Dr. Gideon Strauss (formerly of Fuller Seminary and the Center for Public Justice)
Wednesday March 18 at 1:45, ICS classroom
"I frankly admit," writes Herman Dooyeweerd in his New Critique of Theoretical Thought, "that modern phenomenology is a much more dangerous adversary of a Christian philosophy than classical Humanistic idealism or naturalism." In this paper I will offer a beginner's arguments for doing phenomenology despite working as a scholar in a tradition constitutively shaped by Dooyeweerd. I will give an account of my encounter with phenomenological methods of research in the study of leadership and organizations (in particular in the extra-academic context of business consultancy) and in the professions (in particular as exemplified by the interpretative phenomenological analysis movement in the health professions and by the influence of Max Van Manen in professional education in North America), my burgeoning intuition with regard to the potential value of phenomenological methods ("doing phenomenology") as a means of demonstrating the value of philosophy in particular and the humanities in general to life outside the academy, and my reasons for appropriating the term "phenomenologist" for my own practice of scholarship despite Dooyeweerd's dire warning.
On Tuesday Dr. Strauss will also be leading a seminar at ICS titled "How Ursula K. Le Guin stole my identity: Trying to make sense of a childhood conversion from apartheid ideology"
