled with “of” at the beginning, rendering the title “Of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle” (Kierkegaard 1847/1962). In text in this book, I leave the preposition “of” out of the title to maintain the same usage as Dewey and Tolson, who have commented on the place of Kierkegaard’s essay in Percy’s thought (Dewey 1985, 110; Tolson 1992, 174, 238).

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apostle (Kierkegaard 1847/1962, 89–90).24 Kierkegaard writes, “A genius and an Apostle are qualitatively different, they are definitions which each belong in their own spheres: the sphere of immanence, and the sphere of transcendence” (90–91). The genius, whether scientist or artist, may acquire world-historical significance, and he may gain renown for what he says and does in this world, in the immanent realm. But an apostle “is what he is by his divine authority” (91). In other words, the apostle operates in the realm of transcendence. After making this distinction between the genius and the apostle, Kierkegaard moves on to a consideration of authority. What is authority? “Authority is a specific quality which, coming from elsewhere, becomes qualitatively apparent when the content of the message or of the action is posited as indifferent” (Kierkegaard 1847/1962, 96). To illustrate the essence of authority, Kierkegaard invites the reader to consider two different people saying the same message (e.g., “go!”) in the same way, except one person has authority and the other does not. Contrast a military captain yelling “Go!” to a subordinate paratrooper during a drop exercise with an old woman yelling “Go!” (and perhaps honking) at the car in front of her.25 When holding form and content constant, as in this hypothetical example, the “authority makes the difference” (97). The authority functions as the determining factor in whether or not another heeds the message. Kierkegaard suggests that people listen to geniuses not because they have authority, whether immanent or transcendent authority, but because of their intelligence and their talent to convey something in an intellectual and aesthetically pleasing manner (Kierkegaard 1847/1962, 93–95, 103–104). Plato may have had profound things to say about immortality because he was a genius; however, compared with Christ, “poor Plato has no authority whatsoever” when it comes to speaking about immortality (100–103). Whatever Christ says about eternal life is decisive simply because He said it (102). Authority in the immanent and worldly sense always remains transitory. Kierkegaard writes, “Authority is inconceivable within the sphere of immanence, or else it can only be thought of as something 24  Augustine, of course, appreciates the writings of St. Paul otherwise than Kierkegaard. According to Augustine, the reader can find eloquence in St. Paul’s writings, even if St. Paul did not deliberately use rhetorical precepts in his work (Augustine 1958, 124–125). 25  Anna Bonanno came up with this wonderful example of a military leader versus an old lady.

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transitory” (97). When understood on a merely worldly and historical plane, authority cannot endure. Consider here the fate of nations. The poem “Ozymandias” sums up Kierkegaard’s sentiments about the transitoriness of immanent authority fairly well: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (Shelley 1977). History reveals the rise and fall of kingdoms and leaders in a seemingly endless succession. Nevertheless, fathers, kings, and governments can command obedience, at least on a worldly plane, not because they are geniuses but because they have authority (Kierkegaard 1847/1962, 100, 104). Altogether, Kierkegaard suggests that an apostle, “who has divine authority to command both the masses and the public,” demonstrates his transcendent authority by his statement and his willingness to suffer (105, 108). In “The Message in the Bottle,” Percy adopts Kierkegaard’s distinction between the genius and the apostle. Percy understands the “news” that the apostle bears as both a special category of communication and a type of real knowledge. Percy’s essay begins with a hypothetical thought experiment. Imagine a castaway walking along the beach, picking up bottles washed up along the shore with various messages contained therein. Some bottles have universal scientific knowledge in them like “Water boils at 100 degrees at sea level,” whereas others have messages bearing upon the predicament of the castaway such as “There is fresh water in the next cove” (Percy 1975, 119–126). The former type of knowledge is knowledge sub specie aeternitatis, or knowledge that holds good and true under the aegis of eternity, for all times and places.26 Percy understands the latter statement about water in a neighboring cove as news relevant to the predicament of the castaway (126–128). Though, the fresh water only concerns life on the island, so Percy labels this “island news.” Other news may 26   The phrase “sub specie aeternitati” appears throughout Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Lowrie notes that the phrase “sub specie aeternitatis” with an “s” tacked onto the end comes from Spinoza; however, in Lowrie’s translation, Lowrie preserves the use of “sub specie aeternitati” as opposed to “sub specie aeternitatis” (see Lowrie’s note in Kierkegaard 1944, 560n). Percy, for his own part, uses the phrase “sub specie aeternitatis” simply to classify knowledge that holds true in all times and all places. Percy writes, “By sub specie aeternitatis, he [the castaway] means not what the philosopher usually means but rather knowledge which can be arrived at anywhere by anyone and at any time” (Percy 1975, 125). Thus, while similarities and differences might exist between Kierkegaard’s, Spinoza’s, and Percy’s use of the term, I use it here principally in the sense that Percy did as signifying universally true knowledge.

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address the entire predicament of the castaway (i.e., being stuck on an island), which Percy calls “news from across the seas” (Percy 1975, 143–144). Percy argues by analogy here, comparing the castaway to fallen Man. By “news from across the seas,” Percy means news from a transcendent, eternal source. In addition to the type of message contained in the bottle, Percy considers the posture of the castaway. Will the castaway read each message with an objective-minded posture? Or will he assume the posture proper to his predicament, namely the posture of a castaway (Percy 1975, 128–129)? Percy writes, “Insofar as a man is objective-minded, no sentence is significant as a piece of news. For in order to be objective-minded one must stand outside and over against the world as its knower in one mode or another” (129). The ability of a man to receive news requires some awareness of his predicament. Percy continues, “In summary, the hearer of news is a man who finds himself in a predicament. News is precisely that communication which has bearing on his predicament and is therefore good or bad news” (130). Supposing that you found yourself stuck in a desert, news of water over the next sand dune would appear as good news, whereas news of diamonds nearby might make little difference in remedying your predicament (133–134). Percy disclaims any Christian apologetic motive behind writing his essay. Instead, he insists, “My purpose is rather the investigation of news as a category of communication” (140). While theological implications may follow from what Percy argues, he remains focused on the nature of communication. Percy understands “news” as “the most significant” category of communication, more significant even than communication of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis (145–146). The genius communicates knowledge sub specie aeternitatis in the sphere of immanence, whereas the apostle communicates transcendent “news from across the seas” (147). Thus, Kierkegaard helped Percy to understand that the genius and the apostle communicate differently. They carry different types of messages. One type is far more important than the other since it addresses the entire predicament of the one to whom it is addressed. For Percy, Kierkegaard and other so-called existentialists advanced an anthropology consistent with the view of man as a castaway (i.e., a fallen creature in need of help) (Percy 1975, 145–146). If man is simply an animal in an environment with a complex set of immanent needs, then the news the apostle brings is unnecessary. But if man is destined for something greater yet cannot help himself, then the apostle’s news matters more than anything else.

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Aquinas: News as a Type of Knowledge, Faith as a Type of Knowing Percy did not agree with Kierkegaard on everything. Near the end of “The Message in the Bottle,” Percy takes issue with Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith as absurd and as separate from knowledge (Percy 1975, 145–146). Why? Because news constitutes its own form of knowledge, which scientific modes of knowing typically elide as insignificant. Percy notes, “Ordinary epistemology does not take account of news as a form of knowing” (Percy as qtd. in Gretlund 1985, 205). It is Aquinas, not Kierkegaard, who provided Percy with a way for making sense of news as a type of knowledge and faith as a type of knowing. Indeed, Aquinas understood faith as a type of knowledge, whereas Kierkegaard understood it as an irrational “leap” (Kierkegaard 1944, 15; Kierkegaard 1844/1962, 76; Kierkegaard 1846/1962, 81–82). Percy notes how Kierkegaard considered the Christian faith as “a setting aside of reason” and a paradox (Percy 1975, 145). Kierkegaard repeatedly refers to the setting aside of reason in the act of faith (Kierkegaard 1844/1962, 72–73, 76, 79). Two epigraphs precede “The Message in the Bottle,” one from Kierkegaard and one from Aquinas. The epigraph from Kierkegaard reads: Faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and the historical as indifferent, or it is pure historical knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical. (Kierkegaard as qtd. in Percy 1975, 119; Kierkegaard 1844/1962, 76)

Percy uses this passage as an epigraph because it exemplifies Kierkegaard’s stance against faith as a form of knowledge. In its original context, this quote appears at a point where Kierkegaard is explaining the relationship between the disciple and the Teacher, God Himself. Kierkegaard distinguishes between two particular teachers, Socrates and Christ, in terms of how these teachers relate to their students. Socrates seeks to divest himself of followers, whereas Christianity bids the disciples to cling to the Teacher (Kierkegaard 1844/1962, 19, 28–29, 68–88). Christ says quite simply to Levi, the son of Alphaeus, “Follow me” (Mk 2:14 DRA). With regard to Christianity, Kierkegaard writes, “the object of faith is not the teaching but the Teacher” (Kierkegaard 1844/1962, 77). For Kierkegaard, faith has as

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its object the Paradox that God took human form in the person of Christ (Kierkegaard 1944, 194;  Kierkegaard 1844/1962, 76). Kierkegaard writes, “That God has existed in human form, has been born, grown up, and so forth, is surely the paradox sensu strictissimo [in the strictest sense], the absolute paradox” (Kierkegaard 1944, 194). The paradox of the Incarnation, the union of the historical and the eternal, realizes itself in faith (Kierkegaard 1844/1962, 73, 76). Percy attributes Kierkegaard’s stance on faith as a paradox and as contrary to reason to the Hegelian milieu that Kierkegaard lived and wrote in. “His [Kierkegaard’s] extreme position is at least in part attributable to his anxiety to rescue Christianity from the embrace of the Hegelians,” Percy writes (Percy 1975, 145). Thus, Percy excused much of Kierkegaard’s emphasis on faith as inwardness because he sympathized with Kierkegaard’s plight of writing in an idealistic milieu. Percy admired Kierkegaard’s “analysis of the existential predicament of modern man,” but he rejected Kierkegaard’s notion of faith as an absurd leap in the dark (Percy as qtd. in Gretlund 1985, 204). Percy thought Kierkegaard ranked knowledge sub specie aeternitatis too highly and did not sufficiently value “contingent historical knowledge” like “news from across the seas” (Percy 1975, 145–146). Percy writes, “Yet to the castaway who becomes a Christian, it [the contingent historical knowledge of the Gospel] is not paradox but news from across the seas, the very news he has been waiting for” (Percy 1975, 147). In formulating a response to Kierkegaard’s stance on faith and reason, Percy draws upon Aquinas’ De Veritate, Question 14, Articles 1 and 2. In Article 1, Aquinas asks, “What is belief?” (Aquinas 1953, 207). In reply to his own question, Aquinas suggests that belief involves the simultaneity of discursive thought and assent. To assent means to hold firmly to one side of a set of contradictory propositions (210). Following Augustine, Aquinas suggests that to believe is to think with assent (Aquinas 1920/2017, II-II. Q2.A1).27 Essentially, science follows from a discursive train of reasoning that causes assent.28 “One who has scientific knowledge, however, does use discursive thought and gives assent, but the thought causes the assent, 27  With regard to the difference between belief and faith, Aquinas defines belief as the “internal act of faith” (Aquinas 1920/2017, II-II.Q2). 28  By “science,” Aquinas follows Aristotle’s usage of the term, which refers to certain knowledge obtained from demonstrations (Aquinas 1920/2017, II-II.Q2.A1; Aristotle 1998, Book 6, Ch. 3; 2001, Book I, Ch. 2; Hagen 1912).

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and the assent puts an end to the discursive thought,” Aquinas explains (Aquinas 1953, 210). With regard to belief, assent does not come from a discursive train of reasoning. Rather, belief derives from an act of the will, which occurs in parallel with discursive, scientific thought. The will to believe arises from the promise of eternal life (210–211, 216). Understanding is held “captive” by the assent to believe. But the believer can still inquire deeper into that which he or she believes, and thus the process of discursive thought continues for the believer despite the assent to believe (Aquinas 1953, 211; 2 Co. 10:5 NABRE). With knowledge sub specie aeternitatis, discursive reason causes assent, whereas with “news from across the seas,” or the “knowledge of faith,” “scientific knowledge and assent are undertaken simultaneously” (Percy 1975, 145). The castaway can have knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and receive “news from across the seas” (145). Scientific and salvific knowledge need not contradict one another, as proponents of scientism might have us believe. Question 14, Article 2, of De Veritate takes up the question, “What is faith?” Aquinas builds upon the apostle Paul’s definition of faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence [argumentum] of things that appear not” (Aquinas 1953, 213; Heb 11:1 DRA). The other epigraph from “The Message in the Bottle,” the one from Aquinas instead of Kierkegaard, appears in this particular question from De Veritate and reads, “The act of faith consists essentially in knowledge and there we find its formal or specific perfection” (Percy 1975, 119; Aquinas 1953, 220). Aquinas immediately adds, “This [the preceding statement] is clear from its object, as has been said” (220). Scientific knowledge has for its “object” those things that appear (Aquinas 1953, 217–218, 220–221; Aquinas 1920/2017, II-II.Q4.A1). Faith, on the other hand, has for its “object” those “things that appear not” (Aquinas 1953, 217, 220). In other words, the knowledge of faith has for its object the promise of eternal life, which the senses cannot immediately verify.29 Aquinas defines faith as “a habit of our mind, by which eternal life begins in us, and which makes our understanding assent to things which are not evident” (217). In Percy’s terminology, the castaway cannot verify “news from across the seas” like she can verify knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. Nevertheless, the castaway with faith can rest content knowing that help will indeed come (Percy 1975, 138). By following Aquinas and insisting on the 29  Thus, faith comes through hearing (Ong 1967/2000, 187; Percy 1975, 146; Rom 10:17 DRA).

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harmony of faith and reason, Percy saves the extraordinary capacity of the symbol to mediate real knowledge. He also rescues the fruits of both the natural sciences and theology from skepticism. The truth is one, but it is not always evident, especially to the castaway. Percy disagrees with Kierkegaard concerning the means of salvation (Percy 1975, 140, 149). In his Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard reflects upon the transmission of the faith from Christ’s contemporaries to future generations (Kierkegaard 1844/1962, Ch. 5). Kierkegaard explains how the disciples from Christ’s time needed only to have passed on the following words to future successors: “We have believed that in such and such a year the God [sic] appeared among us in the humble figure of a servant, that he lived and taught in our community and finally died” (130). For Kierkegaard, the first disciples would not have had to pass on anything beyond these words because “this little advertisement, this nota bene on a page of universal history, would be sufficient to afford an occasion for a successor, and the most voluminous account can in all eternity do nothing more” (130–131). Percy interprets Kierkegaard here as suggesting that the first disciples needed only to hand on “the message in the bottle” itself, or the “Absolute Paradox” that God Himself became man (Percy 1975, 148). However, Percy also notes that later Kierkegaard came to recognize the importance of the apostle and “newsbearer” “who delivers the news and who speaks with authority” (148).30 Percy concludes “The Message in the Bottle” by suggesting that the newsbearer brought with him not only the “news” of “where he [the castaway] came from and who he is and what he must do” but also the very “means by which the castaway may do what he what must do” (Percy 1975, 149; emphasis mine). By “means,” Percy is referring to the Catholic Church and the sacraments, the latter of which consist of outward signs instituted by Christ that dispense grace (“Lesson 13: On the Sacraments in General,” Q. 574). Ultimately, sacraments operate on both the triadic and dyadic plane. They both signify something and cause something to occur. Maritain describes a sacrament as “something external and sensory which signifies  Kierkegaard published his Philosophical Fragments in 1844 and “The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle” in 1847. 30

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an effect of interior sanctification to be produced” (Maritain 1948, 225). A sacrament of the New Law operates as an “instrumental cause,” a type of efficient cause, to effect grace in the soul (Aquinas 1920/2017, III. Q62.A1; Maritain 1948, 226; “Instrumental Causality”). An ardent defender of the inwardness of Christianity, Kierkegaard took issue with the individual who sought freedom from doubt and uncertainty in outward sacramental rites like baptism (Kierkegaard 1944, 35, 35n, 42–44, 44n).31 By contrast, Percy’s Catholic faith advances the belief in the real efficacy of the sacraments, which the apostle, no mere messenger, has the authority to administer. Having recognized the magnificence of the symbol as a triadic event, we come full circle when we realize how the sacrament transforms the soul directly, concretely, immediately. Unpacking the role of the apostle in Percy’s thought opens up a better understanding of what C3 consciousness consists of. Essentially, C3 has learned to rely on the Church and the sacraments to avoid the perils of C2. Percy writes, “A C3 consciousness has managed by assistance from something other than self to recover itself from this [semiotic] mobility, through auspices other than symbolic conception, and knows itself for what it is” (Percy 1983, 212n). What does Percy mean by “assistance from something other than self” and “auspices other than symbolic conception”? In my estimation, Percy is referring here to what he calls elsewhere the “unique Thing, the Jewish-People-Jesus-Christ-Catholic-Church” (Percy 1975, 140). The Church leads the soul down the narrow path that leads away from C2 consciousness, and it heals the soul with the sacraments, which Christ has left for this purpose.

31  Kierkegaard writes, “When it is said that the reassuring thing in connection with baptism over against all temptations to doubt, is that in this sacrament God does something to us, the idea is naturally only an illusion, in so far as it is by this means intended to keep dialectics away” (Kierkegaard 1944, 44n). By the term “dialectics,” Kierkegaard means challenges and questions posed by an interlocutor that may induce a believer to doubt. Kierkegaard explains how a believer could repose in authority to keep dialectics away: “If the believer was asked about his faith, i.e. if he was dialectically challenged, he would declare with a certain easy air of confidence that he neither could nor needed to give any account of it, since his trust reposed in others, in the authority of the saints, and so forth. This is an illusion. For the dialectician has merely to shift his point of attack, so as to ask him, i.e. to challenge him dialectically to explain, what authority is, and why he regards just these as authorities” (26). Note that Kierkegaard published the preceding statement in Concluding Unscientific Postscript prior to publishing “The Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle.”

