What is the meaning of life?

Tonight I spent the evening looking for literature that would help me answer that question - well, actually, that will help me answer the question "How do people find/construct/discover etc meaning in life"

Remember the research question is “What does organizational leadership mean in a chaotic, nihilistic, and apocalyptic era?”

My objective is to finish a draft of the first chapter by Tuesday!!!

Wandering in the Revelation Wilderness

Tonight I have spent the evening trying to unravel who are the important Book of Revelation/Apocalypse scholars. There is so much literature that finding a path through it all feels like wandering though a wilderness trying to discover landmarks left by previous travelers who can point the way to a my destination.

I'd like to thank two travelers who have been especially kind: Harry Maier and David Barr.

Harry Maier has a short but helpful review of the contemporary literature in his book: Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation after Christianity.

David Barr has excellent bibliographies in his books Reading the Book of Revelation: A Resourse for Students and Tales of the End: A Narrative Commentary on the Book of Revelation.

In surveying these works, I've discovered a list of important scholars. They are:

• David E. Aune
• David L. Barr
• Richard J. Bauckham
• Adela Yarbro Collins
• Tina Pippin
• Jean-Pierre Ruiz
• Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
• Leonard L Thompson

A little of this and a little of that - and a great little tip

Tonight I cleaned up the new database so that it works more efficiently. I imported a number of books from WorldCat into my Endnotes dissertation library.

Here's a great tip I learned from my boss and fellow doctoral student. You can search for a book in WorldCat and import the citation directly to Endnotes. This saves a lot of time if you have a several books you want to enter into your Endnotes library.

I also requested a book chapter from Regent Library.

Last but not least, I read Du Rand's article: An Apocalyptic Text, Different Contexts and an Applicable Ethos.

Reference

Du Rand, J. A. (1992). An apocalyptic text, different contexts and an applicable ethos. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa no 78 Mr 1992, 75-83.

Creating a Concordance

Tonight I began to wonder how I could create a concordance to keep track of themes across works. So, I experimented with a simple Access database. It has three tables: Master Table, references, and themes. I imported the references from Endnotes using a txt file export/import. It has two forms: a master form and a sub form for entering new themes. Here's what the master form looks like. I tested it and it may be helpful. If it works well, I'll let you know

Establishing the chaotic background of John's Apocalypse - Part 1

Tonight I began to explore the chaotic context of John's Apocalypse. I delved into an interesting book, Reading the Book of Revelation: A Resource for Students edited by David L. Barr. Chapter 2 is an essay by Leonard L. Thompson titled "Ordinary Lives". Thompson argues that contrary to the typical approach of attributing the persecution of Christians during the reign of a particular Roman Emperor (typically Nero or Domitian) as the causal context of John's Apocalypse; the text was motivated by the day to day ordinary life for Christians in the Roman Empire. Generally, the official attitude of Rome was not to hunt down Christians. In fact, Christians could live, work, and prosper in the empire. However, if charges were brought against them, they could be executed just for being a Christian.

"Some could travel throughout the empire, taking advantage of its peace and prosperity, visiting and founding Christian congregations. Others might immediately be viewed with suspicion and killed by officials of that same empire. Thus, some could view the Roman Empire as a source of divine blessing, while others could see it as an evil power destroying the godly. Every Christian, however, would be more or less aware of the contingency of life" (p. 37).

A Good Night's Sleep

Last night I had the best night's sleep that I've had in years. So, I have been reflecting on what I did differently that would have contributed to such a restful night. I've had no great revelations. However, yesterday I felt like a learned more about my subject and made good progress in writing was a contributer. Although I spent most of the day reading and writing, I also had a lengthy phone call with a friend, cut grass in the back yard, and watched TV with my family in the evening. In terms of time investment it was a healthy day.

Hermenutic Phenomenology and The Revelation to John

I spent today primary reading Ricoeur's essay Phenomenology and Hermeneutics. One of the main ideas Ricoeur advances in this essay is the interdependency of these distinct disciplines. You can find the essay in John Thompson's collection of Ricoeur's writings titled: Hermeneutics & the Human Sciences .

From this reading I attempted to construct a hermeneutic phenomenological philosophic foundation for The Revelation to John as the data source for my study.

Here's what I wrote:

Hermeneutic phenomenology provides the philosophic framework for this study. The goal of hermeneutic phenomenology is to describe and interpret lived experience. Hermeneutic phenomenology always asks questions concerning the meaning or nature of being in the world (Van Manen, 1990).

Ricoeur (1981) underscores the parallel nature of hermeneutics and phenomenology in the following definitions:

Phenomenology begins when, not content to ¨live¨ or ¨relive¨, we interrupt lived experience in order to signify it. . . . Hermeneutics similarly begins when, not content to belong to transmitted tradition, we interrupt the relation of belonging in order to signify it. (pp. 116, 117)

Hermeneutic phenomenology is concerned with interpretation of lived experience. However, what is open to philosophical reflection is lived experience within the “lingual condition of all experience” (p. 115).

Lived experience ultimately finds lingual expression (oral or written). However, there is a mediating stage, the “epoché”. The epoché is that moment of interruption with lived in experience in which the subject signifies the experience linguistically. Ricoeur (1981) remarks that “hermeneutic philosophy begins with the experience of art” (p. 117). By an “experience of art”, Ricoeur refers to the epoché as a creative process that is “the virtual event, the imaginary act . . . by which we exchange signs for things and signs for other signs” (p. 116). This creative event – art – precedes and supports the linguistic expression of life experience. In the epoché, the subject distances self from experience in order to interpret the experience and present it symbolically for self and others.

Likewise, Ricoeur (1981) proposes that the hermeneutic counterpart of lived experience is “consciousness exposed to historical efficacy” (p. 117). The hermeneutic counterpart of epoché is “distanciation”. In distanciation, the subject find “empty space” between self and his or her participation in a historic tradition in which to construct the signification of the historical tradition, to which he or she belongs, for self and others. In the same sense that the creative epoché precedes and supports language, it is “the interplay of distance and proximity, constitutive of the historical connections, is what comes to language rather than what language produces” (p. 118).

Ricoeur (1981) identifies the common source of meaning in phenomenology and hermeneutics when he writes, “The reference of the linguistic order back to the structure of experience (which comes to language in the assertion) constitutes, in my view, the most important phenomenological presupposition of hermeneutics” (p. 118). The hermeneutic phenomenologist is concerned with describing and understanding the background structure of experience through the foreground representation of the linguistic expression of experience. Consequently, the philosophical reflection of hermeneutic philosophy revives this “empty space” where the creative epoché and distanciation occur “to render thematic what was only operative, and thereby makes meaning appear as meaning” (p. 116).

Language as the mediator of lived experience opens up the possibility that the interpretation of any linguistic of expression of the nature of human being within chaotic, nihilistic, or apocalyptic realties could be informative for a hermeneutic phenomenological exploration of the research question at hand. Likewise, language as a mediator of historical connection makes it possible to “render present the historical past.” This hermeneutic phenomenology philosophy undergirds the choice of The Revelation to John as an appropriate data source for this study.

References

Ricoeur, P. (1981). Hermenutics and phenomeology (J. B. Thompson, Trans.). In J. B. Thompson (Ed.), Paul Ricoeur hermeneutics and the human sci-ences: Essays on language, action, and interpretation. New York: Cam-bridge University Press.

Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.