VLVL Prairie and DL

[Terrance]

> Eliade reminds us that although the truth is subjective, when we are
> struck with the truth it is of the nature of an objective reality, a
> universal that is being perceived from a necessary, non-arbitrary
> perspective. We think we are seeing an existential condition, something
> real and not dependent upon the viewer. In analyzing truth in Vineland, we
> should start from your position, with an awareness of its phenomenological
> basis--the idea that truth is relativistic or aspectival or subjective, a
> la William James:
> 
> "What we say about reality then depends on the perspective into which we
> throw it. The *that* of it is its own' but the *what* depends on the
> *which;* and the which depends on *us*. Both the sensational and
> relational parts of reality are dumb: They say nothing about themselves.
> We it is who have to speak for them." (WJ/Pragmatism (Cambridge: Harvard
> UP, 1975) 118.

Not sure what it is you are saying about Eliade ... however, our seeing
an existential condition (I'm  guessing that when  you say  "condition"
you mean reality ?) or reality (as your quote from WJ demonstrates) is
an interesting thing to think about in terms of the characters in VL all
remembering and telling different stories. 

Anyway,  I've no idea why we need to,  or would want to,  read any book
starting off with silly ideas about truth, but .... well  in William
James we have a very fascinating and unique figure in American
philosophy who asserts that the source of all ontological activity is to
found in the "push and pull of our personal lives" here and now and he
celebrates personal meanings of truth based on pure experiences
including subjective varieties of religious experience. In VL, religion
is all business. Like just about everything else. Sisterhoods ass, my
girl is ginna cook and clean.