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Implications for the Crisis of Meaning Surpassing the crisis of meaning does not necessarily mean thinking new thoughts so much as it requires a new consciousness altogether, a new way of perceiving and acting in the world, a new way of contending with symbols and engaging with other human beings. Consciousness cannot undergo this wholesale shift without a fundamental transformation of oneself. Morbid and dreary as it may sound to some, religion facilitates this transformation. The sacraments are not mere symbols; rather, as extensions of Christ’s agency in the world, they can  transform you at a fundamental level. The role of Christianity, then, especially the Catholicism in which Percy believed with all of its institutions and sacraments, is to transform individuals—to move them into a different stage of consciousness. The Church exists for the sake of moving individuals toward C3 consciousness and keeping them there. True knowledge in C3 consciousness means participation in the life of Christ. Such participation unfolds via imitation of Him. To imitate Christ is to know Christ, to become like Him. C3 involves a true unity of knower and known. The act of faith implies not simply a reconfiguration of the intellect but a wholesale reshaping of the senses, as well. Perception and conception change in this stage of consciousness (cf. McLuhan 1999b, 81–83, 102–104). The integrity that follows from C3 consciousness comes from transformation in Christ, a thoroughgoing identification with Him. Of course, modernity and postmodernity hinder individuals from moving toward C3 consciousness. The term “modernity” comes from the Latin hodiernus (“today”) and refers to the attribution of axiological import to history. Something is good because it is new and bad because it is old (Del Noce 2014, 3–18). The idea that there is an upward curve to the arc of history, the myth of Progress, is central to modernity (Arnett and Holba 2012, 46; Lyotard 1979/1984). There are perhaps many causes of modernity, but scientism has at least partially contributed to the gradual “disenchantment” of the world (cf. Taylor 2007, 26). Thoroughgoing moderns undermine C3 consciousness by denigrating institutions (i.e., institutionalized Christianity) and by inaugurating a corrosive individualism in its place. By a simple, unreasonable deduction—namely, Christianity is old, therefore it is false—modernity triumphs. The term “postmodernity” refers to the historical moment when values and “metanarratives” have come into question (Arnett et al. 2017, 13–14,

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53, 216; Lyotard 1979/1984). Postmodernists are typically skeptical of truth and authority, and they often question the myth of Progress and the privileged place of science in making authoritative pronouncements. The modernist dispenses with religion. The postmodernist dispenses with the modernist. The postmodernist critiques the idea of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. Water may boil at 100 degrees at sea level, but what does that mean? Of course, to suggest that water boils at a certain temperature, that the force of gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared, or that all the angles in a triangle add up to 180 degrees means one thing: Someone is trying to gain power, whether over nature or other human beings. The word “power” becomes the all-encompassing ultimate term and simulacrum that all other symbols lead back to (Weaver 1953). Some postmodernists hinder the movement to C3 consciousness by relativizing all values and submerging the individual into the sea of language.32 To use the message in a bottle metaphor from above, a postmodernist might see not one bottle washed ashore but hundreds of thousands of bottles. Indeed, for this postmodernist, the beach is practically made out of bottles, and there is no way to distinguish which one to heed. One of them reads, “You are an ape.” Another reads, “Nobody is coming. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” And another: “You are whatever you choose you to be.” Perhaps one of them reads, “Help is coming. Love your neighbor as yourself and God with all your heart and mind and soul” (cf. Mt. 22:37–39 DRA). But the bottle and the paper and the ink look just like all the others. And Language wrote all the messages, anyway. So, what reason does the castaway have to believe any of them? The German nihilist Friedrich Nietzsche played a crucial role in the development of postmodernity. He blamed Christianity for the decline of the West. For him, unmasker of truth and the sacred, Christianity was a sickly, decadent religion that overvalued pity and undervalued self-­ assertion (Nietzsche 1895/2003, 130–131). Not content to simply wipe Christianity off the table, Nietzsche wanted a clean slate altogether: reason, morality, and truth had to go, too. He helped initiate a postmodern consciousness of suspicion and distrust, and he helped make “truth” a dirty word. If reason can ascend to knowledge of universals, then it can yield truth. But if reason is an illusion (or even worse, a mask for power), then a denial of universals is desirable. Universals terrorize, while  Not all postmodernists undermine Percy’s project, but at least some do.

32

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particulars liberate—or so the argument goes. As the preceding chapters suggest, however, universals do not afflict people so much as the simulacra that instigate a devolution of consciousness. We can thank Nietzsche for pointing out the errors of modernity. At least some of his work can serve as smelling salt for dozing Christians. And we should thank postmodernists for critiquing the myth of Progress and an unreflective devotion to scientism. Existentialists merit praise for giving us a language to think through human experience without having to resort to scientism. But we must part ways with nihilists, postmodernists, and existentialists should they invite moral relativism and a rejection of realism. Nietzsche wallowed in C2 consciousness and offered his readers no way out. Anyone who rejects morality in theory will find it more difficult to reject in practice. Theoretically, you can say that all morals are subject to individual interpretation. But I imagine you will struggle putting this theory into practice when I take your keys, steal your car, and refuse to give it back because I consider the prohibition against theft a social construction.33 Some postmodern critics of scientism adopt an ironically authoritative position that exhorts in the name of anti-authoritarianism. What could be more ironic than the metanarrative that all metanarratives have collapsed? What could be more ridiculous than the certain truth that there is no certain truth? The refusal to admit of laughter, even at oneself, among certain postmodernists discloses how “one-sidedly serious” they are (Bakhtin 1986, 134). Like Percy, the Russian philosopher of communication Mikhail Bakhtin noticed the efficacy of satire, irony, and the comical in a postmodern world suspicious of authoritative pronouncements. The old “proclamatory genres” of traditional authority no longer work, he tells us (132). And yet, the inefficacy of traditional authoritative proclamations does not prevent moral exhortation altogether. In a world where advertisers, Communists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses clamor for attention and urge action one way or another, Percy suggests that silence itself may capture attention (Percy 1975, 148). In “The Message in the Bottle,” Percy writes, “In such times, when everyone is saying ‘Come!’ when radio and television say nothing else but ‘Come!’ it may be that the best way to say ‘Come!’ is to remain silent. Sometimes silence itself is a ‘Come!’” (148). Compare Percy’s insight here with Bakhtin, who writes, “Irony as a form 33  Calvin Troup used to give an example similar to this one (with a bookbag instead of a car) to prove the untenability of a relativistic stance.

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of silence. Irony (and laughter) as a means for transcending a situation, rising above it. Only dogmatic and authoritarian cultures are one-sidedly serious” (Bakhtin 1986, 134). It is not simply the modernist or postmodernist who make C3 consciousness difficult to accept; it is also the “one-­ sidedly serious” Christian. Presupposing that C3 consciousness is a good thing, and assuming that authoritative pronouncements tend to have the opposite of their intended effect in this historical moment, then the sentimental evangelists and traffickers of religious simulacra need to cut it out if Christianity is to signify once again. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Dies Irae can do more to resolve the crisis of meaning than kitsch figurines and sickly sweet Christian music. I have no doubt that Percy would agree. The modernist and postmodern nihilist can do a great deal to undermine traditional religion. But nobody does a better job of making C3 consciousness look unappealing than Christians. After the phony religious simulacra have been cleared way, what you find in C3 consciousness is that God, Who consists of the most real and actual substance there is, lies at the heart of all existence. Existence issues forth from a community of Persons, the Trinity (Ong 1967/2000, 174–175, 180–181). The Trinity is not you but loves you, nevertheless. Think back to Caravaggio’s The Calling of St. Matthew. Who is Christ calling? Who is He pointing at? Who is He trying to help? You. A Person is calling you, naming for you, giving You Himself. With C3 consciousness, a fundamental change occurs at the level of perception otherwise known as faith. You do not have faith in symbols or simulacra. You have faith, or trust (pistis, in rhetorical terms), in a Person.34 We can think it absurd that God would call us, that He would care about an obscure tribe in the Middle East, become Man, and then (absurdity of absurdities) found a Church with an irascible fisherman at its head for our own good. But is any of this anymore preposterous than that we have come from nothing and return to nothing, that evolution has placed a ghost in a machine, that we can know everything in the cosmos but ourselves (Percy 1983, 252–253)? Percy’s semiotic realism cuts a path through modern skepticism and postmodern nihilism. Modernists worship at the altar of facts, a facsimile of truth. Postmodern nihilists smash at the truth (and reason and especially universals) with a hammer, just as Nietzsche did. But neither the modernist nor postmodernist can resolve the semiotic predicament. Neither can offer  Anthony Wachs introduced me to this notion of faith as pistis.

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a way out of C2 consciousness. The modernist can overemphasize objectivity at the expense of subjectivity. But she must live with the consequences of understanding everything but herself. The postmodernist can say that there is no such thing as truth, but he will have to admit as true the fact that all metanarratives have collapsed. Devoted modernists and postmodernists struggle to extricate themselves from C2 consciousness, turning this way and that for an answer to the crisis of meaning. It is the exceptional modernist or postmodernist who eventually learns precisely how to proceed. And the Kingdom of Heaven is for such as these.

References “Apocalypse.” Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/ word/apocalypse#etymonline_v_15471. Accessed 28 March 2023. Aquinas, St. Thomas. 1920/2017. Summa Theologiae. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 2nd and Revised edition. New Advent, ed. Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/. Accessed 12 June 2020. ———. 1953. Truth: Volume II: Questions X–XX. Trans. James V.  McGlynn, S.J. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Aristotle. 1984. Rhetoric. In The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle, Trans. W. Rhys Roberts, 1–218. New York: The Modern Library. ———. 1998. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. David Ross, revised J.L.  Ackrill and J.O. Urmson. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2001. Analytica Posteriora. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeona and Trans. G.R.G. Mure, 108–186. New York: The Modern Library. Arnett, Ronald C., and Annette M.  Holba. 2012. An Overture to Philosophy of Communication: The Carrier of Meaning. New York: Peter Lang. Arnett, Ronald C., Janie M.  Harden Fritz, and Leanne M.  Bell. 2017. Communication Ethics Literacy: Dialogue and Difference. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company. Augustine, St. 1958. On Christian Doctrine. Trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. Babbitt, Irving. 1924. Democracy and Leadership. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays. Ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist and Trans. Vern W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bunting, Charles T. 1985. An Afternoon with Walker Percy. In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A.  Lawson and Victor A.  Kramer, 40–55. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Burke, Kenneth. 1935/1984. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1950/1969. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Collins, James. 1952. The Existentialists: A Critical Study. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Del Noce, Augusto. 2014. The Crisis of Modernity. Ed. Carlo Lancellotti and Trans. Carlo Lancellotti. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Dewey, Bradley R. 1985. Walker Percy Talks about Kierkegaard: An Annotated Interview. In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 101–128. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Eco, Umberto. 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gratchev, Slav N., and Howard Mancing, eds. 2019. Viktor Shklovsky’s Heritage in Literature, Arts, and Philosophy. Lanham: Lexington Books. Gretlund, Jan Nordby. 1985. Laying the Ghost of Marcus Aurelius? In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 203–215. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Hagen, John. 1912. Science and the Church. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent, ed. Kevin Knight. New York: Robert Appleton Company. https:// www.newadvent.org/cathen/13598b.htm. Accessed 12 June 2020. Hegel, Georg W.F. 1929a. The Doctrine of Essence. In Hegel Selections, ed. Jacob Lowenberg and Trans. W. Wallace, 129–217. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. ———. 1929b. Preface to Phenomenology of Mind. In Hegel Selections, ed. Jacob Loewenberg and Trans. J.B. Baillie, 1–67. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Heidegger, Martin. 1962/2008. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. Hobson, Linda Whitney. 1993. Interview with Walker Percy. In More Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 84–102. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. “Instrumental Causality.” Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/ religion/encyclopediasalmanacs-transcripts-and-maps/instrumental-causality. Accessed 28 March 2023. Kierkegaard, Søren. 1844/1962. Philosophical Fragments. Trans. David F. Swenson, new introduction and commentary by Niels Thulstrup, translation revised and commentary translated by Howard V. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1846/1962. The Present Age. In The Present Age and of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle, Trans. Alexander Dru, 31–86. New York: Harper Perennial. ———. 1847/1962. Of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle. In The Present Age and of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle, Trans. Alexander Dru, 87–108. New York: Harper Perennial. ———. 1941. The Sickness Unto Death. Trans. Walter Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.189042/ page/n1/mode/2up. Accessed 28 March 2023.

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———. 1944. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Trans. David F.  Swenson and Walter Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1962. The Point of View for My Work as An Author: A Report to History and Related Writings. Ed. Benjamin Nelson and Trans. Walter Lowrie. New York: Harper & Brothers. ———. 2003. Fear and Trembling. Trans. Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Books. Langer, Susanne K. 1942/1980. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lemon, Lee T., and Marion J. Reis, ed. 1965. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Trans. and Ed. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. “Lesson 1: On the End of Man.” Baltimore Catechism #3. Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1891 Version. http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson1. htm. Accessed 12 June 2020. “Lesson 13: On the Sacraments in General.” Baltimore Catechism #3. Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1891 Version. http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson13.htm. Accessed 28 March 2023. Lewis, C.S. 1960/2012. The Four Loves: An Exploration of the Nature of Love. Boston: Mariner Books. Loewenberg, Jacob. 1929/1957. Introduction. In Hegel Selections, ix–xxi. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Lowrie, Walter. 1944. Introduction. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, by Kierkegaard, Trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, xiii–xxi. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1979/1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Maritain, Jacques. 1948. Sign and Symbol. In Ransoming the Time, 217–254. Trans. Harry Lorin Binsse. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. McCombs, Phil. 1993. Century of Thanatos: Walker Percy and His Subversive Message. In More Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 189–207. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. McLuhan, Eric. 1999a. Introduction. In The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion, ed. Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek, ix–xxviii. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Company Limited. McLuhan, Marshall. 1999b. The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion, ed. Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Limited. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1895/2003. The Anti-Christ. In Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, Trans. R.J. Hollingdale, 123–199. London: Penguin Books. O’Connor, Flannery. 1955/2007. The Violent Bear It Away. New  York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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O’Gorman, Farrell. 2013. Confessing the Horrors of Radical Individualism in Lancelot: Percy, Dostoyevsky, Poe. In A Political Companion to Walker Percy, ed. Peter Augustine Lawler and Brian A.  Smith, 119–144. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Olesky, Elzbieta. 1993. A Talk with Walker Percy. In More Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A.  Lawson and Victor A.  Kramer, 72–83. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Ong, Walter J. 1967/2000. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. Albany: State University of New York Press. Pascal, Blaise. 1995. Pensées. Trans. A.J. Krailsheimer. London: Penguin Books. Percy, Walker. 1954. Symbol as Need. Thought: Fordham University Quarterly 29 (3): 381–390. ———. 1960/1989. The Moviegoer. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 1966. The Last Gentleman. New York: Picador. ———. 1971. Love in the Ruins. New York: Picador. ———. 1975. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other. New York: Picador. ———. 1977. Lancelot. New York: Picador. ———. 1980. The Second Coming. New York: Picador. ———. 1983. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. New York: Picador. ———. 1985. Questions They Never Asked Me. In Conversations with Walker Percy, ed. Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer, 158–181. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ———. 1991. Signposts in a Strange Land. Ed. Patrick Samway. New York: Picador. ———. 2019. Symbol & Existence: A Study in Meaning,ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, and Scott Ross Cunningham. Macon: Mercer University Press. Polanyi, Michael. 1966. The Tacit Dimension. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Samway, Patrick, ed. 1995. A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1969/2007. Nausea. Trans. Lloyd Alexander. New York: New Directions Paperbook. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 1977. Ozymandias. In Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers, 103. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Sher, Benjamin. 1990. Translator’s Introduction: Shklovsky and the Revolution. In Theory of Prose, ed. Viktor Shklovsky. Trans. Benjamin Sher. Champaign: Dalkey Archive Press. Shklovsky, Victor. 1965. Art as Technique. In Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, Translated and edited by Lee T.  Lemon and Marion J.  Reis, 3–24. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Strate, Lance. 2014. Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman’s Brave New World Revisited. New York: Peter Lang.

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Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Tolson, Jay. 1992. Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. ———, ed. 1997. The Correspondence of Shelby Foote & Walker Percy. New York: A Doubletake Book. Tolstoy, Leo. 1886/1985 Kholstomer. In Tolstoy: Tales of Courage and Conflict, ed. Charles Neider, 436-463. Trans. Nathan Haskell Dole. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc. ———. 1895/1899. Shame! In The Complete Works of Lyof N.  Tolstoi. Trans. Nathan Haskell Dole. Wikisource. Accessed 28 March 2023. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Lyof_N._Tolstoï/Shame! ———. 1993. War and Peace. Trans. and abridged Princess Alexandra Kropotkin. New York: Barnes & Noble Books. Varriano, John. 2006. Caravaggio: The Art of Realism. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Weaver, Richard M. 1953. Ultimate Terms in Contemporary Rhetoric. In The Ethics of Rhetoric, 211–232. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.

CHAPTER 5

Truth and Meaning

In the preceding three chapters, I outlined how the relationship between mind, existence, and persons takes form (C1), degenerates (C2), and is restored/transcended (C3). Percy’s paradigm of C1, C2, and C3 consciousness provides a hermeneutic toolkit for opening up the crisis of meaning, for letting in some light, and for untangling the web that has enmeshed existentialists and scientists alike. In these last two chapters of this book, I want to focus on how truth and love relate to Percy’s paradigm. Truth and love help bring a soul into C3 consciousness and keep it there. C1 consciousness is desirable but unattainable. C2 consciousness is undesirable because it involves ignorance, bad faith, anxiety, and so forth. Only an abiding C3 consciousness is worthwhile to pursue because it involves knowledge of a different kind, a knowledge that transforms, a knowledge of Persons (as compared to that of lifeless objects), a knowledge rooted in an encounter with otherness, a knowledge impossibly close to and yet infinitely distant from the Source of all that is. Modernists and postmodernists alike have failed to provide people with a means out of C2 consciousness. The truth would set C2 consciousness free (John 8:32 DRA). The problem is that the word “truth” has become a bludgeon to hit people with, a trap to be avoided, or a safety blanket for those who think they possess it. You can scare people into silence by making them doubt not simply that they have the truth but that anybody has it. You can ignore others so long as you are firmly convinced that you have the truth. The word “truth” has been besmirched not because truth does © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. N. Bonanno, Walker Percy and the Crisis of Meaning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37023-6_5

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not exist but because of a faulty epistemology and ontology, which stem from erroneous presuppositions about how words relate to things. As we have already learned thus far, what induces ignorance is not the truth, per se, but simulacra, reifications unmoored from existence. In this chapter, I want to take a step back and defamiliarize the word “truth” by situating it in the history of philosophy. I first discuss Percy’s primary philosophical opponent: nominalism. Second, I contrast nominalism with realism. By introducing these two philosophical schools, I only want to gesture at the larger trajectory of Percy’s thought. Realism is the thread that runs from Percy’s early work to his later work, and realism goes hand in hand with truth. Without a real, independently existing existence, you cannot meaningfully speak about truth. Third, I will consider how nominalism and realism relate to predication, or the coupling of subjects and predicates that occurs with linguistic symbols. If real predicates cannot (or do not) actually relate to real subjects in linguistic utterances, then we are left with the relativistic nihilism that characterizes our current age. Meaninglessness as a phenomenon involves this detachment of subjects from predicates, of selves from other selves, of individuals from God and existence.

Nominalism One primary presupposition guiding this book has been that nominalism undergirds the crisis of meaning. To fully appreciate Percy’s work in semiotics, you could do worse than try to understand it as a reaction to nominalism and its ill effects. Trace the roots of scientism, subjectivism, and materialism back far enough, and you will uncover nominalism (Weaver 1948/2013, 1–16). Ian Hacking has described nominalism as a sort of “name-ism” (Hacking 1999, 82). Nominalism concerns how names relate to things and posits that no fixed essences exist outside of the mind. For a nominalist, our names for things are just that: names. Names correspond to no underlying reality, no universals, no essences, no forms. Only particulars are real for the nominalist (cf. Gorman 1962, 11). The particular is material, tangible, and sensible. The universal qua universal cannot be seen, tasted, or touched. For the Thomistic realist, the universal, which is immaterial, is one in the mind and many in the objects.1 For the nominalist, however, universals do not exist in the  For more on this, see John Haldane’s wonderful talk “Aquinas and Realism” given at the the Lumen Christi Institute on October 30, 2013: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8MnS6A7mzwE. In particular, Haldane begins to speak about universals as one in the mind and many in the things around 36 minutes into the video. 1

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things themselves.2 Due to its attention to the particular at the expense of the universal, nominalism helps to introduce an immanent, scientistic worldview governed by the “endless induction” of particulars (Weaver 1948/2013, 11). Historically speaking, nominalism contributes to immanentization, the process whereby the transcendent collapses into the immanent.3 Although nominalism first appears amid theological debates in the Middle Ages, it has helped contribute (ironically enough) to the disappearance of God (Gilson 1937/1999, 49–72). The ill effects of nominalism still resonate in the everyday attitudes and habits of people far-removed from the admittedly arcane controversy from whence it sprang (Feser 2008, 41–42; Weaver 1948/2013, 1–16). While discussing the significance of nominalism to present-day affairs, Richard Weaver writes, “It is when the first faint warnings come that one has the best chance to save himself; and this, I suspect, explains why medieval thinkers were extremely agitated over questions which seem to us today without point or relevance” (Weaver 1948/2013, 9). Medieval debates concerned the place or location of universals (Ong 1967/2000, 218). Ong poses a question at the center of these debates: “Were universals in things or in the words only?” (218). Having had the benefit of Percy’s discussion of C1 consciousness, we can understand that universals exist not only in the things and not only in the mind but also in words, albeit in alio esse. The spoken word, especially, serves as the vehicle for the mediation of the universal. The appleness of the apple finds its way into the spoken word “apple” (Percy 1983, 102n). One implication that follows from Fr. Ong’s The Presence of the Word, a study in the effects of alphabetic literacy and print on consciousness, is that the written word distances us from our sense of this central fact: that the word is the thing in a different manner of existence (cf. McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, 186). It is important to acknowledge that studying nominalism may

2  Nominalists do not believe universals exist at all, while others, such as conceptualists, believe that universals exist only within the mind (Feser 2008,41–42). 3  Or, if you are a pantheist, immanentization involves the gradual widening of the immanent to eclipse the transcendent (Thames 2015, 203).

