Abstract
Rhonda McDonnell argues that Walker Percy’s self-described “radical anthropology” is properly understood as an Existential semiotic. The cornerstone of this anthropology is his concept of intersubjectivity, which was developed through his examination of language development in humans, his participation in a study of schizophrenics, and his investigation of a broad range of thinkers from the disciplines of science, psychiatry, anthropology, semiotics, and philosophy. Percy’s Existential semiotic predates that of Eero Tarasti, which was independently developed at the turn of the twenty-first century. For Percy, using an Existential Semiotic provides a triadic science in place of traditional binary science. Using this triadic model, he analyzes human communication in terms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, self and other, authenticity and inauthenticity. Ultimately, McDonnell asserts that Percy’s goal is to posit intersubjectivity as a means to address and potentially heal issues of identity and alienation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Semeiosis is Charles S. Peirce’s theory of signs.
- 2.
I use this term much as Percy does, in reference to the study of knowledge, whether the field is the physical world or that which deals with those things which are non-material but nonetheless real.
- 3.
Percy most frequently used the term semiotic rather than semeiotic or semiotics. However, the use of Charles S. Peirce’s spelling, semeiotic, clearly demarcates the term, lest readers believe an ‘s’ was accidentally omitted; further, Percy’s application of the term is rooted in Peirce, not in other American semioticians such as Charles Morris, so the Peircean spelling is the more logical choice.
- 4.
Percy’s appropriation of Peirce is done with modifications of Peirce’s definitions of terminology, and discussion of Percy’s use of Secondness and Thirdness should not be seen as reflecting a pure use of Peirce’s terms.
- 5.
Author’s Note in MB.
- 6.
La sua volontade è nostra pace is from Dante’s Divina Commedia: Paradiso (3:85), translated by Longfellow as “His will is our peace.”
- 7.
Walker Percy. “Semiotic and a Theory of Knowledge.” (MB, pp. 255–56).
- 8.
Percy (SSL, pp. 120–121) uses Peirce’s theory to explain the differences between dyadic and triadic events:
Peirce believed that there are at least two kinds of natural phenomena, and by this he did not mean physical and mental phenomena. He referred to the two as dyadic and triadic events ….
To make the distinction as briefly as possible: by dyadic events, Peirce meant nothing more or less than the phenomena studied by the conventional sciences, whether the collision of subatomic particles, or the reaction of NaOH with H2SO4, or the response of an amoeba to a change in pH, or the performance of a rat in learning to thread a maze ….
But there is one kind of natural phenomenon which, according to Peirce, cannot be so explained. It is man’s transactions with symbols, of which, of course, the prime example is his use of language ….
Thus, language in particular and all of man’s transactions with symbols in general are not dyadic but triadic behavior.
- 9.
Percy’s persistence with the triangle was a source of unending frustration for Ketner, who repeatedly argued in their correspondence that Percy should shift to Peirce’s model. However, by the time Percy began corresponding with Ketner, he had been sketching triangles and tetrads for some 30 years, and he resisted Ketner’s attempts to change his representations of human communication (Cf. Samway 1991, p. 30).
- 10.
This paper references a number of recent studies that vindicate Peirce’s nonreduction claims.
- 11.
Percy sums up the importance of Keller’s experience: “Unquestionably Helen’s breakthrough was critical and went to the very heart of the terra incognita. Before, Helen had behaved like a good responding organism. Afterward, she acted like a rejoicing symbol-mongering human. Before, she was little more than an animal. Afterward, she became wholly human.” (MB, p. 38, italics added).
- 12.
Percy’s argument seems to rest upon the supposition that the future self differs from the now self to the degree that through journal writing we engage in intersubjectivity with the self. Even the process of fully formulated but unarticulated thoughts is placed in this category by Percy, suggesting that a self-distancing occurs to posit the self as being simultaneously the other. Using Samuel Pepys as an example because Pepys’s journal was kept in a private code, Percy asserted that Pepys “was nevertheless formulating the experiences and so setting it at a distance for a someone else—himself.”
- 13.
En soi, Jean-Paul Sartre’s term for being-in-itself, is used by Percy to describe those creatures living in an environment, those for whom Secondness is the only mode of being.
- 14.
L’enfer c’est autrui seems to be Percy’s translation into French of the English translation of the Sartre’s original, which is “l’enfer, c’est les Autres.” (Huis Clos [No Exit] Scene 5) Sartre’s line is typically translated as “Hell is other people,” though it would be more true to Sartre to translate it as “Hell is the Other,” which is reflected in Percy’s phrase.
- 15.
In 1963, F. Gentry Harris, the Chief of Clinical Studies at the National Institute of Mental Health, recruited Percy as a consultant on a study involving the family therapy of schizophrenic patients. Harris reached out to Percy after reading “The Symbolic Structure of Interpersonal Process,” noting in Percy a fellow follower of Peirce’s semeiotic. Percy’s role consisted of listening to tapes of family therapy sessions and reporting back to Harris on his analysis of the intersubjective relationships presented in those sessions. Percy and Harris continued their correspondence for some time after the dissolution of the study, continuing to ponder and argue the application of Peirce’s Categories to human behavior.
- 16.
Percy and Harris: Such interactions are noted repeatedly throughout Percy’s analyses of therapy sessions involving multiple family groups.
References
Dante. Paradiso: Canto III. http://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divinecomedy/paradiso/paradiso-3/.
Keller, Helen. 1905. The Story of My Life. A Celebration of Women Writers. Ed. Mary Mark Ockerbloom. New York: Doubleday, Page and Company. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/keller/life/life.html
Ketner, Kenneth Laine. 1996. Pragmaticism is an Existentialism? Frontiers in American Philosophy (Volume 2). Eds. Robert W. Burch and Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. College Station: Texas A & M University Press.
———. et al. 2011. Peirce’s Nonreduction and Relational Completeness Claims in the Context of First-Order Predicate Logic. Interdisciplinary Seminar on Peirce. KODIKAS Volume 34:: 3–14.
Percy, Walker. 1984. Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. New York: Washington Square Press.
———. 1989. The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.
———. 1991. Signposts in a Strange Land: Essays. Ed. Patrick Samway. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Percy, Walker and Gentry Harris. n.d. The Walker Percy-Gentry Harris Correspondence. Texas Tech University Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism. Item 0000027.
Samway, Patrick J., S. J. (ed.). 1995. A Thief of Peirce: The Letters of Kenneth Laine Ketner and Walker Percy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Sartre, Jean-Paul 1962. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press.
Tarasti, Eero. 2001. Existential Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 2012. Existential Semiotics and Cultural Psychology. In: The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology. Ed. Jean Valsiner. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McDonnell, R.R. (2018). Walker Percy’s Intersubjectivity: An Existential Semiotic or 3 + 3 = 4. In: Marsh, L. (eds) Walker Percy, Philosopher. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77968-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77968-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77967-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77968-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)