In Search of Self: Life, Death and Walker Percy

COWLEY PUBLICATIONS

Jerome Taylor

Our central task in life is to acquire our own selfhood through personal choice and action, even though we find ourselves in a world that discourages our efforts, offering instead "death" through consumerism, escapism, and pleasure-seeking. As a result we surrender our freedom to seek our own way and fail to struggle genuinely with life's longings, suffering and despair.

Taylor lends concreteness to the search for selfhood as he turns to characters in Walker Percy's novels who have reached selfhood in very real ways. He points out how certain choices and actions helped characters achieve a sense of themselves, and how we may make similar choices for our own lives. Taylor also uses Kierkegaard's notion of the self and the self's stages of development to crystalize the readers' grasp on the meaning of selfhood.

In Search of Self, through the kindred though Percy and Kierkegaard, teaches us how to recognize true, living selfhood in ourselves and in others, and how to recognize a failure to attain it, in our world which encourages "death-in-life."

"Quite brilliant, both in its unerring dead aim on my characters, but also in his treatment of Kierkegarrd. Jay Taylor makes him more accessible than any writer in memory." – Walker Percy

Jerome Taylor is an Episcopal priest serving a parish in New Jersey, having served as a chaplain at William and Mary, and as a professor of systematic theology.

Publication Date: March 1, 1986

Pages: 177 (Paperback)

NOTE: Also see, Taylor, L. Jerome. Walker Percy's Heroes: A Kierkegaardian Analysis. United States, Seabury Press, 1983.