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hold little appeal for individuals today (Feser 2008, 41). But everyone must contend with the following three consequences of nominalism.4 First, if reality has no essences, then no true and enduring knowledge of things beyond the individual is possible. If knowledge of reality is not possible, it can no longer inform our practical decisions.5 The philosopher and historian Charles Taylor explains in A Secular Age how the nominalist William of Ockham refused to place a limit on God’s omnipotence (Taylor 2007, 97). God’s special prerogative is that He can change reality as He sees fit. If He so decided, God could change a banana into a beagle and then into a black hole. Yet it seems to have escaped Ockham that God might have designed the cosmos so that His creatures could understand it. If He changed His universe often enough, everything might appear absolutely unintelligible. If God never ceased changing the world, all would be chaos. A second consequence of the nominalist worldview is that decision-­ making becomes decision-making by personal preference, or emotivism (MacIntyre 1981/2007, 11–12). Nominalism shifts the locus of decision-­ making from existence to the individual agent. People no longer do what existence dictates (Follett 1941/2013, 58–60; McLuhan 2011, 77). Instead, people do what they want to do, and they do it simply because they want to do it. No rational justification is necessary for the emotivist; she can simply claim to do something because she likes to do it, because she wants to do it, because it is her personal preference. Thus, a faulty understanding of how words relate to things lies at the heart of subjectivism, the philosophical position that places all knowledge, including practical knowledge, inside the mind of the knower. A third consequence of nominalism is that as all fixed essences become unfixed, so too does human nature. Man is a part of nature. He has a body 4  Here is Peirce on the significance of nominalism: “But though the question of realism and nominalism has its roots in the technicalities of logic, its branches reach about our life. The question whether genus homo has any existence except as individuals, is the question whether there is anything of any more dignity, worth, and importance than individual happiness, individual aspirations, and individual life. Whether men really have anything in common, so that the community is to be considered as an end in itself, and if so, what the relative value of the two factors is, is the most fundamental practical question in regard to every public institution the constitution of which we have it in our power to influence” (Peirce 1992, 105). 5  “Realism about essences bespeaks the predicament of an agent who sees rightful action as following patterns (essences) which must first be descried in things” (Taylor 2007, 97).

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composed of matter. He has organs, blood, and tissue. He shares many features in common with other animals. And yet, if nature has no fixed essences, then neither does man. The implications of this cannot be understated. For if man has no fixed essence, then man can be changed to suit your preferences. The essential trait of the twentieth-century gnostic was his rejection of the order inherent to the cosmos and readiness to impose order on it (Voegelin 1968/1997, 68–69). Totalitarian states enjoin human beings to live and act in a manner at odds with their nature (Weil 1949, 7–9). The special prerogative of the dictator is that he can make you a soldier, baker, or dead man by fiat. He can annex a territory if he so desires. He can alter the law to suit his needs, not because it is reasonable to do so but because it is what he prefers, even if such an alteration should require everyone in a society to contort themselves into the most unnatural of positions. Ultimately, you can identify a nominalist by his insistence upon the nonidentification of word and thing. The more arbitrary a symbol (like a spoken word or a letter of the phonetic alphabet), the better it can serve as a vehicle of meaning, it is true. The question is not whether names are arbitrary or conventional. They are, and some more so than others. The visible letter “A” somehow represents the sound “ay”. The sound “kat” somehow serves as a translation of that furry quadruped lapping up milk. Yet, it is common sense that the word is not the thing. Nobody tries to eat the word “food” or drink the word “milk” (cf. Percy 2019, 184). The semiotic realist would insist that the word is not the thing, but, at the same time, it is the thing. Otherwise put, the word must not be the thing in order that it can be the thing. The semiotic realist insists upon the real relationship between word and thing despite the apparent arbitrariness of the word. It is the relation of identity between two non-identical constituents of the triadic relationship, symbol and entity, that matters for the realist. The arbitrary symbol can serve as a vehicle for a real form in the thing itself. When we know things, we do not know copies of them but rather the things themselves. When the mind thinks, it thinks the things themselves (Aristotle 2001, 431b5; Aquinas 1920/2017, I.Q85.A1). Having sundered words from things, nominalism cannot provide a fully adequate basis for investigating the phenomenon of symbolization. For that, we need philosophical realism.

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Realism Realism enabled Percy to investigate symbols in a deeper, more robust manner than nominalism. By “realism,” I mean quite simply the doctrine that reality really exists beyond each individual human mind and that such reality is knowable. This extramental reality is pervaded by order and essences. Without such an extramental reality, shared in by billions of human beings, we would not have the world of scientific knowledge and the laws of nature, the understanding of which yields everything from penicillin to space shuttles. Without this extramental reality, nothing would be, and neither would we. You can reason to realism by studying how symbols function, and you can proceed from realist presuppositions to extend your investigation of symbols. Near the end of Symbol & Existence, Percy suggests that an empirical (and inductive) study of how symbols work should lead to an acceptance of philosophical realism. Percy writes, “My conviction is that an honest appraisal of the empirical elements and the genesis and the structure of human meaning must carry one beyond the organismic view of man and toward a philosophic realism” (Percy 2019, 235). This is perhaps one of the most important statements in all of Percy’s works, whether fiction or nonfiction. A purely naturalistic view of human beings, an “organismic view of man,” cannot fully encapsulate what it means to be human (i.e., to pass into C1 consciousness). Human beings deal in symbols not to simply fulfill a biological need but to know the world around them. There must be an extramental reality that can be known; otherwise, all we can know (if we can know anything at all) are our own projections onto the world. Such is the nature of solipsism, to know only the fabrications of our own mind to the point that even other persons become the product of our own making. Undoubtedly, symbols can refer to something other than themselves.6 Thus, realism accommodates the refreshing (and transcendent) encounter with otherness. Percy further defines what he means by philosophical realism: “I refer, of course, to realism in the technical sense, as implying a real world, a lawful world, which can to some degree be known and the knowledge communicated to other men. Man is a being in the world. But he is also that 6  The great twentieth century philosopher of language Owen Barfield agrees with Percy here. Barfield writes, “language, by definition (that is to say, by virtue of its very nature as language) does point beyond itself” (Barfield 1977/2013, 192).

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being who knows and affirms other beings” (Percy 2019, 235). The last two sentences of this quote acknowledge the importance of both existentialism (“a being in the world”) and science, properly understood (“he is also that being who knows”). Existentialism errs in discounting the human potential for knowledge, whereas scientism neglects the significance of individual human experience. Any attempt to respond to the crisis of meaning without taking these two deficiencies into account will undoubtedly fail. It is perhaps controversial among Catholics to suggest that the true existentialist is a realist and vice-versa. Yet at least some realists in the twentieth century acknowledged the merits of an existential approach (Feser 2009). In The Existentialists, Collins writes, “The critical standpoint from which I have tried to weigh existentialism is that of a philosophical theism and realism” (xiv). Percy would follow Collins’ lead, reading existentialist works and authors as a theist and realist. As indicated in the previous chapter, Percy had also read Aquinas, who is perhaps the advocate of realism. Aquinas’ realism is succinctly summed up in his comment from On the Teacher: “truth does not depend on our knowledge, but on the existence of things” (Aquinas 1998, 212). Compare Aquinas’ quote from On the Teacher with C. S. Peirce’s definition of the real: “The real is that which is not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it” (Peirce 1992, 88).7 Here the reader can see precisely how Aquinas’ realism coincides with that of Peirce. Existence, not the human mind, per se, determines the truth. Existence is real. And existence is because God is. God is the source and ground of all existence.8 Thus, God always determines what is and therefore what the truth is. As Aquinas is the Church’s philosopher, so realism is the Church’s philosophical position (Pope Leo XIII 1879). Whether he knew it at the time or not, Percy committed himself to realism the moment he entered the Church. And such a commitment allowed Percy to read and appreciate a variety of thinkers, taking the truth from their thought without adopting a problematic metaphysical position.

7  Percy’s interest in Peirce lay in the latter’s attack on nominalism and rehabilitation of Scholastic realism (Percy as qtd. in Samway 1995, 130). 8  Aquinas explains, “Deus est ipsum esse per se subsistens,” or “God is existence itself, of itself subsistent” (Aquinas n.d., I.Q4.A2co; Aquinas 1920/2017, I.Q4.A2).

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Existence, not a priori knowledge, is the supreme standard that all philosophical realists must use to gauge what counts as truth. Importantly, placing truth in existence rather than a priori knowledge makes room for the all too human experience of ignorance and error. If all symbols only refer to themselves or to other symbols, then how can we tell truth from falsity? Philosophical realists depart from idealists insofar as they begin their inquiry differently. The realist begins with being, while the idealist begins with thought (Gilson 1935/2011, 84). The idealist states, “I think therefore I am.” Gilson the realist counters, “[T]hings are, therefore I think” (87). Realism subjugates knowledge to existence (105). Hence, Percy’s book Symbol & Existence is appropriately titled. For it is existence, through the mediation of the symbol, that yields truth. And it is an undue attachment to one’s own symbol or symbolic formulation that yields error. Had Percy entitled his manuscript Symbol & Knowledge, he may have inappropriately emphasized the knowledge-generating function of the symbol to the exclusion of its ignorance-inducing capacity.

Real Predicates, Real Judgments Having recognized the relationship between symbols and existence with Percy’s help, we can consider the importance of predication in relation to truth. Predication is the joining of a predicate to a subject, or more accurately, it is the judging of a predicate against a subject (Ong 1967/2000, 157). Predication occurs the moment a parent names something for a child by an act of ostension, or the act of simultaneously pointing and naming. When a father points to a bird and says to his child, “bird,” therein you have ostension. The word “bird” thus becomes a specific type of symbol for the child—a substantive (a noun or name) (Sr. Miriam Joseph 1937/2002, 48–50). The demonstrative “this,” the pure copula “is,” and the indefinite article “a” are implied when the father points and names the feathered creature (Ong 1967/2000, 158; Percy 1975, 167).9 A child learns concepts through names: “bird” conveys birdness, “apple”

9  Ostension involves gesture. Even eyes can “point” in a direction and indicate in a symbolic manner. Recall here Caravaggio’s The Calling of St. Matthew. Christ’s gesture signifies this: “I am calling you.”

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conveys appleness, “balloon” conveys balloonness, and so on (Percy 1983, 102n, 104).10 Over time, a child will begin to couple substantives with adjectives, such as “The bird is blue.”11 In this case, “bird” is the subject, and “blue” is the predicate. Children will also begin to utilize verbs. Indeed, discussion of predication moves Percy’s paradigm from the realm of the symbol as a thing (substantive, noun, or name) into the realm of the verb, or “that part of speech of which the office is predication, and which, either alone or with various modifiers or adjuncts, combines with a subject to make a sentence” (“Verb”). If I say, “The bird flies,” then the verb “flies” is the predicate and “The bird” is the subject. When I say, “The bird was,” “was” is both a verb and a predicate that describes the bird.12 Consideration of predication matters because morality depends upon the application of predicates. If I say, “Sugar is sweet” or “Business is good,” I attach predicates (sweet and good) to subjects in such a fashion as to shed light on subjects (sugar and business) (Weaver 1985/2001, 1360). When I speak or write, I constantly make judgments. The modern devotee of scientism (or liberalism, for that matter) feigns neutrality. But nobody predicates disinterestedly. As Richard Weaver insists, language is sermonic, and as Kenneth Burke confirms, there is no neutral vocabulary (Weaver 1985/2001; Burke 1950/1969, 90–101). To speak at all is to judge, to discriminate, to predicate, to accuse. Percy himself acknowledges the normative dimension of sentences (Percy 1975, 176–177). He writes of the assertory and normative character of language, which coincides with discussion of predication (176–177, 234). For Percy, linguistic assertion 10  Recall here the Helen Keller anecdote, the symbolic coupling (or joining) of one thing to another and Helen discovering that the word “water” was water. 11  Predication allows more abstract entities to appear in C1 consciousness, such as numbers (e.g., “one bird,” “two birds,” etc.) and adjectives (“a white bird,” “a dirty bird,” etc.). We have no experience of oneness, twoness, whiteness, or dirtiness as such. But we do have experience of one finger, two shoes, a white hat, some dirty spoons. We know what these concepts are thanks to the particular instances in which we encounter them. We can judge one from two and white from black because we predicate analytically. Otherwise put, we abstract essences from existence through the operation of language (Anton 2010, 45–46). 12  In the sentence “The bird is blue,” the word “is” is neither part of the subject nor the predicate of the sentence; rather, “is” operates as a “pure copula,” a “nonverb which connects subject and predicate” (Sr. Miriam Joseph, 1937/2002, 63–65). For a wonderful review of predication, I refer the reader to Schoolhouse Rock’s catchy tune “The Tale of Mr. Morton,” available on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=J oZn12BEjyM.

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involves the “coupling” of a subject to a predicate (166–169). Ong gives us another way of thinking of predication beyond “coupling.” For Ong, I accuse subjects of something (of being sweet or bad, for example). Predication involves the judgment of a predicate against a subject (Ong 1967/2000, 157). Predication thus serves as an a propos object of reflection in the context of this book because the crisis of meaning is a crisis of judgment (from the Greek krisis). Essentially, predication is a necessary but not sufficient ground for articulating the truth. By themselves, names are neither true nor false (Ong 1967/2000, 151). In fact, uncoupled and alone, names are meaningless. If I say “bird,” you may ask, “What about a bird?” The same goes for verbs. If I say, “runs,” then you may ask, “What do you mean by ‘runs’?” But if I say, “The bird is blue,” then you can say that my utterance is either true or false because a subject (“bird”) has been coupled to a predicate (“blue”) (Adler 1978, 137; Ong 1967/2000, 151–152; cf. Percy 1975, 153, 166). Thus, you need predication for an utterance to have meaning, but you need added consideration of existence for truth. You need something beyond the symbol to judge the appropriateness of the symbol. So long as utterances have subjects coupled to predicates, they can have meaning; yet, these same utterances can also be false, or unrelated to existence. If I say, “The bird is blue,” and if the bird is actually white, then the sentence has meaning, but it is nevertheless false. With nominalism, the application of predicates has no necessary relation to existence. The nominalist can predicate “freely” not only about what things are but about what he is. With realism, however, you must at least acknowledge the possibility that your predications, or those of others, can express real relations. Existence dictates the predicates for the realist. Rephrasing Aquinas in light of Percy’s paradigm, we might say that truth depends not on our predications but on the existence of things. Regarding the implications of nominalism for this historical moment, predicates have no grounding in existence. A human subject absent any real predicates will suffer meaninglessness. We always seek to join ourselves to one symbol or another, and when we find no predicate (or an overwhelming abundance of them that apply equally), anxiety ensues. The relativist deprives people of everything but self-imposed predicates. Altogether, reflection upon predication matters because it helps us to thematize more precisely what constitutes meaninglessness as such.

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Of course, not all acts of predication are strictly logical, literal, or abstract. Metaphor rests upon an act of predication, and metaphor allows us to say, with the utmost economy, “This is that” or “That is this.” Indeed, as Burke reminds us, a metaphor “brings out the thisness of a that, or the thatness of a this” (Burke 1941, 421–422; emphasis mine). Metaphors can convey concepts to the intellect when simulacra hinder conception. Without predication, there is no metaphor. Metaphors serve as vehicles to know the world, and they can reveal something new about it to help us to perceive it afresh. A true metaphor is an instrument of perception because it reveals something about existence (McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, 120). As it pertains to the rhetorical expression of truth in a particular time and place in history, metaphor plays an indispensable role. Finding a new language or “singing a new song” in fact becomes an ethical imperative, an injunction to judge and therefore name appropriately in a contingent circumstance, a particular place in time (Percy 1991, 306; Ps 96:1 NABRE). The central modern antagonist to the quest for truth is Nietzsche. In “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” Nietzsche explains: What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins. (Nietzsche 2001, 1174)

The question that must be posed to Nietzsche (and even to his more analytical opponents) is this: So what if truth appears as “a movable host of metaphors”? If you presuppose that metaphor is figurative and poetic and thus the opposite of the literal, the prosaic, and especially the true, then Nietzsche’s statement can be interpreted as problematic. Yet the problematic nature of his statement disappears once you acknowledge that plain speech derives from metaphoric utterance and not vice-versa. Poetry precedes prose as the concrete precedes the abstract (Vico 1948, 8; McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, 230; Barfield 1977/2013, 45–62; Dantzig 1930/2007, 6, 57). Historically speaking, as the poets antedated the philosophers, so, too, do children pass from outward concelebration of being

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and metaphorical utterance (C1) to inward introspection and literal statement (C2). The signifying symbol antedates the simulacrum. Metaphors can provide real existential contact and confer an intelligibility on that which is, was, or might be. In other words, metaphors can reveal the truth at a fundamental existential level. The subject of metaphor brings the difference between the realist and linguistic relativist to the forefront of attention: the metaphor gives rise to the substantive but not to substance. Having reviewed both realism and predication, we can now say that truth is not a thing so much as a predication, a judgment, an event that happens in time.13 Historically speaking, oral-aural cultures thought of words as events—not as things (Ong 1967/2000, 22, 30, 33–34, 159). In these cultures, metaphor reigned supreme. Metaphorical utterance and poetry preceded literal expression, prose, and more abstract forms of thought (i.e., philosophy). Whereas today we can think of communicating truth as the transmission of a priori ideas from one mind container to another mind container, a movement of things over space, early man had an awareness of how words (and the truths they reveal) transform one thing into another.14 Indeed, the Word that became flesh at a particular 13  Ong would have us transcend the use of “symbol” (a throwing or coupling together) and “sign” (which originally referred to a visible military standard) to consider the word in its more original sense: as a mystery. Furthermore, Ong draws our attention to the word as verbum. Considering the word as a verb despatializes the word, unthingifies it, focuses our attention on the centrality of predication, and recaptures the sense of the word as a happening, an event (Ong 1967/2000. 158, 323–324; “Symbol”). The Gospel of John begins: “In principio erat Verbum,” or “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1 Vulgate/DRA). Had Percy read or followed Ong on the significance of the word as verb, perhaps he would have given Symbol & Existence the title Verb & Existence. 14  At the conventional level, people can consider communication as the transmission of ideas from one mind to another. In the twentieth century, Shannon and Weaver advanced their own model of communication, which helped to reify this notion of communication as the transmission of information from one mind to another along a channel (McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, 86). With the transmission model of communication, you can think of the truth as something you put into a container (i.e., a message) and then transmit along a channel, another container. Communication thus becomes the science of matching ideas at the source with those at the destination and aiming to eliminate noise along the way. When the ideas match between source and destination, therein you have truth. Epistemologically speaking, you can think of truth as the transmission of the external world into the internal mind; you match what is “out there” with what is “in here.” When a passive subject lets an active object impress itself upon the mind in a dyadic manner, therein you have “truth,” or so some might suggest.

