This memorable essay offers in lay language a profound criticism of the limitations of modern thought as based on Descartes, Darwin, and Freud. It highlights the decissive role of Peirce's approach to language and human activity in order to close the modern rift between matter and mind, between biology and grammar.

Throughout his literary career Walker Percy read and studied the philosophical thought of Charles Sanders Peirce in an attempt to re-present in language the world as Percy knew it. Beginning in 1984 and ending in 1990, the year of his death, Percy corresponded with Kenneth Laine Ketner about the "semiotic" of Peirce. Their letters - honest, instructive, and often filled with down-home humor - record an epistolary friendship of two men both passionately interested in Peirce's theory of signs. This volume (...) of letters provides a rich philosophical perspective for better understanding the fiction and nonfiction of Walker Percy. (shrink)

Suicidal Thoughts is a compilation of some of the most moving and insightful writing accomplished on the topic of suicide. It presents the thoughts and experiences of fifteen writers who have contemplated suicide-some on a professional level, others on a personal level, and a few, both personally and professionally. Through this collection, the reader is able to bear witness to the struggle between life and death and to the devastating aftermath of suicide. Suicidal Thoughts provides readers with a better understanding (...) of the reasons why some individuals give serious consideration to killing themselves. (shrink)

Symbol and existence will prove fascinating to Walker Percy scholars and fans who wish to decipher Percy's authentic philosophical stance. Percy, an existentialist Catholic at his core, was also a scientist seeking an objective paradigm to portray his views. Symbol and existence demonstrates that Percy was quite methodical and logical in his thought and provides an entirely new perspective on his scholarship. Much of this book is unique and has never been published before; however, some sections were revised and published (...) as isolated journal articles or book chapters, never presented as the unified whole that Percy intended. The orderly unity of Percy's work has not previously been accessible to scholars and fans. Symbol and existences systematic presentation and its new material offer fresh insight and a more accurate view of Percy's ideas. His early philosophical writings were often revised and significantly modified by outside editorial intent to conform to prevailing intellectual currents of the time. Readers of some published articles with corresponding passages in Symbol and Existence will be surprised to discover major changes in meaning from Percy's initial writing due to editorial intrusion and loss of context upon their removal from Symbol and existence. As the only known systematic representation of Percy's general working theory, Symbol and existence gives an important framework for his diverse intellectual background--philosophy and psychology, medicine and anthropology, semiotic and zoology--creating a coherent view of Percy's "radical anthropology. (shrink)