The American Evasion of Pragmatism: Souls, Science, and The Case of Walker Percy

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Here’s a very good article by Rob Chodat

It is the scientist’s “being-in-the-world” that allows her to describe planets and bacteria, “things and subhuman organisms,” but the “being-in-the-world” of the layman occupies what Percy calls a “different sort of reality,” resting upon the linguistic and social ties that constitute a “non-material, non-measurable entity.” And what holds true of our triadic relationships also goes for us as individuals. A “material substance cannot name or assert a proposition,” which accordingly means, Percy concludes, that “the initiator of a speech act” is also something that the natural sciences are incapable of recognizing: “The agent is not material.”

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A Confederacy of Dunces – quotes and extracts – 77

A Confederacy of Dunces

Jones

“Whoa! Levy Pant kick your ass out for tryina get all them po color people throwed in jail, huh?”

“How do you know about that?” Ignatius asked guardedly. “Were you involved in that particularly abortive coup?” “No. I hear peoples talkin aroun.”

“You did?” Ignatius asked interestedly. “No doubt they made some mention of my carriage and bearing. Thus, I am recognizable. I hardly suspected that I have become a legend. Perhaps I abandoned that movement too hastily.” Ignatius was delighted. This was developing into a bright day after many bleak ones. “I have probably become a martyr of sorts.” He belched. “Would you care for a hot dog? I extend the same courteous service to all colors and creeds. Paradise Vendors has been a pioneer in the field of public accommodations.”

“How come a white cat like you, talkin so good, sellin weenies?”

“Please blow your smoke elsewhere. My respiratory system, unfortunately, is below par. I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner.”

This was luck, Jones thought. The fat mother dropped out of the sky just when he needed him most.

“You mus be outa your min man. You oughta have you a good job, big Buick, all that shit. Whoa! Air condition, color TV…”

“I have a very pleasant occupation,” Ignatius answered icily. “Outdoor work, no supervision. The only pressure is on the feet.”

“If I go to college I wouldn be draggin no meat wagon aroun sellin peoples a lotta garbage and shit.”

“Please! Paradise products are of the very highest quality.” Ignatius rapped his cutlass against the curb. “Anyone employed by that dubious bar is not in a position to question another’s occupation.”

“Shit, you think I like the Night of Joy? Ooo-wee. I wanna get someplace. I like to get someplace good, be gainfully employ, make me a livin wage.”

“Just as I suspected,” Ignatius said angrily. “In other words, you want to become totally bourgeois. You people have all been brainwashed. I imagine that you’d like to become a success or something equally vile.”

Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science

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Here’s an interesting paper co-authored by Jonathan Haidt. Also, here is a good accompanying article in The New Yorker. The problem though with all the discussion is that the terms “conservative” and “liberal” and their supposed practical politics correlates “Republican” and “Democrat” are meaningless. When push comes to shove, self-ascribed or pejorative usage of these terms, flounder. People invoke these labels as if necessary and sufficient conditions can be specified, oblivious to what Michael Freeden called ideological morphology, something Percy understood. As I repeatedly say, epistemology not ideology.   

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Whatever Happened to Wim Wenders’ Project to Adapt Percy’s The Second Coming?

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A few months ago I made a posting concerning Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Walker Percy. In conversation/correspondence with a filmmaker chum I mentioned that of all Percy’s novels The Thanatos Syndrome would be the most translatable into the modality that is film since it works brilliantly and disturbingly as a thriller on a purely surface level. My second choice of adaptation would be The Second Coming (in my view the most optimistic of his novels) which my chum informed me that apparently Wenders was working on. Googling this, all I came across was this now six year old squib. So in all probability given what I know about the film business, this ain’t gonna happen.

Speaking of Wenders, his biography is not that dissimilar to Percy. According to his Wiki entry:

He then studied medicine (1963–64) and philosophy (1964–65) in Freiburg and Düsseldorf. However, he dropped out of university studies and moved to Paris in October 1966 to become a painter. Wenders failed his entry test at France’s national film school IDHEC (now La Fémis), and instead became an engraver in the studio of Johnny Friedlander, in Montparnasse. During this time, Wenders became fascinated with cinema, and saw up to five movies a day at the local movie theater.

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A Double Agent in the Dream of Michael Oakeshott

Robert Orr

This still rates as one of my favorite pieces of secondary literature on Oakeshott using it to critical effect in the essay “Constructivism and Relativism in Oakeshott“. Robert Orr, by the way, also wrote a memorable article on Machiavelli. When I asked him why the only books he had in his LSE office (pretty much the complete set of Biggles), he in his wry way said something along the lines that most academic books have the shelf-life of a loaf of bread. By then he had given up the ghost and was thoroughly disillusioned with academia — and perhaps given the non-entities that had come to populate the Government department, his outlook was understandable. His inscribed first edition of A New Guide to the Derby: How to Pick the Winner was the first time I’d seen a copy in person. I enjoyed several chats with him, especially the ones over a cheap and bland curry at the YMCA. It was good to see the sparkle return to his eyes if only for the few days that the Oakeshott conference was on.    

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The incumbent of the revived post of Dean of the Graduate School is a New Zealander, Robert Orr. He took his BA (1951) and MA (1953) in New Zealand, Victoria University, and his PhD (1958) at LSE. He was an assistant lecturerin Political Science, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1957-59, a Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Western Australia, 1959-62; and a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Monash University, 1963-1965. He joined the staff of LSE in 1965 and is presently Senior Lecturer in Government. He has held Visiting Professorships at the Charles University of Prague, the University of Bratislava, and the University of Western Australia…’ Extract from ‘The Graduate School,’ LSE Magazine, June 1978, No. 55 p.6

It would be unfortunate if psychiatry moved fully — prematurely — to squeeze the art out of its science.

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Peter Kramer in the NYT

Because so little evidence stands on its own, incorporating research results into clinical practice requires discernment. Thoughtful doctors consider data, accompanying narrative, plausibility and, yes, clinical anecdote in their decision making. To put the same matter differently, evidence-based medicine, properly enacted, is judgment-based medicine in which randomized trials, carefully assessed, are given their due.

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The Moviegoer – quotes and extracts – 7

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She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.

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