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place and time in history came full of grace and truth, and He arrived on a mission to transform (John 1:1–16 DRA). Paradoxically, oral-aural man may have lived closer to existence than his abstracted, post-Cartesian Importantly, communication does involve the transmission and expression of ideas; it is true. A Christian must concede this point, too: An apostle is sent (missus) across (trans) long distances carrying a message. In a certain sense, the apostle is in fact the message that is sent (cf. McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, 109). However, the transmission model of communication can obscure how symbols constitute thought, give rise to different worlds of meaning, and transform persons. To speak of communication as constitutive appears to betray a postmodernist position. However, Percy’s paradigm demonstrates that you can admit the constitutive dimension of communication without abandoning the possibility and desirability of truth. Through communication (exchange in symbols), people describe the world around them, shape the social realm, and performatively create and maintain individual identity. The of/as nature of consciousness means that everything is filtered through the medium of symbols. Our sense of identity and our knowledge are mediated (i.e., they are the product of triadic relationships). To say this does not mean that communication (or language) is everything. In our zeal to defend the “constitutive dimension” of language, we must not abandon the element of an independently existing existence in human experience, of real transformation at play in the cosmos outside human control (Taylor 2016, 3–50). Herein we discover the significance that Percy’s thought could play in the field perhaps most capable of appropriating and building upon his thought: communication studies. In the field of communication, you can find social scientists and social constructionists, those who insist on quantifying experience and those who insist on describing qualitative experience. Not surprisingly, the divide between modernist and postmodernist, scientist and existentialist, appears in this field as in others. The primary contributions that Percy makes to the study of communication (and to contemporary thought, broadly speaking) is to the debate about what precisely communication is. Communication is not necessarily the transfer of information from one mind container to another. Rather, for Percy, communication is a tetradic relationship that involves a shared act of attention between two or more persons (cf. Percy 1983, 105; Percy 1975, 167n). Considering communication as transformation widens the scope of the field of communication and allows us to see that communication is not a secondary consideration in the transmission of thought but rather a primary one in the very generation of it (McLuhan 2015, 111–118; cf. Postman and Weingartner 1969, 122–132). Oftentimes, people think of truth as a type of matching ideas in one’s head with what exists in the cosmos. Some might suggest that successful communication involves a variation of this type of matching, albeit this time the matching occurs between two individuals’ heads. One person transmits a message along a channel with the hope that the message (i.e., the truth) will remain unchanged from sender to receiver. Essentially, your understanding of what communication is will affect how you conceive of what to do with the truth. However, truth, if it is truth, is not something you can stand apart from. Rather, truth is such that, when you discover it, its effects echo throughout the entirety of your being. Today, imbued as we are by a scientistic attitude that has divided the world into subjects and objects, we speak of the truth dispassionately. Many who may profess to possess the truth do not love it (cf. Grant 1986, 35–70). Yet, as it pertains to real truth, once you know it, you cannot stand apart from it, for it draws you in (cf. Weil 1949, 250–251). Truth transforms and unites.

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counterpart. The experience of existence, in this life at least, is always contingent, shifting, full of surprises, characterized by otherness. C3 consciousness involves the interminable search for truth, a paradoxical searching for what you have already found, a holding on to what you can never fully grasp.

Implications for the Crisis of Meaning In their zeal to defend universals, many epistemological realists have emphasized being over becoming. But for other realists, especially Percy, becoming is just as valuable an object of metaphysical study as being (cf. McLuhan 1999, 48–49). Somehow, some way, a person can go from being a complete atheist to regularly attending Mass. A transformation occurs. When a person begins to speak differently, that same person will perceive differently, predicate differently, think differently, act differently, and eventually be different. Christ teaches us that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Mt 12:34 DRA). With a change of heart comes a change of speech and vice-versa. If certain simulacra can prevent movement into C3 consciousness, then the right symbols can enable passage into it. When you teach someone a word, you do not merely give that person a symbol in an additive sense. Giving someone a word does not simply go into a person as an object goes into a container. Rather, words (and other types of symbols) can transform someone, taking away their perceptual blindness, their taken-for-granted deafness, their inability to love and be loved, their ignorance. Such is the significance of Kierkegaard’s comment concerning evangelization: Because everybody knows it, the Christian truth has gradually become a triviality, of which it is difficult to secure a primitive impression. This being the case, the art of communication at last becomes the art of taking away, of luring something away from someone. (Kierkegaard 1944, 245n; cf. Kierkegaard as qtd. in Peters 1999, 275)

If you want to move someone into C3 consciousness and keep her there, you must trick simulacra away from her, which requires an artful awareness of how to communicate. If our speech can change the persons around us and the worlds we inhabit, we cannot help but take a deep interest in communication.

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The connection between Percy’s paradigm and Catholicism lies in this emphasis on transformation, how the universal transforms the particular, making it into something that it hitherto was not. C3 consciousness has as its defining characteristic the abiding and perpetual transformation of the self into a new person through love of God, Who is Truth Itself. Truth emerges in relation to others and to existence. Importantly, truth expresses itself as a relation: between a subject and a predicate in addition to between persons. The relational nature of truth does not culminate in relativism but rather to an appreciation of personhood. Subverting the crisis of meaning necessitates an attentiveness to the other and a recognition of solipsism in its many forms—even (and perhaps especially) the institutionalization of individualism. The community of Persons that is the Trinity serves as the formal cause of the most perfect transformation, reflection upon which must lead us to pass from consideration of truth to dwelling upon love, the subject of this book’s final chapter.15 Human beings today, suffering through a crisis of meaning, seek to find an answer to the semiotic existential question “[B]ut what am I?” (Percy 1975, 284). Absent any religious or narrative framework, people seek identity in self-creation (causa sui) (Madigan 2013; Becker 1973/1997, 116; Anton 2010, 19–23). Those engaged in the project of self-creation may assert their ability to determine the meaning of life for themselves. Experts well-versed in therapeutic techniques encourage people to find and be their true selves. Accidents of birth appear as viable answers to the semiotic existential question (e.g., race and sex). Whether or not you are the hero or the villain in the cosmic drama may depend on your birth (“I was born like this”) or simply your fiat (“I am this, despite what others say”). In attempting to address the crisis of meaning, identity politics ironically exacerbates it. Ultimately, identity politics cannot remedy the predicament of C2 consciousness because it encourages the reification of the self into a thing. Identity politics is an ironic consequence of the individualism and scientism of late modernity. As the authority of older institutions has worn out, individuals have sought semiotic refuge in their own self-conceived identities. Scientism, too, dialectically constitutes its opposite: the 15  Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen’s wonderful book Divine Intimacy provided the inspiration for these last two chapters on truth and love. Further, Marshall and/or Eric McLuhan may have spoken about the Trinity as a formal cause, but I could not locate a source proving as much.

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postmodern individual who eschews “objectivity.” The remedy for this situation is not to reify the subject/object divide, to insist upon neutrality and impartiality, to assume the libertarian’s stance, or to turn to science for answers to the semiotic existential predicament. The modern libertarian is the bedfellow of the postmodern nihilist. The goal should be not to denounce identity politics, per se, but to understand it from the vantage of Percy’s paradigm (i.e., as an attempt to shake free of C2 consciousness). The remedy for the situation is a rhetorically sensitive response to scientism and those ideas that help to dialectically constitute identity politics. Identity politics threatens the well-being of institutions insofar as it makes the authority of the self-expressive individual supreme. One of the primary tensions at play in this historical moment is where nature ends and society begins. Nature has a structure, which we can discern through the natural sciences. Human societies can always be configured differently, but within certain limits, for human beings help to give structure to society. If human societies can take a different shape, then the same goes for human institutions. Thus far, I have attempted to show how Percy’s work is situated in that liminal place between Enlightenment rationalism and romanticism, between phusis and nomos, between nature and convention (Guthrie 1971, 55–57; cf. Percy 1983, 163). The symbol yields knowledge of nature; it shows us an order in the cosmos that does not depend on us. But the symbol also enables us to configure and reconfigure social arrangements, especially problematic ones. Sometimes, reform is needed. At other times, reform fails to take human nature into consideration and thereby misses the constant (and all-too-human) temptation to escape C2 consciousness by fixing the self into a thing. The most realistic way to initiate a reconciliation between the hardnosed modernist and the embittered postmodernist is to stress the place of the symbol in both of their philosophical commitments. The symbol mediates the logos intrinsic to the cosmos, and therefore provides the continuity between nature and society. The logos is responsible for the limits necessary to both individual and collective flourishing. What gives shape to nature? The logos. What keeps institutions together over time, giving them form and durability? The logos. It is not simply that the symbol ought to provide limits; symbols already provide limits. Symbols, across cultures, times, and places, provide a structure that the human mind operates within. People live and work and find meaning from within larger corporate narratives constituted by symbols (Arnett and Arneson 1999, 52, 58; Arnett et al. 2017, 37–38).

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The problem is not with reifying human nature, which has its grounding in nature, but with reifying particular human beings, with writing them off “as” simply particular instances of some sort of larger group identity. Human beings use symbols to interpret the world, which includes other people. Whether these symbols enlighten or obscure, whether they enliven or obstruct, whether they enrich or outrage, they are nevertheless a given, and we must acknowledge the limits of the symbol, its glories, and its deceptions, just as much as we must recognize the limits of gravity or the reality of a wet floor. You cannot escape the implications of the symbol by rejecting reification as such, or by strategic essentialism, or by scientism. You make room for the symbol by attending to its role in human nature. The realist, having made a commitment to truth and error, recognizes just how ignorant he can be. He has made room for ignorance, and, by doing so, he has made room for knowledge. What affords the best way through the thicket of identity politics? A devotion to (and love for) truth. What would ultimately contribute toward the end of resolving the crisis of meaning? Love of truth. Institutions can provide an answer to the crisis of meaning only insofar as these institutions aim for the truth of things. And that which exists dictates the truth. In order to start clawing our way out of the crisis of meaning, we need both subjects (human beings that actually exist) and real predicates. You either are or are not a good cook, writer, father, sister, and so on. Essentially, that which should dictate an honest appraisal of yourself exists beyond you (Crawford 2015, Ch. 8). Institutions, provided that they are oriented toward the proper end, can provide a much-needed reservoir of meaning for the individual. Without some external limit to run up against, human beings may suffer from boredom, aimlessness, or anxiety. Without the negative, the “no” hemming in our desires, we flounder in a sea of possibility that promises everything but delivers nothing. Existence provides the negative, the necessary recalcitrance for true selfhood to appear (Arnett 2013, 1; Burke 1935/1984, 261). True charity never hesitates to say “no” if saying “yes” would mean surrendering the truth. Thus far, I have sought to explore how Percy’s paradigm clarifies certain ontological and epistemological issues that aggravate the crisis of meaning. Percy’s work demonstrates how the epistemological cannot be separated from the ontological or axiological. The crisis of meaning is an epistemological crisis because we have rested content with scientism to serve as the paradigm for all types of knowledge, including knowledge of persons; it is an ontological crisis because the effects of scientism have

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abstracted persons from the world they live in; it is an axiological crisis because some have not the faintest idea of what matters or where value truly resides. We have lost our sense of how to predicate (i.e., how to speak), and we no longer acknowledge predicates as attaching to subjects at an existential level. The secular reaction to scientism, one wherein individuals are encouraged to actualize their “true self,” has only exacerbated the situation. The discarnating effects of the new media, especially the Internet, have allowed for an incredible explosion of individualistic identity manipulation, much to the detriment of individuals, families, and society (McLuhan 2015, 97–98). Today the intellect has been rendered aimless, and the will has lost hold of its proper object: the Word made flesh (Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen 1953/2022, xxiv). Et Verbum carum factum est, et habitavit in nobis (Jn 1:14 Vulgate).

References Adler, Mortimer. 1978. Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy. New York: Touchstone. Anton, Corey. 2010. Sources of Significance: Worldly Rejuvenation and Neo-Stoic Heroism. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Aquinas, St. Thomas. 1920/2017. Summa Theologiae, Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 2nd and Revised edition. New Advent, ed. Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/. Accessed 28 March 2023. ———. 1998. On the Teacher. In Selected Writings, Trans. Ralph McInerny, 193–216. London: Penguin Books. ———. n.d. Summa Theologiae. The Logic Museum. http://www.logicmuseum. com/wiki/Authors/Thomas_Aquinas/Summa_Theologiae/Par t_I/ Q4#q4a2arg1. Accessed 29 March 2023. Aristotle. 2001. De Anima. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon and Trans. J.A. Smith, 535–603. New York: The Modern Library. Arnett, Ronald C. 2013. Communication Ethics in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt’s Rhetoric of Warning and Hope. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Arnett, Ronald C., and Pat Arneson. 1999. Dialogic Civility in a Cynical Age: Community, Hope, and Interpersonal Relationships. Albany: State University of New York Press. Arnett, Ronald C., Janie M. Harden Fritz, and Leeanne M. Bell McManus. 2017. Communication Ethic Literacy: Dialogue and Difference. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company. Barfield, Owen. 1977/2013. The Rediscovery of Meaning, and Other Essays. Oxford: Barfield Press. Becker, Ernest. 1973/1997. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press Paperbacks.

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Burke, Kenneth. 1935/1984. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1941. Four Master Tropes. The Kenyon Review 3 (4): 421–438. ———. 1950/1969. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Crawford, Matthew. 2015. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming and Individual in an Age of Distraction. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Dantzig, Tobias. 1930/2007. Number: The Language of Science, ed. Joseph Mazur. New York: PLUME. Feser, Edward. 2008. The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press. ———. 2009. The Thomistic Tradition, Part I. https://edwardfeser.blogspot. com/2009/10/thomistic-­tradition-­part-­i.html. Accessed 29 March 2023. Follett, Mary Parker. 1941/2013. Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett. Ed. H.C.  Metcalf and L.  Urwick. Mansfield Centre: Martino Publishing. Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen. 1953/2022. Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Every Day of the Liturgical Calendar. Trans. Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Boston. Baronius Press. Gilson, Étienne. 1935/2011. Methodical Realism: A Handbook for Beginning Realists. Trans. Philip Trower. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. ———. 1937/1999. The Unity of Philosophical Experience. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Gorman, Margaret. 1962. General Semantics and Contemporary Thomism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Grant, George. 1986. Technology & Justice. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Guthrie, W. K. C. 1971. The Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hacking, Ian. 1999. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Joseph, Miriam Sr. 1937/2002. The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric: Understanding the Nature and Function of Language. Ed. Marguerite McGlinn. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books. Kierkegaard, Søren. 1944. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. MacIntryre, Alasdair. 1981/2007. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Madigan, Patrick. 2013. Expressive Individualism, the Cult of the Artist as Genius, and Milton’s Lucifer. The Heythrop Journal 54 (6): 992–998. McLuhan, Marshall. 1999. The Medium and the Light. Ed. Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek. Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Limited. ———. 2011. Formal Causality in Chesterton. In Media and Formal Cause, 73–82. Houston: NeoPoiesis Press.

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McLuhan, Eric. 2015. The Sensus Communis, Synesthesia, and the Soul. Toronto: BPS Books. McLuhan, Marshall, and Eric McLuhan. 1988. Laws of Media: The New Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2001. On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, ed. and trans. by Daniel Breazeale. In The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, 2nd ed., 1171–1179. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Ong, Walter J. 1967/2000. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. Albany: State University of New York Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1992. A Guess at the Riddle. In The Essential Peirce: Volume 1 (1867–1893), ed. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel, 245–279. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Percy, Walker. 1975. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other. New York: Picador. ———. 1983. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. New York: Picador. ———. 1991. Signposts in a Strange Land, ed. Patrick Samway. New York: Picador. ———. 2019. Symbol & Existence: A Study in Meaning, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner, Karey Lea Perkins, Rhonda Reneé McDonnell, and Scott Ross Cunningham. Macon: Mercer University Press. Peters, John Durham. 1999. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pope Leo XIII. 1879. Aeterni Patris: On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy. https://www.vatican.va/content/leoxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_lxiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris.html. Accessed 29 March 2023. Postman, Neil, and Charles Weingartner. 1969. Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York: A Delta Book. Samway, Patrick, ed. 1995. A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. “Symbol.” Online Etymology Dictionary. Available at https://www.etymonline. com/word/symbol#etymonline_v_22514. Accessed 28 March 2023. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ———. 2016. The Language Animal. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Thames, Richard. 2015. God Is a Circle Whose Center Is Everywhere: Kenneth Burke & Charles Williams, Language & Love. Listening: Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture 50 (3): 199–207. “Verb.” Online Etymology Dictionary. Available at https://www.etymonline. com/word/verb#etymonline_v_4713. Accessed 28 March 2023. Vico, Giambattista. 1948. The New Science of Giambattista Vico. Trans. Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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Voegelin, Eric. 1968/1997. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. Weaver, Richard. 1948/2013. Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1985/2001. Language is Sermonic. In The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Weil, Simone. 1949. The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind. Trans. Arthur Wills. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 6

Love and Meaningfulness

The preceding chapter reviewed how “truth,” an oftentimes abused and maligned word, is fundamental to overcoming the contemporary crisis of meaning. “Love,” too, requires reconsideration in light of Percy’s paradigm. As I already suggested in the chapter on C3 consciousness, “love” has become a simulacrum, a taken-for-granted term that merits defamiliarization. I have chosen to resolve this book in the manner that Percy suggests “sit-com plots and soap operas get resolved a hundred times a week”: with love (Percy 1991, 161). Nevertheless, it must be done. We must reflect upon love because the affectionate tetradic serves as the takenfor-­granted and necessary ground for the triadic to appear (cf. McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, 5). By this, I only mean to suggest that at least one other person always stands on the other side of the triadic relationship, especially in the very entrance into C1 consciousness. Just as you cannot have a child without a mother, so, too, you cannot have the triadic event without the tetradic event. The tetradic event involves four elements: 1) a person, 2) a symbol, 3) an entity, and 4) another person. Thus, the symbol always emerges first in an interpersonal context. The world of meaning stands between (inter) persons (Fig. 6.1). Throughout life, symbols come and go in interpersonal situations. Certainly, we receive mass “to whom it may concern” messages that affect our worldview (Peters 1999, 206). But it is only when we are in isolation that these messages affect us in the most fundamental way, at the very core of our being (Ellul 1965, 6–9). Another person serves as a constant check © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. N. Bonanno, Walker Percy and the Crisis of Meaning, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37023-6_6

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Fig. 6.1  The triadic emerges amidst the tetradic

and counselor on the ideas we receive through the mass media. Indeed, mass media artifacts—movies, songs, or books, for example—take on meaning insofar as they illumine our relationships and/or remind us of others. Certain tunes are indelibly attached to certain persons. We come to realize the intense significance of interpersonal communication when we realize the degree to which the voices of others permeate our own.1 Their tastes transform our tastes. Their words blend with our own. Their thoughts become our thoughts. We like what another likes just because she likes it, for better or for worse (Girard 2001, 9–10). We always communicate, and perhaps even think, with the other in mind, even if only tacitly (Percy 1975, 200). You cannot reduce the triadic to the dyadic, it is true. But, as the chapter on C1 consciousness has demonstrated, the tetradic precedes the triadic in the order of knowing. Another names the world for and before you, temporally speaking. In Lost in the Cosmos, Percy aimed to shift the focus in semiotics away from analysis of artifacts and move it toward the analysis of persons, those who do the uttering and making of artifacts (Percy 1983, 83). Whereas contemplating the triadic can lead us to the truth, pausing to reflect upon the tetradic can reveal the relationship between symbols and love. The triadic and tetradic do not contradict one

1  Bakhtin writes, “Our speech, that is, all our utterances (including creative works), is filled with others’ words, varying degrees of otherness or varying degrees of ‘our-own-ness,’ varying degrees of awareness and detachment. These words of others carry with them their own expression, their own evaluative tone, which we assimilate, rework, and re-accentuate” (Bakhtin 1986, 89).

