Some Assumptions about the Self
in Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos
In his Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, the late American writer Walker Percy was under the influence of a rendition of the modern mind that had been given its earliest expression by Descartes and that continued (with significant revisions) through Kierkegaard. Although Percy revealed many of the problematic consequences of that version of the modern mind, he also fell victim to some of its key assumptions -- which led him to propose a semiotic theory of the self. However, one virtue of his theory was that it located several levels of alienation of modern human beings from their most basic organic (living) and somatic (embodied) natures.

1st level alienation
LANGUAGE
Square Language is a gain of the complex possibility of forming self and world.
BUT
Square Language is a loss of the simple unity of organism and environment.


2nd level alienation
SELF
Square Self can identify with many (up to all) "places" [e.g., I am ________ .].
BUT
Square Self needs to be securely "placed" in order to attain a stable identity [i.e., to be, under the exigency of truth].

3rd level alienation
IN THE MODERN (SECULARIZED OR POST-RELIGIOUS) WORLD
Square Self is most likely to be "placed" in relation to
(a) goods, services, and entertainment -- as a consumer
(b) choices and decisions -- as autonomous
(c) creative visions and productions -- as an artist
and/or
(d) an objectivized, mathematically expressed, abstracted image of the Cosmos -- as a scientist.
BUT
Square These four types of self, as such, never can be securely "placed" -- never can attain a stable, satisfactory, sufficient identity.

4th level alienation
IN ANY WORLD
Square Self will attempt to resolve its predicament in ways that turn out to be inherently unstable, temporary, and self-defeating.
BUT
Square Self can be securely placed only in relation to what is absolute [for Percy = God] by trusting what is other than merely an object in self's world -- and must risk all, including itself, by making a leap of faith.
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