A pre-novelist Walker Percy. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Jun., 1956), pp. 522-530.
A POSSIBLE BRIDGE FROM EMPIRICISM
If it is true that both Anglo-American empiricism and European existentialism contain valid insights, then in respect of the failure to make a unifying effort toward giving an account of all realities, the former is surely the worse offender. For the existentialists do take note of empirical science, if only to demote it to some such category as problem, Seiendes, passionate abstract, etc. But the empiricists are notably indifferent toward existentialism. In the empirical mind, existential categories are apt to be dismissed as “emotional” manifestations, that is, as dramatic expressions of a particular historical circumstances, or – what is worse – as exhortatory, and deserving the same attention as any other pulpiteering. Such notions as Dread, Dasein, boredom, and the dichotomies: authenticity-inauthenticity, freedom-falling-prey-to, esthetic-ethical, will inevitably appear as reducibles if they have any meaning at all. Whatever significance they have will be assumed to yield itself in their objective correlates.
manwithoutqualities 