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another, just as the search for real truth and love of neighbor are not mutually exclusive.2 The name-giver is an authority, an author. A parent gives you life, gives you a name, and gives you also the awareness that names pervade the cosmos.3 Thus, exploring love and the axiological dimension of the contemporary crisis of meaning cannot help but lead to questions of authority. Whose names will we accept? Whose names will we love? Whose names will we invoke and act “in the name of” (Burke 1941b, 3–8)? Those whose words we trust reveal the extent of our love for them. We reveal our lack of trust when we refuse to give our names to others. It is not just the primitive who believes that names, as well as the authority and willingness to give them, imply power. Not everyone has the power to welcome new individuals into an organization, giving them titles (names) in the process. Not everyone has the power to fire employees, either. To fire someone is to take away her title. Modernists and postmodernists struggle with questions of authority because they have lost sight of the significance of “love,” a broken word. If we do not trust authority, we cannot love it. Paradoxically, if we do not love it, then we cannot trust it, either. Love gets to the root of desire, the movement of the will, and ultimate happiness. Without love, there can be no trusting submission to authority of any kind. Love is an a propos topic for reflection at this juncture because love sits on the threshold between the philosophical and the rhetorical, the abstract and the concrete, the transcendent and immanent. In Plato’s Symposium, Eros is the mediator between the gods and men (Plato 1925, 202d-e; Plato 1996, 202d-e; Plato as qtd. in Peters 1999, 273).4 You can theorize about love, it is true. But love expresses itself in actions, and the word is first and foremost an action, an event, a happening. Our words go forth to others as expressions of our love (or lack thereof). As Christ Himself has said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 2  Some contemporary philosophers may oppose the search for real truth and knowledge with an ethical attentiveness to the other. However, truth and love do not necessarily have to be in opposition with one another. 3  In his Cratylus, Plato makes the “authentic” name-giver a dialectician; however, existentially, a parent obviously may or may not be a dialectician (Plato 1998, 389d–390e). It is worthwhile to mention here, too, that a caregiver, a relative, or a loving parent who adopts can also name for a child and invite that child into a world of meaning. 4  I have referenced both Jowett’s 1996 and Fowler’s 1925 translation of Plato’s Symposium because Jowett uses the term “mediator” and Fowler allows you to see how “Love” translates to Eros on the Perseus website.

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speaketh” (Luke 6:45 DRA). Our loving symbols constitute relationships, and our hateful symbols destroy them. Think, for example, of the many symbolic gestures meant to establish, maintain, or sever relationships: the handshake, the casual nod of the head, the bow, the fist bump, the salute, “the bird,” and so on. Think of the many symbolic adornments of the human body that are also meant to constitute or invite relationships: jerseys, lockets, wedding rings, scapulars, cassocks, habits, crowns, and so on. Consider the affective side of the following predications: “I love you,” “I hate you,” “I am yours,” and so on. In its highest form, communication is the giving of yourself to another (Holy See 1971, para. 11). Thus, communication implies and involves vulnerability, the willingness to be wounded, whether in public or in private, whether on the Cross or in marriage (Lewis 1960/2012, 121).5 It is not by coincidence that Percy ends Lost in the Cosmos with a reflection on love. In his Space Odyssey (II), the captain of a spaceship has relationships with three different women, one of whom insists upon marriage (Percy 1983, 236–237). Moreover, Lost in the Cosmos concludes with a message from an alien that reads: “Do you have a self? Do you know who you are? Do you know what you are doing? Do you love? Do you know how to love? Are you loved? Do you hate? Do you read me? Come back. Repeat. Come back. Come back. Come back” (Percy 1983, 262; emphasis mine). Why does Percy finish the book with this narrative reflection on love? In the least and in my estimation, as with symbolization, Percy wants us to understand love from beyond the vantage of an organismic view of man (Percy 1975, 204). What does “love” mean within the confines of an immanent perspective? What becomes of marriage in this view? Is it mere convention? What does the sexual act mean? Is it simply the transmission of genes through time and space? Is the filial love of God, as expressed in Judaeo-Christianity, simply a façade for power, just as the suspicious debunkers tell us it is? In this book, I have sought to review Percy’s paradigm of C1, C2, and C3 consciousness and to explain how this paradigm provides a compelling way to interpret the contemporary crisis of meaning. Many of our current woes stem from a faulty understanding of how symbols and human communication actually work at the experiential level. In this final chapter, I want to consider love in terms of a hierarchy of meaning. Not all symbols 5  I am grateful for Anthony Wachs’ discussions on vulnerability, communication, and love in his Interpersonal Communication course taught at Duquesne University.

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signify equally. Some symbols resonate more than others. If we are to ascend from the depths of the crisis, we must acknowledge that while many things are true, not all truthful things inspire enthusiasm and a burning zeal to love God and neighbor with our whole being. In order to proceed, I need to defamiliarize the term “love.” This defamiliarization will, at least in part, involve translating “love” into four Greek terms: storge, philia, eros, and agape. We can utilize each of these terms to better understand the relational aspects of Percy’s paradigm. My argument in this chapter is that the phenomenon of meaning peaks in love, especially agape. Love and its many expressions constitute the summit of meaning. Indeed, some meanings are higher (and more desirable) than others. You can have meaningful experiences outside of love. But love is where the root and marrow of meaning is. Love entails the kind of meaning that people willingly live and die for. All other meaningful experiences pale in comparison with it. In Symbol & Existence, Percy uses the term “anagogic,” an important adjective that, I think, can be used to profitably describe all of Percy’s work, fiction and nonfiction alike (Percy 2019, 93, 234). His work is meant to lead you, the reader, higher. The rhetoric of Percy’s fiction aims to rearrange the hierarchy of your symbols (Weaver 1953, 212–214). The truest and fullest meaning is that which resonates throughout the entirety of your being, that which incites and fulfills your desire, that which draws you higher, toward the Truth. Love is the great rhetorical commonplace, the ripest terrain for persuasion, for—as Percy himself acknowledges—everyone agrees that it is the answer (Percy 1991, 161). One way to defamiliarize something is to translate it (Shklovsky 1965, 22–23). Like etymology, translation makes words strange again. A metaphor is a translation. In this chapter, I rely primarily on C. S. Lewis’ discussion of the types of love in his The Four Loves. We have reason to believe that Percy had read (or at least had known of) Lewis because Percy references Lewis’ science fiction (Percy as qtd. in Hobson 1984/1993, 86–87). Like Percy, Lewis was a Christian who wrote fiction for evangelical ends (albeit Lewis wrote in a more direct manner than Percy). With the exception of “Eros,” Lewis primarily uses the English words for love: Affection, Friendship, and Charity. I will use the Greek equivalents of these terms since, like Heidegger’s usage of strange terms, they help to combat the simulacrum that “love” has become. Storge refers to affection, philia to

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friendship, eros to romantic love, and agape to self-giving love.6 Essentially, reading the four loves into Percy’s paradigm (and vice-versa) opens up the crisis of meaning in yet another fruitful way. Reflection upon love keeps us close to those profoundly real human experiences that Percy was apt to investigate. From a rhetorical perspective, these loves can serve as commonplaces to turn to for arguments when responding to the crisis of meaning. Below, I focus mainly on how the four loves relate to Percy’s semiotic paradigm; however, as with Percy’s reference to the sacraments, the careful reader could see how these types of love play into Percy’s fictional works, as well.

Storge: In Defense of the Familiar Storge concerns affection for the familiar. Much of what I have hitherto said in this book concerning the familiar has been negative. I have equated the familiar with C2 consciousness and argued for the importance of defamiliarization because simulacra hinder understanding or the discovery of new knowledge. Yet, we need the familiar because without it we would inhabit a chaotic world where we could take nothing for granted. Whitehead wisely said, “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them” (Whitehead 1911, 61). The question of familiarity pertains to our attention and how we allocate it. The more that we can take for granted, the more that we can direct our attention elsewhere (to the strange, to the novel, to the contingent, to the particular). The familiar helps us to be at home in the world, especially if we feel we have been “thrown” into it (Heidegger 1962/2008, 174, 174n1). Of all the types of love, storge has perhaps the most surprising connections to Percy’s paradigm. Through consideration of storge, you can appreciate the importance of what I have called the affectionate tetradic, and you can understand the dangers of certain patterns of communication that are corrosive to meaningful institutional life (e.g., cynicism). Storge is a defense of the familiar and taken-for-granted against the sterile hand of rationalism; it shuns the irrational appeal of novelty for the sake of novelty. Storge protects against defamiliarization for the sake of 6  Although Lewis makes a few references to storge, philia, and eros, he never actually uses the word “agape”; instead, he utilizes the word “charity.” I will employ “agape” here in keeping with the other Greek terms.

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defamiliarization (i.e., “art for art’s sake”). Otherwise put, desiring the novel simply because it is novel is unacceptable to the man motivated by storge. Furthermore, storge concerns our sense of appropriateness, decorum, and piety (Burke 1935/1984, 76). When someone rearranges our office, our cupboard pantry, or our favorite website, we can get impatient or upset, which can stem from our love of the familiar, that which we can otherwise take for granted. In my estimation, the liturgical debates in the Catholic Church of the past 70 years or so have largely concerned not only aesthetics but also storge, the affection for the familiar rite of the Mass. Perhaps the most direct connection between storge and Percy’s work is this: storge has a direct bearing upon our communal identities. The symbols that we elect to utilize, whether in our clothing, gestures, or words, cannot help but demonstrate respect (or lack thereof) for established conventions that confer identity. In one family, setting the dinner table helps to mediate the unitive family bond. In another, nobody exercises undue caution when deciding which side of the plate the fork goes on in the pre-dinner ritual. Yet, what seems like a simple, unimportant, familiar custom in point of fact helps to constitute both a world of meaning and a sense of identity. You can direct affectionate love toward familiar persons or even non-­ human entities, such as animals, places, or objects (Lewis 1960/2012, 34). Regarding persons, storge mediates the parent–child relationship through which the child enters into consciousness.7 First the mother, and then the family, provide the symbolic materials for the child to enter into a world of meaning. The family is thus the primordial context for symbols, affection, and meaning to emerge. The Italian political philosopher Augusto Del Noce reminds us that the family is the vehicle for the meta-­historical transmission of values (Del Noce 2014, 145). Predication (like charity) begins at home. For certain truths to maintain a presence in society, families must communicate these predications across time. Splitting up the family cuts at the root of the meta-historical transmission of necessary truths, which is precisely why some Marxists, historically speaking, thought it important to abolish the family (145). Families also encourage the formation and persistence of identity over time. Without the family, an individual may more easily float between identities. In Percy’s terms, the semiotic mobility of the isolated self is 7  Agape, of course, also plays a central role in the parent–child relationship. I discuss agape, or charity, in a section below.

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more fluid in persons outside the family (Percy 1983, 212n). The family helps to ground identity to such a degree that you may ironically rebel against it to achieve identity. If anything thrives on familiarity, especially in the interpersonal sphere, it is the family. Note here, too, the etymological connection between “familiar” and “family.” Familial bonds assuage the startling loneliness of our predicament from the very beginning. We are travelers, indeed, but it is better to not have to travel alone (cf. Gen 2:18 DRA). It is affection that leads us to appreciate those whom we have been “thrown” together with (Heidegger 1962/2008, 174, 174n1; Lewis 1960/2012, 37). The diminutive is a great hermeneutic entrance into a discussion of the communicative expression of storge in the family (cf. Lewis 1960/2012, 35). The names we use for others reflect our disposition toward them; indeed, the use of a diminutive in a familial context is an expression of affection. The Spanish language makes this readily apparent: perro becomes perrito (little dog), Justin becomes Justincito (little Justin), Juan becomes Juanito (little Juan), and so on. In Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the boy is not simply Tim but Tiny Tim. Dostoyevsky, a man with incredible insight into the human condition, gives ample evidence of the use of the diminutive in nineteenth-century Russia. The rabble-rousing Dmitri also goes by Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov. We can see how the angsty teenager wants to shake off the diminutive. She is no longer Mia or Marita but Maria. To add insult to injury, she calls her parents by their first names—a rebellious act, indeed! The parents want relation, while the child wants distance (cf. Buber 1965). Some find “Dave” or “Danny” obnoxious; they might insist on being called “David” and “Daniel,” instead. Witness the inappropriateness of certain diminutives: Mao Zedong as “little Mao,” and so on. Beyond names, certain families cherish, hold dear, and esteem symbolic objects of affection that give the family, and therefore the individual within that family, a communal source of meaning. Citizen Kane’s “Rosebud” is an exemplary symbol of affectionate meaning; indeed, the movie’s entire plot revolves around it. Common objects of affection may include books or movies. One family reads The Night Before Christmas and watches It’s A Wonderful Life during the holiday season. A father and son regularly rewatch James Cameron’s Aliens, regardless of the time of year, because this symbol mediates their bond. Food, too, is a wonderful exemplar of an affectionate symbol that can mediate interpersonal relationships. In true

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symbolic fashion, certain foods are more than what they are at the material level. By implication, consideration of food alone can take us beyond an organismic view of man. Food is more to a man than it is to an animal in an environment; it is filled with symbolic meaning. Indeed, food helps to establish relationships and constitute a meaningful world. The phrase “comfort foods” demonstrates the intricate connection between the food that gives pleasure and the person (or persons) that have provided it. Recipes themselves, especially family recipes, have familiarity as their end. You can know what to expect when you make this or that recipe. The regular return to these affectionate symbols draws our attention toward what James Carey has called the ritual view of communication, which he contrasts with the transmission view (Carey 1992, 42–43). Affectionate symbols can ritually create a world of meaning, which makes their desecration such an abomination to the person who holds them dear. There is a certain violation of decorum when an edgy scholar irreverently explains how The Sound of Music is a story about repressed sexuality and self-­ loathing. The deconstruction attacks not only the movie but a familiar source of meaning. Aside from families, symbols of affection have a bearing upon the relationships between individuals and larger corporate bodies such as governments, universities, businesses, and so on. We refer to the university we attended as our “alma mater,” or affectionate mother, and we call ourselves “alumni,” or fostered/nourished children (“Alma Mater”; “Alma”; “Alumnus”). In the context of the marketplace, storge can mediate the relationship between a business’ leaders and its stakeholders. If you can manage to create a sense of affection for your brand, if you have become a familiar part of a consumer’s world, then you have done something right. A corporate merger or hostile takeover of a company may represent a disturbance to employees’ and consumers’ sense of what goes with what, their sense of familiarity with the company they work for, and even their sense of identity (Burke 1935/1984, 76). Changing a company’s logo or updating a brand’s marketing strategy can violate loyal consumers’ affection for a brand, too.8 You cannot tinker with objects of affection, even in 8  I am thinking here of Olive Garden’s redesigned logo or KFC’s Colonel Sanders. When these companies changed their branding, they may have lost some loyal customers in the process. I am grateful to Eric Grabowsky for pointing out how some have reacted to the Colonel’s new image.

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the corporate sphere, with impunity. Long-time employees may feel a similar offense at corporate rebranding efforts. The now-clichéd image of a stifling white-collar work world is in fact a product of the very success of organizations to name, to order, and to make the office surrounding an employee familiar. Cynicism is institutional dry rot that will ultimately hinder any collective form of thriving; it is also one of the primary communicative offenses against storge. When people speak ill of their school, they neglect the truth that lies in the translation of “alma mater.” Hypocrisy, of course, invites cynicism. As Arnett and Arneson have demonstrated, constant unmet high expectations breed cynicism (Arnett and Arneson 1999, 22). When you are promised one thing and get another, when there is a disconnect between what you think you will get and what you actually get, cynicism ensues. Nevertheless, it is incredibly easy to be cynical, and cynicism plays directly into the passive, consumer mentality that Percy was at pains to combat. Cynicism may manifest itself communicatively through complaining or whining. It is much more difficult to adopt an affectionate attitude toward the institutions that help to constitute your identity than to complain about how they are not meeting your needs. Once you realize that you (and society, in general) depend on these larger sources of meaning, then you can perceive your obligation to attend to and care for them. The contemporary crisis of meaning presupposes that the individual can confer meaning by fiat; but in reality, this is not the case. Our peers, families, and the organizations we belong to help to make our life meaningful by conferring favors upon us, giving us gifts, being there when we need them to be, and giving us the names (or titles) that we carry. Instead of adopting a cynical attitude, we can recognize that important changes necessary in the institutions of education, politics, and business begin in the interpersonal realm (Burke 1790/1999, 136; Weil 1949, 189, 205). Berger and Luckmann explain the importance of conversation in both maintaining and altering social reality (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 152–153). Berger and Luckmann write, “The most important vehicle of

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reality maintenance is conversation” (152).9 Changes in patterns of ­interpersonal communication affect institutional arrangements, for better or for worse. Speaking cynically about an organization at the interpersonal level can poison the whole, making the entire corporate entity cynical. The proliferation of mass media today creates the illusion that in order to do something on a large scale, you need to put it online, get it produced by a large studio, or have it appear on TV. But interpersonal communication undergirds and precedes all other forms of communication, including mass communication. It is the living word, the gesture, the spoken utterance, that precedes all of the other myriad forms of the word (Ong 1967/2000, 1–9). Storge turns sour (and perhaps even demonic) when it culminates in a “need to be needed” (Lewis 1960/2012, 51). Lewis explains that “the ravenous need to be needed will gratify itself either by keeping its objects needy or by inventing for them imaginary needs” (51). As a parent, the refusal to move from your position within the tetradic relationship spoils it. Further, the danger in storge is its bent toward extreme conservatism, even to the point of denying the unfamiliar to enter into the picture. Consider the parent who cherishes driving her daughter to school in the morning. She might look for excuses to prevent the child from eventually getting her own driver’s license. As Lewis writes, “Change is a threat to Affection” (45). Rituals and symbols of affection confer identity and serve as reservoirs of meaning, but they can also suffocate if they are repeatedly forced upon you. As the saying goes, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” The 9  In the academy, the social construction metaphor has been stretched to include not only social reality but all of reality. Berger and Luckmann define “reality” as “a quality appertaining to phenomena that we recognize as having a being independent of our own volition” (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 1). Perhaps the biggest problem with this definition of reality lies in the words “we recognize.” The realist would insist that reality is that which exists whether we recognize it or not. In the culture wars, many things have been considered as socially constructed, especially gender. The problem with the social construction of reality is that, taken literally, it can create the illusion that human beings make all reality. But we do not make all reality. We discover much of it, and then we communicate our discoveries to one another. We do not make causes exist in nature, even if we harness these causes for human ends. We do not construct the technological milieu that we are born into, either. We inherit a language, even if we unconsciously reify or alter that language simply by speaking it in a certain way (cf. Bakhtin 1986, 63–65, 78–81; cf. Berger and Luckmann 1966, 60–61, 67–72). Undoubtedly, we may change that which others have already made. But modifying or adding to what we find differs from constructing it ex nihilo.

