Tom Wolfe, Walker Percy, and Being Stuck with Virtue

Perspectives on Political Science, 40 (3), Summer 2011, 119-123

By P. Lawler and M. Guerra 

We are pleased to introduce this symposium on the moral, political, scientific, philosophical, and even theological dimensions of the thought of two contemporary American novelists and essayists: Walker Percy and Tom Wolfe. Astute and penetrating observers of modern America, Percy and Wolfe offer memorably critical portraits of the effect that popularized scientific and pseudo-scientific theories increasingly have on our view, both as particular persons and as a people, of who we are and how we want to live. They both think that what we can know through science supports the conclusion that human beings are stuck with virtue, and that characteristic forms of modern science—even or especially in its most advanced forms (such as evolutionary psychology and neuroscience)—are unempirical insofar as they fail to account adequately for the real human longings and capabilities that constitute the human self or soul.

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