Repository | Book | Chapter
(2018) Walker Percy, philosopher, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
To take the writer's meaning
an unpublished manuscript on "Peirce and modern semiotic" by Walker Percy
Kenneth Laine Ketner
pp. 133-150
Percy has been studied under several headings: Catholic, Southerner, Existentialist. Two such aspects, however, have been neglected: the strong influence of Charles Sanders Peirce, plus Percy's deep competence in laboratory science. His typescript essay, "Peirce and Modern Semiotic (1959)," presented here, shows that Percy was well ahead of his contemporaries in understanding the scientific and philosophical importance of Peirce's Semeiotic, the Theory of Semeioses. Percy particularly pointed to the experiential importance of "taking the other's meaning." He regarded that common phenomenon as vital, and genuine—a kind of event that behaviorists such as B. F. Skinner or Charles Morris explained away as nothing but a dynamic dyadic causal (or S-R) process. Percy's essay definitively blocks those reductions.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-77968-3_7
Full citation:
Laine Ketner, K. (2018)., To take the writer's meaning: an unpublished manuscript on "Peirce and modern semiotic" by Walker Percy, in L. Marsh (ed.), Walker Percy, philosopher, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 133-150.
This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.