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familiarity that stifles will ironically provoke a reaction, and any attempt at relationship building will move in the opposite direction. In Kierkegaard’s (and Percy’s) terms, storge pushed to its immanent extreme will invite a lust for “rotation,” or a desire for the new (Percy 1975, Ch. 4; cf. McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, 99). The flip side of the “alma mater” (the affectionate mother) is the overbearing mother, the one who will not let you stand on your own (cf. Lewis 1960/2012, 48–55). In addition to refraining from cynical patterns of communication, those wishing to cultivate storge can do a few things to protect and promote it (Arnett et al. 2017, 2–6). Reticence as a communicative virtue comes to the fore once we realize that our careless speech can strip the world of meaning and destroy the familiar institutions that we depend upon to thrive. The temptation to commiseration with others about a problematic institution needs checked by a recognition of how words can carelessly destroy. As St. Arsenius the Great said, “I have often regretted the words I have spoken, but I have never regretted my silence” (“Venerable Arsenius the Great”). In light of Percy’s paradigm, discretion as a communicative virtue is knowing when to respect the familiar and when to defamiliarize. Cultivating storge requires protecting those affectionate symbols already in circulation, and it also requires promoting new ones (Arnett et al. 2017, 2–6). We must take care not to thoughtlessly profane those conventional symbols that others hold dear, which requires effort and an attentiveness to the symbolic significance that persons and non-human entities hold for others. Prudence demands an attentiveness to how people already speak about subjects and objects in their world and how new technologies can displace a familiar world of meaning and supplant it with a new one. Careless utilitarianism can introduce technology into a community for the sake of efficiency, all the while neglecting established habits and cultural norms that give life significance (Arnett 2013, 244–245; Ellul 1964, 21, 80). For companies, cultivating storge might mean finding more opportunities to literally break bread with employees. Recall here the wisdom in the etymology of “company” in com + panis (literally, “with bread”) (“Company”). The same goes for families. The proverb suggests that those who pray together stay together. But those who eat together stay together, too. Starting traditions, whether in the family or a larger organization, requires a recognition that these traditions will have humble beginnings. It can take time for the meaning of symbols to escalate. Institutions can easily appear as a type of “second nature,” a world recalcitrant to human

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intentions just like mountains, lakes, or streams.10 For institutions to grow, they need carefully tended to; they are more like gardens than machines. A delicate pruning of a symbol here, a seed of meaning carefully planted there, can do more for institutional growth than any sort of mechanical imposition of symbols injected top-down into a hierarchical arrangement.11 The best leaders, whether of families, businesses, or governments, will recognize those symbols already in circulation, those in the context surrounding their respective institution and those breathing life through the organization that they are responsible for. Children do not learn to speak immediately out of the womb, even if they are born with the potential for speech. New employees do not enter an organization already enculturated or institutionalized into a larger pattern of meaning; it takes time. The best a leader of a family or company can do is to introduce symbols with the potential for greater meaning (for love) and to give them time, space, and attention to grow. Indeed, as we shall see, the world of total work and the widespread attenuation of attention are crucial factors hindering not only our affection but also our friendships.

Philia: The Interpersonal Context of Truth The capacity for friendship to lift life beyond the immanent plane has long been recognized. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle famously distinguished between different types of friends, such as friends of utility and friends of pleasure (Aristotle 1998, Book 8, Ch. 3). Good men unite as friends together in good activities and thus become like one another; the same goes for bad men (Book 9, Ch. 12). Some Biblical proverbs concern the importance of running with a good or bad crowd (Prov 13:20 DRA; Prov 22:24–25 DRA). When you stand in a hot room, you, too, become hot. The same goes for the types of people you choose to surround yourself with. You become like them.12 As the saying goes, “A man is judged by the company he keeps.” To live in the truth is to live in the company of truthful friends. In essence, the ancients saw friendship as a virtue, as necessary for a full life (Lewis 1960/2012, 57–58). Friendship does not  I am grateful to Richard Thames for introducing me to this notion of second nature.  With regard to the organic nature of meaning, I. A. Richards states, “We shall do better to think of a meaning as though it were a plant that has grown—not a can that has been filled or a lump of clay that has been moulded” (Richards 1936/1964, 12). 12  Some might suggest that the friend group is the formal cause (or “ground”) of any one member of it (McLuhan and McLuhan 2011, 43, 89). 10 11

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necessarily help you to live but rather, in the Aristotelian sense, to live well (68). As with storge, filtering philia through Percy’s paradigm reveals the limits of the scientistic approach to man. According to modern scientism, friendship can be justified in terms of evolutionary advantage or mental health. Indeed, you can think of friendship as one more immanent need that must be satisfied in order to be considered normal (cf. Rieff 2006, 151). Today, a man without friends is not vicious but abnormal or antisocial. And yet, how are we to make sense of those friends who can offer us nothing in the way of material benefits or survival value? How are we to make friends if we only make them because we want to be “normal”? As Lewis reminds us, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival” (Lewis 1960/2012, 71). Friends are those people you elect to spend time with, not those you are “thrown” together with (Lewis 1960/2012, 60; Heidegger 1962/2008, 174, 174n1). You choose your friends, and this choice implies freedom of will, which moves us beyond a dyadic framework of friendship. A good friend will tell you the truth, even if it hurts, even if it is (to invoke Nietzsche) “ugly” (Nietzsche 1901/1968, 325). Of course, the good friend exercises tact, but he or she also transcends the flimsy, quasi-virtue called “niceness” (Troup and McDowell Marinchak 2018). A good friend will endure the discomfort that oftentimes accompanies discussion of hard truths or difficult subjects for the sake of another. For this reason, you can seek counsel from a good friend (cf. Aquinas 1920/2017, I-II.Q108.A4). Friendship depends on love of something held in common (Lewis 1960/2012, 61, 65–66, 70–71, 76, 88). To say as much is to suggest that friendship is intrinsically triadic. Some third thing always binds friends together (Arnett and Arneson 1999, 128–129; Lewis 1960/2012, 65–66). Events lie at the heart of friendship. Friends hunt, ride motorcycles, and play chess. They bake, sew, and talk. Above all, friends do something together. A shared activity mediates their union. Friends can introduce each other to new practices, crafts, or sports (MacIntyre 1981/2007, 187–194). Contemplation of sublime truths can also serve as the activity that binds (as, for example, in the shared love of wisdom, or philosophia). Arguably, the primordial infinitive that all friendships can be reduced to is “to play.” Note well that play characterizes C1 consciousness and thus makes for a solid hermeneutic entrance into the communicative

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expression of philia. When children convene, they play together. One way of looking at play is from a social scientific perspective. The child plays because it is crucial to normal development, the scientist might suggest. However, this explanation misses the totality of the phenomenon of play. Children do not play in order to socialize; rather, playing is an end in itself, with socialization occurring as an unintended byproduct (cf. Huizinga 1950/2014, 16–17). True friendship stifles rationalism and serves as a bulwark against totalitarianism. The dictator cannot suffer play or jest at his expense, but to the truly humble play is never a threat (Bakhtin 1986, 134).13 Totalitarianism proposes to resolve the crisis of meaning by providing an all-encompassing perspective from which to view the world: a totality. For Jacques Ellul, propaganda infects the isolated individual (Ellul 1965, 6–9). Thus, the person with real friends can withstand propaganda much better than the autonomous self. Lewis concurs that men and women with friends are more difficult for a State to “get at,” and he goes as far as to suggest that friendship is “almost our strongest safeguard against complete servitude” (Lewis 80). Of course, friends can prevent much-needed correction from benevolent authorities from getting through (Lewis 80). All authority, good or bad, must in some degree contend with the role of friends in hindering the influence of top-down messages. Nevertheless, this safeguard against totalitarianism is one of the unintended and oftentimes neglected advantages of friendship. Today, many concern themselves with combating “misinformation” or “disinformation” with more information. In reality, the best check against the error and the lie is a good friend who is willing to tell you the truth. Friends have perhaps the best chance of getting through to you if you aim to reify your identity for the worse. Perhaps more so than a parent or sibling, a friend has the liberty to 13  Cicero’s tale in “Discussions at Tusculum” of Dionysius the tyrant seems a propos here: “He [Dionysius] was very fond of playing ball-games, and the story goes that once, when he was about to take off his tunic for a game, he handed his sword to a youth whom he loved very dearly. One of his friends said as a joke, ‘Here at least is someone you’re prepared to trust your life to!’ And the young man smiled. But Dionysius ordered both of them to be executed, the man who had made the remark because he had pointed out a way in which the king could be assassinated, and the youth because, by smiling, he had implied approval of what the other had said. This action caused Dionysius greater sorrow than anything else that happened throughout his life: because he had ordered the death of a person whom he deeply loved. The story illustrates the contradictory nature of a tyrant’s urges. You can only satisfy one at the expense of another” (Cicero 1971, 84).

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say, “That is not who you are.” Friendship can provide a necessary check against totalitarianism, but, as with its socializing effect on children, it is not necessarily undertaken for the sake of resisting totalitarianism. Friendship transcends race, class, sex, gender, and so on, thus making it a remarkable weapon against identity politics and authoritarianism alike (cf. Lewis 1960/2012, 70). While many may not realize it, you can befriend those you disagree with. Consider here the friendship between G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw, two friends who could not have disagreed more about ultimate matters concerning faith. A friend can playfully poke at your world of meaning, jesting at the ultimate signifier you have chosen for yourself. Without jokes, especially practical jokes, friendship can wane. Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly is one big joke dedicated to St. Thomas More. Despite the comic and casual nature of friendship, it nevertheless provides the context for truth to emerge. Friendship predisposes others to the truth of what you have to say (Weil 1949, 205). A friend is someone whom you can trust not to take offense or to overreact if you happen to disagree with him or her. Friendships abide despite conflict, and they may in fact thrive on disagreement.14 In this historical moment, the world of “total work” is the single greatest threat to philia (as it is also the single greatest threat to philosophy in general) (Pieper 1948/1998, 4). Of course, a scattered or misplaced attention can hinder any of the loves, but the fact that it hinders friendship is easily overlooked. Since it is technically unnecessary, philia may suffer even more than the other types of love such as storge, eros, and agape in the battle for attention. Work consumes both time and attention, and the pervasiveness of the need and desire to work clouds out all other activities. The cynic might say that children play because they have time on their hands; they have the leisure to play. Thus, people deprive friendship of the time that it needs due to its unnecessary character. Francis Bacon succinctly sums up this great hindrance to friendship with the phrase “Amici fures temporis,” or “Friends are thieves of time” (Bacon 1765, 106). By consequence, if you are avaricious or careless with your time, you will have 14  In more than one of my classes, students would ask me something to the effect of, “Do you think there are more doors or wheels in the world?” You could tell this was a question they would ask each other, too. Even if you consider this as a stupid question, it is easy to see how debating its answer could unite two (or more) friends together in dialectical tension. Sometimes, friends just need something to banter about.

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no friends. If you totally and obsessively guard your time, refusing to give even a minute for an unnecessary phone call, then you will have no friends. Many can justify the work that they do as necessary for financial survival. Others can justify their work as a necessary ingredient to the self-­ actualization of their identity, as contributing to the process of what they see themselves “as.” Yet many do not realize that by overemphasizing the world of total work, they lose the capacity for friendship. Each type of love has its own particular way of turning sour. Friendship must exclude (Lewis 1960/2012, 86). When we spend our time with some, we simultaneously do not spend it with others. In order to grow in friendship, we must devote time and attention to others. And yet, from this very exclusivity the pride of the “spirit of exclusiveness” can grow (86). The pride of exclusivity breeds shibboleths, jargon, and nicknames that keep the outsider on the outside just as much as they keep the insider in (cf. 85–86). The readiness to extend an invitation to play as well as our willingness to translate the language of the in-group for the outsider help combat this prideful exclusivity. The outsider must be willing to learn the language (to learn the slang, even), to keep up the conversation, to razz. But an outsider cannot do this if the in-group does not make the time or space for others to join the conversation. The aim of making friendship less exclusive will destroy it (cf. 74–76, 86). It is far better to attack pride in its exclusivity than to try to root out exclusivity altogether (cf. 86). Making friendship a priority demands time, attention, and initiative. Cliché as it sounds, the best way to make a friend is to be one. Yet, you cannot make friendship itself the object or goal (Lewis 1960/2012, 66). If you repeatedly return to friendship as an object of thought, you will fail in the manner of the piano player who repeatedly reflects upon her own performance instead of the music.15Reifying the “us” or the “we” can be as dangerous as reifying the “self” or “I.” Collective bad faith wherein two or more pretend to be something they are not is no different in some regards than someone who pretends to be something as an individual. People who merely want friends will never get them because friendship must always be “about” something (66). To this end, we must strive to create space for activities, crafts, and practices that invite shared 15  In graduate school, Ronald C. Arnett would frequently return to this metaphor of the musician reflecting on his/her own performance, which would lead to mistakes.

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attention (Borgmann 1984, 196–210). Further, we must also recognize that there is a limit to how many friends we can have. As my graduate school mentor Ronald C.  Arnett once observed, Facebook has cheapened what the word “friend” means. You cannot have thousands of friends so long as friendship entails a willingness to dedicate time, attention, and resources to ensure another’s well-being. Finally, friendship requires sacrifice. Scripture reads, “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 DRA). At this juncture of total self-donation, philia passes into agape, consideration of which must wait until we have contended with eros.

Eros: The Desire to Know Although Percy did not use the terms “storge” or “philia,” he did refer to “eros.” Following Freud, Percy considered the relationship between eros, or sexual desire, and thanatos, the death drive (Percy 1983, 186; Percy as qtd. in McCombs 1988/1993, 201; Freud 1920/1922, 67).16 Percy asks the question: “Suppose the erotic is the last and best recourse of the stranded self and suppose then that, through the sexual revolution, recreational sex becomes available to all ages and all classes. What if then even the erotic becomes devalued?” (Percy 1983, 186). Essentially, if eros loses its appeal, then the self must “turn in the end to the cold fury of Saturn [i.e., war, violence, thanatos, etc.]” (186). The love of war is what happens when the erotic becomes trivialized through excessive familiarization (Percy 1983, 192). Further, Percy gestures at the relationship between knowledge and eros with his distinction between angelism and bestialism. The immanent view of man stakes a great deal on erotic love when it makes sex into a need. When the expression of one’s sexual being becomes a need, when sex becomes an expression of normalcy, or even of your “true self,” look out (Percy 1983, 44, 113–114, 192; Percy 1975, 84). Scientism treats of sex as a dyadic enterprise, as one thing causing another,

16  Although Freud used the term Eros, he did not use the Greek “Thanatos.” Instead, Freud himself referred to “Todestrieb” translated variously as “death instinct” or “death drive” (Freud 1920/1922, 67; Jones 1957, 273; Boothby 1991/2015, 1, 229n1).

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a mere spreading of genes.17 A thoroughgoing modern might suggest that sex, in the manner of an efficient cause, leads to pleasure. But the act has come to mean even more than that. Within the immanent frame, sex confers self-actualization. Without sex, repression and neurosis ensue, or so the story goes. Yet, those intent upon reducing the act to a dyadic event miss the triadic dimension of sex, which is to say, its meaning. What does “it” mean? Eros implies a particular beloved on the other side of the tetradic relation, which the immanent view obscures when it reduces the other to a means of self-actualization (Lewis 1960/2012, 94). With scientism having cut off access to the transcendent, eros eclipses agape as the summit of meaning, and thereby sex becomes the most meaningful and real act that the autonomous self can engage in. When sex can become anything, when its signifier becomes uncoupled from reality, sex threatens to be nothing, hence the transition from eros to thanatos. Meaningless eroticism does not prevent individuals from seeking out and glorifying sex any less, though. On the contrary, the immanent view of man makes the act of sex itself the most supremely important thing in the world, to be revered and taken with the utmost seriousness (Lewis 1960/2012, 97–101). A man is not a self unless he has actualized himself through the act. He does not exist without it; it is his means of access and participation in the world; without it, he is lost, a mere “ghost” (Percy 1983, 44). Turning sex (and by implication, the other) into a god is what makes it, ultimately, demonic (Lewis 1960/2012, 97–101). The danger of sex is not that it results in pleasure, but rather that sex becomes the means to self-actualization and normalcy in the immanent realm (Rieff 2006, 151). The domain of eros concerns both sex and knowledge, which Percy treats of in terms of the “bestial” and the “angelic.” When Percy discusses angelism and bestialism, he is talking about the proclivity of modern human beings to try to escape their alienated predicaments by way of knowledge or sex. C2 consciousness can oscillate (violently, even) between these two extremes of knowledge (angelism) and sex (bestialism). Percy 17  In his song “Imitosis,” Andrew Bird tells the story of a scientist coming to the realization that what he thought was love was actually just a case of cell division. Bird sings, “What was mistaken for closeness / Was just a case of mitosis” (Bird 2007). Interpreting sexual love from a scientistic perspective can yield a “displacement of the real,” wherein the scientific explanation takes on a higher degree of reality than the thing itself (Percy 1983, 43). Cell division can seem to account for the marital act better than the mutual self-donation of two spouses.

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gives the example in Lost in the Cosmos of the astronomer who descends from his observatory to his home: He was so absorbed in his work, the search for the quasar with the greatest red shift, that when he came home to his pleasant subdivision house, he seemed to take his pleasure like a god descending from Olympus into the world of mortals, ate heartily, had frequent intercourse with his wife, watched TV, read Mickey Spillane, and said not a word to wife or children. (Percy 1983, 115)

A great articulation of what Percy means by the terms “angelism” and “bestialism” appears in Albert Camus’ The Fall. The narrator in The Fall explains how two things preoccupy his fellow citizens: ideas and fornication (Camus 1956/1958, 6). You can indulge in theoretical abstraction or carnal pleasures to momentarily escape from your own devastating alienation, though the transcendence will not last, as I have already discussed. Of itself, eros is not bad. Considered in light of eros, the pursuit of knowledge becomes something far more than disinterested. With eros, you desire to know someone or something. The word “objective” can be used to describe a disinterested, neutral observer of the cosmos—someone set apart from it in the manner of a Cartesian subject. Yet the reification of the subject/object divide obscures the operation of eros in the discovery of knowledge.18 Those who pretend to a disinterested pursuit of knowledge deceive themselves, for love is not blind (Chesterton 1908/2004, 63; Grant 1986, 53). The paradigm of a disinterested subject letting an object impress itself on the mind misses the role of eros in mediating the desire of the knower. Recall that knowledge involves triadic relationships, three entities in relation instead of just two (e.g., a subject and an object). The dyadic subject/object dichotomy can presuppose a relation of superiority between a subject (with agency) and an inert object (without agency). As Grant explains, “…technology is the ontology of the age, Western peoples (and perhaps soon all peoples) take themselves as subjects confronting otherness as objects—objects lying as raw material at the disposal  Oftentimes, students choose a major that they think will get them a job or serve some practical benefit, and they will make this choice regardless of what subject interests them. The interested pursuit of knowledge, however, involves love of a particular subject matter, topic, or field of study. Such love carries you through the rigor and boredom that will occasionally accompany any occupation. 18

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of knowing and making subjects” (Grant 1986, 32). The encounter with otherness lies at the heart of true eros. From a grammatical perspective, eros revolves around the possessive, especially the pronoun, such as “his,” “hers,” “mine,” “yours,” and “ours.” When one lover says to another, “You are mine,” and the other replies, “I am yours,” eros is at play. As noted previously, a metaphysical relation of identity appears in all symbolic coupling, and the possessive is no different. The ontological coupling that occurs with eros involves not lifeless objects but vivified subjects. The identity between the knower and the known dissolves. When considered in relation to both sex and knowledge, eros obliterates “the distinction between giving and receiving” (Lewis 1960/2012, 96).19 Cultivating true eros requires situating it in its proper context and recognizing what hinders it. The marital act, just like any other symbol, takes its meaning from its context, and the proper context for sex is marriage. Lewis would have us maintain a comic attitude toward sex lest we take it too seriously and perish in the process (Lewis 1960/2012, 97–101). Yet we must also identify that problematic, technological approach to the world which makes both knowledge and the other person into an object. Eros involves that experience of transcendence, the ecstasy of standing outside of oneself, which an individual experiences in the moment of knowledge, whether intellectual or corporeal (“Ecstasy”). Whereas affection thrives on familiarity (sameness), eros grows out of contact with otherness. When otherness can no longer appear, when the world appears drenched in sameness, C2 consciousness will strike out in another direction. You can lose the self in sex, but you can also lose it in violence, the ultimate defamiliarization (anomy, chaos, etc.) (Berger 1967/1990, 23–24). 19  Strange as it may sound, personal property demonstrates this metaphysical relationship between possessor and possessed, too. When I say, “This is my bag,” or simply “This is mine,” there is no visible relationship between me and whatever it is that belongs to me. For this reason, Richard Weaver calls personal property the last metaphysical right because it flies in the face of positivism (Weaver 1948/2013, 117–133). Otherwise put, you cannot empirically demonstrate the relation between owner and owned just as you cannot simply quantify the relation between spouses. When someone says, “This is my wife” or “This is my husband,” the relationship between husband and wife is real but unvisualizable; it is qualitative, immaterial, and substantial—but the relation itself is not something you can necessarily measure.

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In C3 consciousness, the divine life has purified eros by placing another type of love above it: agape. Agape transcends eros insofar as it surrenders not only the self but also the other for some higher Good. When God the Father says, “This is my beloved Son,” He indicates that His Son belongs to Him (Mt 3:17; emphasis mine). And yet, He lets Him go. The Mother of God, too, in faith surrenders her Son. She, too, lets Him go. The willingness to give up one’s own life, one’s own beloved, and all of one’s belongings leads us to the very pinnacle of meaning. The sublimity of agape and the letting go it presupposes lies at the heart of C3 consciousness (Matthew 19:29; DRA). “This is my life” and “This is my place in the sun” must give way to something greater (Pascal 1995, 18).20 The grain of wheat must die in order for something new to grow (John 12:24–25 DRA).

Agape: The Self-Giving Word Neither semiotics, realism, semiotic realism, nor Percy’s paradigm provides the ultimate answer to the crisis of meaning. Rather, it is Christlike agape (charity) that offers the surest path out of the crisis, with all of the humility, self-donation, self-forgetfulness, and sacrifice that it implies. Agape strikes at the heart of the crisis of meaning because it problematizes the preoccupation with the self and all of the therapeutic techniques that revolve around pleasing the self (Percy 1983, 81, 179). Agape counters what Christopher Lasch has called the “survival mentality,” which maximizes the protection of the self (Lasch 1979/1991, Ch. 2). In this historical moment, the overemphasis on survival entails a corresponding overvaluation of security and health. You can justify an inordinate number of actions “in the name of” survival, security, or health (Burke 1941b, 3–8; Han 2015, 18, 50–51; Lasch 1995, 217; Rieff 2006, 151). All of these ultimate terms retain a type of centripetal force that moves the self further inward and away from the vulnerability that charity requires (Weaver 1953, 211–232; Lewis 1960/2012, 121). You cannot achieve complete self-giving love without denying yourself (Mt 16:24 DRA). With charity, we see Christ in others. And with charity, 20  Aphorism 64 in Pascal’s Pensées reads: “Mine, thine. ‘This is my dog,’ said these poor children. ‘That is my place in the sun.’ There is the origin and image of universal usurpation” (Pascal 1995, 18).

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others see Christ in us. With charity, strange as it may sound, we can perceive others (and they can perceive us) as more real. Thus, charity opens the door to interpersonal actions that defamiliarize. Charitable gestures thus take on meaning when we become “doers of the Word” (James 1:22 DRA). When we act out charity for another, the recipient of our love’s perception may be cleansed by the gratuity of our kindness. Someone who has long been ignored is seen again, heard again, remembered, and acknowledged (Hyde 2006, 1–3). Charity retrieves the hitherto unnoticed person from the taken-for-granted background of things (McLuhan and McLuhan 1988, 5). Grace enables us to perceive others in need, and it permits us to recognize our own desperate need for help. Despite Percy’s critique of the satisfaction of immanent needs, Percy understood the importance of our need for God’s help. Lost in the Cosmos is truly the “last” self-help book, as per the book’s subtitle, because you can finally have recourse to the One who can help you only after you realize you cannot help yourself. All of this is to say that we cannot fully resolve the contemporary crisis of meaning on our own accord. Only God can. If that is the truth, then the question is: What can we do? In the least, we can ask for the grace to expend ourselves for others, for those that Providence puts on our path. Interpreting agape from within a strictly immanent frame will always reduce it to something other than what it is. You can always reduce charity to some selfish motive. A person will donate his time at a food kitchen because it makes him feel good. He likes the way volunteering makes him look in front of others. He wants to be seen as charitable. But how are we to make sense of those who live hidden lives, toiling in obscurity, out of the spotlight and in the service of the poor? Charity costs something, as it cost the poor widow in the Gospel even the small bit that she had (Mk 12:41–44 DRA). Of course, you can always reduce charity to some other set of terms; you can see some charitable action “in terms of” evolutionary adaptation, class interests, and so on (Burke 1941a). Nevertheless, whenever you choose to interpret charity in these terms, you will have a “displacement of the real” (Percy 1983, 43). The theory explaining the charity appears more real than the charity itself. The communication of agape requires everything: your whole self, every fiber of your being, your whole body. Charity demands complete

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sacrifice.21 Through charity, your whole life becomes an eloquent speech (Augustine 1958, 166). Like the practice of the other virtues, charity is not necessarily easy. A laying down of your life for the other may require a total abandonment of self (John 15:13 DRA). But such complete loss of self is not suicide (Chesterton 1908/2004, 65–66). Some of the greatest visual depictions of charity involve the commonplace of a mother breastfeeding a child and surrounded by multiple children.22Motherhood itself requires an extraordinary sacrifice of time, attention, and one’s whole being (cf. Lewis 1960/2012, 127). The saint brings others to knowledge of God by communicating with her whole being. A celebrity takes on a higher degree of reality through the process of mediation. We measure celebrities against the images we have of them in our imagination (Percy 1983, 37–40). The saint, on the other hand, does not necessarily appear in the media. We may not recognize a saint when we see her. Nevertheless, the presence of a saint defamiliarizes the world around us because a saint’s whole being reveals Christ and therefore the Father. The power of the saint is that she has become a symbol that has disappeared from the awareness of those who perceive her. An exemplar of humility, the saint has disappeared even from her very own awareness. If her being mediates anything, it is the presence of God. Those in her presence perceive God through her just as she perceives God through others. The saint does not stand in the way of herself. She has not yet raised her “self” to the level of awareness. Otherwise put, her “self” has not become an object of attention hindering her perception of God. For the saint, faith ceases to be an abstract concept and becomes instead a mode of perception, a sense (McLuhan 1999, xv). The saint has not reified herself into a thing (a symbol), but she has become a symbol for others nevertheless by her actions, by her devotion, by her piety. The purest and most complete way to avoid Sartrean bad faith (and thereby C2 consciousness) is to pursue sainthood, whereby a man concentrates the totality of his attention on loving God and neighbor. It is not without reason 21  Ernest Becker, a man on the verge of spiritual transformation, perceived the crisis of meaning and invited his readers to make an offering of themselves to the “life force” (Becker 1973/1997, 285). Had Becker substituted “life force” with “God,” he would have recognized that what he was urging others to do was to pursue sainthood, the total sacrifice of self to God. 22  I refer the reader to the paintings of Guido Reni, Anthony Van Dyck, Simon Vouet, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and Jacques Blanchard. Bernini produced a sculpture of charity that depicts a mother breastfeeding, as well.

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that the fixity of the label “saint” comes only after death (Arendt 1958/1998, 192–193). Only after a man has suffered the final transformation from life to death can he truly say that he is no longer in transit, that he is no longer homo viator. The entirety of Percy’s work moves toward this central point: You cannot fix your self. This word “fix” has multiple meanings, of course. In one sense, you cannot fix your self into a symbol or a thing without consequence. The semiotic nature of consciousness is such that it is constantly roving about searching for that ultimate signifier (Percy 1983, 212n). A fortiori, you cannot fix yourself in the sense of resolving your sinful nature. You need help. The transition from C2 to C3 consciousness, let alone the transformation of a sinner into a saint, presupposes “grace,” another term that Percy identified as devalued (Percy 1991, 180). At the etymological heart of communication lies the Latin word for gift: “munus.” This strange word draws our attention to the centrality of the gift in the resolution of the crisis of meaning. Grace (gratia) is a gift necessary for someone to move into and remain in C3 consciousness. The question is whether you recognize grace “as” grace, or whether grace comes and you know not the time of your visitation (Luke 19:41–44 DRA). With grace and humility, you can surrender your ultimate signifier for God’s sake. From the vantage of communication, vulnerability involves a willingness to let go of that signifier or predicate which means the most to you, whether “father,” “mother,” “teacher,” “author,” and so on (cf. Mt 19:29 DRA). This willingness to die to self is what it means, in Percy’s words, to live “transparently before God” (Percy 1983, 157). When we willingly let go of our most meaningful possessions, or most significant predicates, for the sake of following the God-Man, we receive meaning in abundance. Everything you perceive is a sign, a unity of signifier and signified, a composite of symbol and entity. The question is: Which sign matters most? At this juncture, I should like to conclude with a semiotic definition of rhetoric inspired by Percy. Rhetoric concerns itself with interpreting the hierarchy of signs within any given world of meaning, with defamiliarizing those that have ceased to signify, and with artfully directing others’ attention to those which ought to matter most. The adept rhetor studies the arrangement of signs already at play in the world and attempts to move others to perceive one thing “as” another. The truly virtuous communicator tries to lead others up the chain of chains, the ladder of ladders, the sign of signs (Jasso 2020, 176; Plato 2005, 271c10-d5). The discerning evangelist knows that his greatest gift to others is the anagogic sign, that

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which leads them higher. We ascend to our heavenly home by following the signs and symbols, especially those laid out by others who have loved us and have come before us. For a Christian, the crucifix is (or should be) an orienting sign, one which directs and arranges all other signs in our world of meaning. In hoc signo, a phrase that often appears at the top of a crucifix, means: “in this sign” (thou shalt conquer) (Murray 1901, 34).23 In the crucifix, we gaze upon helplessness incarnate and, paradoxically, find the only One who helps. We contemplate absolute humiliation in the humiliation of the Absolute, and such gazing yields true rest (Fr. Gabriel 1953/2022, 317; Mt 11:29  DRA). We scale the world with this sign in hand. We should know at this juncture of the power in a name. Under command of an angel, His earthly father was tasked with naming Him “Jesus”: “For he shall save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:20–21 DRA). To save is to help. For wounded and helpless humanity, this God-given sign of His charity is what saves. This God-given sign is also one of contradiction, for not everyone will understand what it means, not everyone will perceive its significance, not everyone will care. But to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, nothing could be a more sublime piece of news than this: That despite our predicament, the day is coming when we shall not have to roam about the world seeking that one ultimate signifier which contains within it an infinity of meaning. We will not need to find ourselves because we shall stand face-to-face before the One who knows us best, the One who has found us. On that day, we shall hear the Word, the One spoken from all eternity, the One that has loved us most.

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Index1

A Abstract, 69n8, 141, 155 Abstraction, 112n21, 172 Addressivity, 38n3 Adjectives, 139n11 Adler, Mortimer, 49n17 Adventitia, 20n10 Aestheticism, 110 Affection, see Storge Affectionate tetradic, 153, 158 Agape, 78, 147, 157, 179 Agnosticism, 65 Aletheia, 80 Alexander, Lloyd, 72n15 Alien, 28, 156 Alienation, 15n5, 62, 85, 87, 97 Alighieri, Dante, 25 Anagogic, 157, 177 Analogy, 38, 44, 48n14, 57 Langer’s understanding of, 43 a proportion between likeness and unlikeness, 33, 44

Angelism, 53, 108, 170, 171 Anguish, 71n12 Anthropology, 10n2, 39, 68, 78, 79, 116 alternative approach to, 83 Antiques, 68n6 Anton, Corey, 20n9 Anxiety, 1, 19, 62, 82, 147 in the face of novelty, 63 that stems from the inability to place the other in the world, 69 Apocalypse, 108n16 Apostle, 101, 110, 113 St. Paul, 119 the transcendent message of the, 101 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 3, 5, 11, 15n5, 26, 51, 69n7, 86n21, 117–121, 137 Arendt, Hannah, 26 Aristotle, 41, 49n17, 51, 55n20, 57, 81, 104n9, 165

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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184 

INDEX

Arneson, Pat, 162 Arnett, Ronald C., 162, 169n15, 170 Arsenius the Great, St., 164 Art, 47, 51, 102 Articulation, 85 Assertion, 139 Atheism, 25, 75 of Sartre, 70 Attention, 158, 165, 168–170, 176 Augustine, St., 5, 114n24, 118, 176 Authenticity, 74, 81, 85 Heidegger’s understanding of, 86 Percy’s interpretation of, 86 Authoritarianism, 168 Authority, 65, 109, 110, 145, 155 of the apostle, 114 and friendship, 167 Kierkegaard’s definition of, 114 loving and trusting, 155 as a means of keeping dialectics away, 121n31 the name-giver as, 155 of the saints, 121n31 of the self-expressive individual, 146 Autonomous self, 9, 58, 65, 67, 67n5, 99, 167 Awareness of the supernatural, 68 B Babbitt, Irving, 98n2 Bacon, Francis, 168 Bad faith, 73, 75, 176 Sartre’s own bad faith, 74 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 13n3, 38n3, 124, 154n1 Barfield, Owen, 136n6 Barnes, Hazel, 72n15 Becker, Ernest, 176n21 Behaviorism, 10n2 Being and Time, 79–83 Being-for-itself (l’être-pour-soi), 71 Being-in-itself (l’être-en-soi), 70n11, 71, 87n23, 103

Berger, Peter L., 162, 163n9 Bestialism, 170, 171 Biden, Joe, 55n20 Binswanger, Ludwig, 18, 80n19 Biological adaptation, 45 Blue-dollar hawk, 56 Bonanno, Anna, 114n25 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 100 Boredom, 62, 79, 110, 147, 172n18 Brecht, Bertolt, 102n5 Buber, Martin, 69, 86, 100 Burke, Kenneth, 139 C Cameron, James, 160 Camus, Albert, 8, 172 Caravaggio, 95 Carey, James, 161 Cassirer, Ernst, 9, 39 Catholic Church, 22, 101, 120 and liturgical debates, 159 Catholicism, 4–7, 22, 122, 145 Causa sui, 145 Cause the confusion between formal and efficient, 50 efficient, 49, 49n17, 67, 121, 171 formal, 49, 49n17, 145, 145n15 friend group as formal cause, 165n12 Celebrity, 176 Charity, see Agape Chesterton, G. K., 168 Cicero, 167n13 CNN, 98 Collins, James, 8, 15n5, 70, 72 Communication, 25, 116, 158 animal vs. human, 39 the art of communication as per Kierkegaard, 144 communication ethics, 164 communicative virtues, 164 as constitutive, 143n14 in the family, 159

 INDEX 

the field of, 3, 25 implies vulnerability, 156, 177 the impossibility of, 3 indirect communication, 109, 111, 111n19 information transfer model of, 12 interpersonal, 69, 153, 154, 162, 163, 175 is not everything, 143n14 mass, 163 and munus, 177 Percy’s contribution to the field of, 143n14 philosophy of, 7 the ritual view of, 161 the saint as communicating with her whole being, 176 as self-donation, 156 as technical art or soft skill, 25 the transmission model and transformation model of communication, 142n14 of truth and the transmission model, 142 as the union of the human with the divine, 4 Communio et Progressio, 26 Communion, 98 intersubjective, 85, 97–99 Community, 98, 99, 99n3, 134n4 art reestablishes, 97 Concept, 49, 52 Conception, 122 Conceptualism, 133n2 Concrete, 69n8, 141, 155 C1 consciousness description of, 34 origins of C1, C2, and C3 consciousness in Percy’s work, 28 Conflict, 168 Consciousness, 15 as directed towards the other, 74 etymology of, 36

185

Sartre’s account of, 72 “of” something “as” something, 19 Conservatism, 163 Consumer, 66, 68 Consumption, 68 Conversation, 162 Counsel, 69, 69n7 Coupling, 139n10 between words and things, 96 symbolic, 15, 67n5 Cratylus, 33 Crisis of meaning, 24, 66, 87, 90, 100, 122, 125, 132, 145, 147, 153, 156, 158, 162, 167, 174, 176n21, 177 the contemporary, 25 as a crisis of judgment, 140 only God can resolve the, 175 Crucifix as an orienting sign, 178 C2 consciousness description of, 62–65 origins of C1, C2, and C3 consciousness in Percy’s work, 28 the path out of, 90 C3 consciousness as compared with C2 consciousness, 101 description of, 96–102 difficulties of entering into, 101 movement from C2 to C3, 101 origins of C1, C2, and C3 consciousness in Percy’s work, 28 quasi-C3 consciousness, 97, 99n3 Cynicism, 162, 163 D Dalí, Salvador, 56 Darstellbar, 64, 64n3 Dasein, 80, 86n22 Percy’s take on, 83

186 

INDEX

Deconstruction, 161 Decorum, 159, 161 Defamiliarization, 103, 107n15, 110, 153, 157, 158 definition of, 102 of love, 157 as a reversal of reification, 96 violence as the ultimate, 173 Del Noce, Augusto, 159 Delta phenomenon, 13 Demonstrative, 19n8 Descartes, René, 9, 53 Desecration, 161 Desire, 155, 157 Despair, 66, 66n4 Deterioration from C1 to C2, 73 Determinism psychological, 71 De trop, 71n14, 72, 72n15 Devaluation, 99, 105n10, 105n12 of religious symbols, 105 Devolution, 102, 124 Dialectic, 155n3 Dickens, Charles, 160 Diminutive, 160 Discarnation, 23, 25, 148 Discretion, 164 Disenchantment, 122 Disinformation, 167 Dislocation, 65 Displacement of the real, 171n17, 175 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 8, 22, 160 Drugs, 98, 99 E Eccles, John, 18 Eco, Umberto, 102, 103n6 Ecstasy, 22 Efficiency, 164 Efficient cause, 12, 14

Einstein, Albert, 97 Either/or, 112n21 Emotivism, 89, 134 Enlightenment, 15n5, 23 Entelechy, 39n4 Environment, 11, 116 Environment and world distinction between, 21, 80n19 Epistemology, 38, 132 realist, 51 Equivocity, 44, 56 Eros, 157, 170–174 Error, 46, 53, 62, 63n1, 147, 167 Essences, 132, 134n5, 139n11 Ethics, 141 Etymology, 157 Evangelization, 144 Events, 142n13 dyadic, 12–15, 13n4, 43, 154, 166, 170, 171 tetradic, 13n3, 153, 171 triadic, 12–15, 13n4, 50n18, 154, 166, 171 Everydayness, 99, 107 Evolution, 61, 65, 96, 125, 166 Existence, 46, 137 dictates the predicates, 140 Existentialism, 15n5, 124, 137 F Facebook, 89, 170 Faith, 100, 125, 168 comes through hearing, 119n29 the difference between belief and faith, 118n27 as an irrational leap, 117 leap of faith, 112n21 a mode of perception, 176 and reason, 120 a type of knowing, 117 Fallacy of misplaced concreteness, 69n8

 INDEX 

Familiarity, 164 Familiarization, 62, 170 Family, 159 Fear, 71n12 Feibleman, James, 9 Firstness, 15n5 Fixing the self, 62, 89, 177 Foote, Shelby, 18 Form, 132, 135 and content, 57 presentative, 49n16 Fortugno, Art, 5 Fox News, 98 Free will, 14, 71n12 Freud, Sigmund, 53, 170, 170n16 Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, 145n15 Friend, Julius, 9 Friendship, see Philia Functionalism, 18, 39, 45, 46 Fundamentalism Christian, 96 G Garrett, Erik, 63n1 Genius, 113 Gestalt, 24 Gesture, 138n9, 156, 159, 163, 175 Gift, 177 Gilson, Étienne, 9 Gnosticism, 135 God, 101 God the Father, 174, 176 Grabowsky, Eric, 161n8 Grace, 143, 175 as a gift necessary for moving into and staying in C3 consciousness, 177 Ground, 153, 165n12, 175 God as ground of all existence, 102, 137

187

H Habiliment, 63n2 Habitualization, 62 Habituation, 103 Haldane, John, 132n1 Happiness, 155 Health, 88 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 111 Heidegger, Martin, 8, 9, 18, 26, 83–87, 157 Helplessness, 178 Hierarchy of signs, 177 Homo normalis, 88 Homo viator, 78, 78n18, 79, 83, 87n23, 88, 160, 177 Human nature, 134, 146, 147 Humiliation, 178 The Hurt Locker, 110 Husserl, Edmund, 8 Hypostatization, 74 I Idealism, 3, 9, 12, 19, 38, 39n4, 45, 51, 90, 113, 138 of Cassirer, 17, 40 in contrast to materialism, 9 Kierkegaard’s critique of, 111 Identification, 67, 98, 122 Identity, 89, 99, 159–163, 167, 169 intentional relation of, 14 metaphysical relation of identity that appears in symbolic coupling, 173 Identity politics, 145, 147 irony of, 145 Idolatry, 76 definition of, 67 Ignorance, 62, 63, 76, 132, 144, 147 Image, 49, 51 Imagination, 49 Immanence, 114, 155 definition of, 21

188 

INDEX

Immanence and transcendence distinction between, 22 Immanentism, 75 Immanentization, 133, 133n3 In alio esse, 14, 34n1, 35, 46, 49–52, 63, 133 Incarnation, 22 Individualism, 145 Heideggerian, 86 Instagram, 89 Institutions, 134n4, 146, 162, 164 Intellect, 148 Intention, 55n20 first and second, 46n11 Intentionality phenomenological, 19, 83 Intersubjectivity, 37, 38, 74, 86, 87, 113n22 Irony, 65, 67, 124, 160 Isolation, 98 Itard, Dr., 36 J Jaspers, Karl, 8 Jesus Christ, 52, 54, 95, 105, 114, 117, 121, 126, 144, 155, 174, 176 the name of Jesus, 178 as the Word made flesh, 142, 148 John of St. Thomas, see Poinsot, John K Kafka, Franz, 22, 85 Kant, Immanuel, 40 Keller, Helen, 12, 35–36, 37n2, 39 Ketner, Kenneth Laine, 10, 102 KFC, 161n8 Kierkegaard, Søren, 3, 5, 8, 100, 111–116, 164 King Midas, 62 Knowledge, 49, 147

L Lancelot, 108 Langer, Susanne, 5, 9, 18, 37, 42–45 Language, 28, 35, 123, 124, 136n6, 139n11, 163n9, 169 acquisition, 34 assertory and normative character of, 139 devaluation of the language of Christendom, 109 finding a new, 141 foreign, 103, 103n7 of the in-group, 169 is not everything, 143n14 is sermonic, 139 learning to use a, 103 as a mere instrument, 37 propositional and emotional, 39 as received from others, 36 renewing language as one task of the saint, 105 repeated use of, 76 as a secondary instrument for conveying (or expressing) thoughts, 25 the social origins of, 38 symbol, 46 use, power, and subjectivity, 53 Lasch, Christopher, 174 Laughter, 125 Lewis, C. S., 105n11, 157 Liberalism, 139 Lille, Alain de, 57 Logos, 146 animal with, 81 Love, 27, 57n21, 78, 108, 143n14, 144 as a simulacrum, 105 Love in the Ruins, 108 Lowrie, Walter, 66n4 Luckmann, Thomas, 162, 163n9

 INDEX 

M Magic, 51 Magic cognition, 47–48 Marcel, Gabriel, 8, 75–79, 86 Maritain, Jacques, 9, 15n5, 47 Marriage, 173 Marx, Karl, 12 Marxism, 78, 159 Mass media, 154, 163 Materialism, 3, 9, 12, 45, 75, 132 Matter as carrying the potential for meaning, 58 McLuhan, Eric, 103n7, 145n15, 165n12 McLuhan, Marshall, 103n7, 145n15, 165n12 Meaning, 22, 24, 27, 38, 42, 55n20, 70, 78n18, 80, 103n7, 105n11, 108, 155n3, 159, 161–165, 168, 171, 175, 177 as growing organically, 165 the hierarchy of, 27 an infinity of, 178 institutions as providing a reservoir of meaning for the individual, 147 an interpersonal phenomenon, 24 love and the hierarchy of, 156 Marcel giving new meaning to old terms, 105n10 of marriage, 156 peaks in love, 157 as a relationship between persons, 3 self-donation as the pinnacle of, 174 of sex, 156 some meanings higher than others, 157 symbolic objects as communal sources of, 160 the world of meaning as standing between persons, 153

189

Meaninglessness, 22, 27, 44n10, 132, 140 Media ecology, 41n6 Mediation, 13n4, 14, 18, 25, 49, 50, 53, 58, 63, 64, 97, 103, 133, 138, 159, 161, 166, 176 Mediator, 155 Memory, 49 Mental health, 166 Metaphor, 56, 141–142 analogical, 56 as an instrument of perception, 141 and predication, 141 as a translation, 157 Metaphysics, 53, 78 Middle Ages, 133 Mirrielees, Dorris, 35 Misinformation, 167 Modernity, 122 Morality, 139 Morris, Charles, 10n2, 13n4 Mother Teresa of Calcutta, St., 19 Motherhood and self-donation, 176 Mother of God, 174 Mystery, 63n2, 70, 78, 90, 142n13 of the other, 70 N Names, 1, 13, 19, 62, 63, 138, 160, 162 anxiety and the inability to name, 1 as arbitrary or conventional, 135 the artist and scientist as namers, 85 autonomous self as self-namer, 65 commonplace, 104 everything has a name, 39 finding a name for Being, 86 first, 160 Heidegger finding new names for being, 105n10

190 

INDEX

Names (cont.) as meaningless, 140 in the name of, 66, 106, 124, 174 naming a child, 55n20 naming alienation, 97 naming and elation, 1 naming a new business, 55n20 and naming appropriately, 141 as neither true nor false by themselves, 140 nicknames, 169 and nominalism, 132 Plato on the correctness of, 33 the power in a name, 178 predication and the moment of naming, 138 and pronouns, 90n26 proper, 55n20 as reflective of dispositions, 160 Narrative, 68, 145, 146 Naturalism, 39, 39n4 Nature, 146 second nature, 164 Nazis, 39n4 Needs, 11, 17, 18, 65, 116, 136, 163, 166, 170, 175 Netflix, 97 Neutrality, 139, 146 New Age movements, 23 News, 178 from across the seas, 27, 101, 119 the most significant category of communication, 116 News media, 98 Niceness, 166 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 8, 26, 27n12, 123, 166 Nihilism, 22, 27, 125, 132 Nominalism, 45, 140 the consequences of, 134 Percy’s project as a response to, 132–135 and scientism, 133

Nomos, 65, 146 Normalcy, 88 Nothing the self as, 71 Nothingness, 100 of the self, 64 Noumenon, 42, 57 Novelist, 78n18 Numbers, 139n11 O Objectification through sight, 90 Objectivity, 66, 113n22, 126, 172 the ideal of, 113 Obligation, 162 Ockham, William of, 134 O’Connor, Flannery, 11, 106 Of/as structure of consciousness, 19, 20n11, 36, 80, 83–84, 147, 169, 177 O’Gorman, Farrell, 109 Olive Garden, 161n8 Ong, Walter, 90, 90n26, 140, 142n13 Onomatopoeia, 54 false, 33 Ontology, 132 Buber’s relational, 69 Sartre’s, 73, 75 Operationalization, 24 Ordeal, 102, 106, 107 Ostension, 138n9 and predication, 138 Ostranenie, see Defamiliarization Otherness, 136, 144, 173 Other, the, 38, 86n22 P Pantheism, 64, 133n3 Paradox, 100 of the Incarnation, 118

 INDEX 

Participation, 51, 78, 171 in a technical identity or myths of the state, 68 Particulars, 132 Pascal, Blaise, 100, 174n20 Paul, St., 114n24 Pavlov, Ivan, 12 Peirce, C. S., 9, 11, 12, 15n5, 26, 137 Perception, 103, 104, 122, 125, 141, 175, 176 automatization of, 103 Percy, Ann, 34 Percy, Bunt, 34 Percy, Mary Pratt, 34 Percy, William Alexander, 4 Performativity, 55n20 Personal property, 173n19 Perspective a shift in perspective as defamiliarizing, 104 Persuasion, 157 Phantasm, 20n11, 41, 51, 52, 52n19 Phenomenology, 73 Philia, 69n7, 78, 157, 165–170 Phusis, 146 Picture-book world, 73 Piety, 159, 176 as the sense of what goes with what, 161 Pistis, 125 Pity, 123 Plato, 33, 113, 114, 155 Play, 166–167 Poet, 56 Poetry, 104n8, 141 Poinsot, John, 10, 42, 86n21 Positivism, 173n19 Possessive, 173 Postapocalyptic novel, 108 Postman, Neil, 41n6 Postmodernity, 122 Poststructuralism, 10n2 Practical reason, 69

191

Practices, 169 Pragmaticism, 15n5 Pragmatism, 15n5 Predicament, 62, 65, 66, 74, 78n18, 83, 85, 86n21, 87, 97–101, 99n3, 106, 110, 113, 116, 134n5, 171 Predicate, 139, 177 Predication, 27, 138–144, 139n11, 159 affective side of, 156 as the coupling of subjects and predicates that occurs with linguistic symbols, 132 as the judging of a predicate against a subject, 138 predicate analytically, 139n11 and truth, 142 Presence and voice, 90 Pride, 169 Progress, 122 Pronoun, 19n8, 90n26 Propaganda, 167 Prose, 104n8, 141 Providence, 175 Prudence, 69n7, 164 Psychoanalysis, 99n3 Psychology, 53, 88 Pure copula, 138, 139n12 R Rationalism, 158 Realism, 9, 11, 124, 134n5, 135, 136, 142, 174 and the Catholic Church, 137 definition of, 136 Percy’s definition of, 136 Scholastic, 15n5, 137n7 semiotic, 3, 9, 26, 38, 39, 45, 55n20, 70, 96, 125, 135, 174 Reason, 123

192 

INDEX

Recalcitrance, 40, 106, 147, 164 Recreation, 98 Reentry problems, 99, 100, 110 Reification, 69, 69n8, 70, 70n10, 74, 79, 89, 90, 96, 101, 145, 147, 163n9, 167, 169 of particular human beings, 147 and the saint, 176 of the self, 75 Relativism, 124, 124n33, 140, 145 Religious conversion, 100 Repetition, 111 Res cogitans, 83 Res extensa, 83 Reticence, 164 Revelation of being as inducing horror, 109 Rhetoric, 114n24, 141 love as rhetorical commonplace, 157, 158 of Percy’s fiction, 157 semiotic definition of, 177 Richards, I. A., 43n7, 165n11 Rieff, Philip, 23, 88 Rotation, 111, 164 S Sacraments, 108, 120, 121, 158 the appearance of the sacraments in Percy’s novels, 108, 109 as transformative, 122 Saint, 55n20, 176 Sameness, 173 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 8, 21, 22, 70–74, 109 Satire, 106, 106n13, 106n14, 124 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 13n4, 50n18, 106 Scholasticism, 18 Scholastics, 41, 86n21 Science, 137

Aquinas and Aristotle’s usage of the term, 118n28 and its incapacity to shed light on the semiotic existential predicament, 66 the merits of, 70 Scientific method, 102, 106 Scientism, 5, 10, 22, 27, 62, 70, 111, 119, 132, 139, 145, 147, 166, 171 as the paradigm for all types of knowledge, 147 Sebeok, Thomas, 102 The Second Coming, 107 Second nature, 164 Secondness, 15n5 Self as amoeba, 64 as compared with Dasein, 83 drinking to lose the, 99 dying to, 177 as nought, 64, 71n13 self-forgetfulness, 98, 99 selfhood of the saint, 176 unspeakability of the, 65, 74, 76, 79, 100 as vacuole, 64 as wound, 75 Self-actualization, 169, 171 Self-deception, 62 Self-donation, 170 Self-help, 106 Selfhood, 147 Selfishness, 175 Self-knowledge the impossibility of self-knowledge through symbolic mediation, 64 Semiotic disguises, 100 Semiotic existential predicament, 11, 20, 65, 75, 96, 100, 125 Semiotic habiliment, 74

 INDEX 

Semiotic mobility, 159 Semiotics, 10, 10n2, 106, 154, 174 vs., semiotic, 10n2 semiotic primer of the self, 10n2 as a type of anthropology, 10n2 Sex, 98 as a means to self-actualization, 171 Shakespeare, William, 113 Shame, 62, 64 Shannon, Claude Elwood, 12, 142n14 Shaw, George Bernard, 168 Shklovsky, Viktor, 102 Sign, 17n7, 50n18, 142n13, 177 astrological, 64 definition of, 16 formal, 20n11, 49, 52 formal sign as presentative form and species, 49n16 instrumental vs. formal, 48 magic signs, 55n20 Maritain’s definition of, 48 practical, 48n15 reverse, 53, 68 speculative, 48n15 the world itself as a, 57 Signal and sign distinction between, 16n6 Signal and symbol distinction between, 18, 35 Signals, 18 definition of, 17 Signified, 50n18 Signifier, 50n18, 177, 178 Silence, 124 Simulacrum, 27, 63, 76, 79, 102–104, 105n11, 107–109, 107n15, 108n16, 123, 125, 141, 142, 144, 157, 158 definition of the, 76 examples of religious simulacra, 105 examples of simulacra, 105 the Gospel as a, 96 as inducing ignorance, 132

193

love as a, 153 as obscuring the other’s existence, 77 as preventing movement into C3 consciousness, 144 as a reification of personality, 76 Sin, 108, 110 Skepticism, 54 Slang, 169 Social construction, 90, 163n9 Social media, 98 Society, 146 Socrates, 117 Solipsism, 38, 86n22, 90, 145 Soul, 9, 17, 39n4, 54, 55n20, 78, 101, 121, 123, 131 healed with the sacraments, 121 immateriality of the, 96 as neither mind nor brain alone, 78 never thinks without an image, 51 Sartre’s reduction of the soul to the body, 75 Species, 49n16 Specimen, 69n8 Spinoza, Baruch, 115n26 Sports, 98 Storge, 157–165 Strategic essentialism, 147 Structuralism, 10n2 Subjectivism, 132, 134 Subjectivity, 113n22, 126 Sub specie aeternitatis, 115n26 Substance, 142 Substantive, 27, 139, 142 Suicide, 5, 26, 176 of Percy’s father, 4 Sullivan, Anne, 35, 37n2 Surrealism, 56 Symbol, 11, 38, 52, 142n13, 177 definition of, 2, 17 as distinct from but related to the phantasm, 52 hierarchy of symbols, 157

194 

INDEX

Symbol (cont.) knowing existence through the, 41 limits of symbol use, 62, 65, 96 mediates knowledge of existence, 38 the realm of the, 27 as referring to something other, 136 the right symbols enabling passage into C3 consciousness, 144 as sign-image, 48n14 symbols as constituting relationships, 156 as a way out of solipsism, 38 what happens when symbols fail to mediate existence, 73 Symbolic breakthrough, 34, 37n2 Symbolic formulation, 63, 90 Symbolic mediation, 6 Symbolic objects of affection, 160, 163 Symbolization, 52n19, 135, 156 T Tate, Allen, 53, 57 Taylor, Charles, 134 Technology, 164, 172 Televangelists, 101 Tetradic events, 13n3, 153 as preceding triadic events in the order of knowing, 154 Thames, Richard, 165n10 Thanatos, 170, 170n16 Theology, 78 Therapeutic culture, 88, 89, 98, 145, 174 description of the, 88 therapeutic as adjective and character type, 88n25 The they, 9, 81, 82, 84, 88, 89 as concealing death, 82n20 falling into, 82, 84, 87n24 Thirdness, 13n4, 15n5

Thomism, 47 Percy as a Thomist, 15n5 Thrown, 80, 158, 160, 166 Todestrieb, 170n16 Tolson, Jay, 15n5, 85 Tolstoy, Leo, 104, 107 Totalitarianism, 67, 135, 167, 168 Totality world as a totality of meaning, 19 Totemism, 64, 67, 68 Traditions, 164 Transcendence, 9, 11, 78n18, 98, 99, 110, 114, 155, 172 definition of, 21 in immanence, 77 in intersubjective communion, 79 Marcel’s understanding of transcendence in contrast to Sartre’s, 77, 78n17 Transformation, 67, 113, 121, 122, 142–145, 143n14, 177 symbolic, 14, 33, 38, 41–43, 43n7, 45, 46, 54 Translation, 135, 157 Travel, 68n6, 98 Triadic event, 153 friendship as intrinsically triadic, 166 the irreducibility of the, 13 Trial, 111, 111n20 Trinity, 125, 131 as formal cause, 145, 145n15 Troup, Calvin, 124n33 Truth, 19, 46, 52, 53, 55n20, 57n21, 85, 112n21, 113, 123, 124, 126, 131, 141, 142n14, 143n14, 147, 153, 166, 167, 175 as aletheia, 80 art aiming at the truth, 47 friendship as the context for, 168 God as Truth, 145 love for, 147

 INDEX 

Nietzsche as antagonist to, 141 as not in opposition to love, 155n2 and predication, 142 in relation to both existence and predication, 140 U Ultimate term, 123, 174 Umwelt, 80n19 Unconcealment, 85 Universals, 123, 125, 132, 133n2, 144 the location or place of the, 133, 133n2 as one in the mind and many in the things, 132n1 Univocity, 44, 56 Unspeakability of the self, 64–70 Utilitarianism, 164 Utterance, 13n3 V Verb, 142n13 and predication, 139 Verfremdung, 102n5 Victor of Aveyron, 36, 44 Violence, 99n3, 106n13 Vocable, 44 Von Frisch, Karl, 97 Von Uexküll, Jakob, 18

195

W Wachs, Anthony, 105n12, 125n34, 156n5 War, 99n3, 170 Wayfarer, 79, 87 Weaver, Richard, 139 Weaver, Warren, 12, 142n14 Weil, Simone, 57n21, 100 Welt, 80n19 Whitehead, Alfred North, 69n8, 158 Wilhelmsen, Frederick, 9, 15n5, 51, 52n19 Will, 148, 155, 166 Words, 33, 159 as actions, events, happenings, 155 arbitrariness of spoken words, 45 careless words destroy, 164 as events, 142, 142n13 as expressions of love, 155 living, 163 losing potency through repetition and overuse, 105 spoken words as economical, 44 as vehicles for the mediation of universals, 133 word as symbol, sign, or verbum, 142n13 word-soul, 108n17 word-thing, 55n20 written, 133 World, 70, 161 World of total work, 168