The Existential Phenomenology of Hazel E. Barnes: Toward a Theory of Existential Leadership Jen Jones
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Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2014 The Existential Phenomenology of Hazel E. Barnes: Toward a Theory of Existential Leadership Jen Jones Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Jones, J. (2014). The Existential Phenomenology of Hazel E. Barnes: Toward a Theory of Existential Leadership (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/710 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY OF HAZEL E. BARNES: TOWARD A THEORY OF EXISTENTIAL LEADERSHIP A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Jen Jones May 2014 Copyright by Jen Jones 2014 THE EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY OF HAZEL E. BARNES: TOWARD A THEORY OF EXISTENTIAL LEADERSHIP By Jen Jones Approved February 28, 2014 ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. Janie Harden Fritz Dr. Ronald C. Arnett Professor of Communication & Rhetorical Professor and Chair of Communication Studies and Rhetorical Studies (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ Dr. Erik Garrett Associate Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. James C. Swindal Dr. Ronald C. Arnett Dean, McAnulty College of Liberal Arts Chair, Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies iii ABSTRACT THE EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY OF HAZEL E. BARNES: TOWARD A THEORY OF EXISTENTIAL LEADERSHIP By Jen Jones May 2014 Dissertation supervised by Dr. Janie Harden Fritz This project engages the Existential Phenomenology of Hazel E. Barnes to demonstrate that in being-in-the-world, the world and engagement with others are prior to being. Barnes makes a significant contribution to Existential Phenomenology with her idea of good faith where, not naïve to human suffering, situatedness provides meaning and human relations offer opportunity for learning. After providing a biographical and philosophical background of Barnes, discussion turns to the idea of mythodology posited as an interpretive approach for studying the human condition. Myth continues as a cultural element for Existential dwellings, where group-in-fusion praxis is situated within organizations. Discussion then moves from group to Existential interpersonal relations with looking-at-the-world-together, which involves love, imagination, and communicative learning to fulfill projects and find meaning in organizations. Dwelling iv places and engagement with others provide a meeting of horizons where Existential leaders emerge. Ideas are put into practice with Existential education, an alternative to Humanistic education, where universities may be dwelling places for the Existential engagement of ideas. Existential education does not provide answers or prescription, but offers hope for enlarging students’ existence with others in the life world. A biographical and philosophical background of Hazel E. Barnes is provided to situate her life and philosophy within the philosophy of Existentialism. Barnes is credited for bringing Existentialism to the United States with her translation of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness; however, her own works make significant contribution to the philosophy by reinterpreting Existentialist metaphors within a framework of good faith. Barnes lived during an historical moment of disruption where the meta-narrative of Modernity’s guiding universal precepts failed to deliver its optimistic promises. Barnes’s Existentialism offers a response to the demands of this moment. She found that the ideas of freedom and responsibility in Existentialism offer hope for human existence. Without determining precepts found in Modern Capitalism and Objectivism, which may be viewed in bad faith, organizations and leaders are free to choose their actions, and in good faith, be responsible for their actions within human communities. Interpretive research is utilized as an approach, rather than a method, to reveal understanding from contributions of Barnes’s work for implications in contemporary communication, organizational, and leadership studies. Barnes provides insight for a new horizon of doing interpretive research, posited here as mythodology. Her works provide ground for an Existential Phenomenological approach for doing research with the aim of garnering understanding of the human condition. Barnes claims that the Greek Dramatists v are relevant to the everydayness of contemporary life where characters experience life and interact with others in a world of shifting values. In a Postmodern moment of narrative and virtue contention, her observation of shifting values and lack of centralization is particularly relevant to negotiating what it means to be-in-the-world. She argues that in these Classical works, tragedy emerges from Existential choices characters make rather than from some irrational force. Her idea of tragicomedy blends the tragic and comedic—a search for a different way of being combined with temporal understanding and reminder that real life often interrupts and changes preconceived plans. While certainly far from scientific, myths offer salient means of understanding human experience that quantitative data cannot provide. In the spirit of interpretive research, Barnes posits that myths respond to questions that emerge in historical moments, which opens more questioning rather than providing answers. The idea of dwelling situates individual human freedom. Barnes reinterprets Heidegger’s idea of dwelling as a locality to that of a cultural climate. Discussion then turns to Sartre’s idea of group dynamics in group-in-fusion praxis, which Barnes interprets as rhetorical excitement within dwellings. These ideas present an opportunity to forge a new understanding of organizations as Existential dwellings, which redirects questions about being to questions about doing. Depicting organizations as such displaces the necessity for responding to whether organizations can have agency, consciousness, or authenticity. From a Barnesean perspective, organizations can never possess subjectivity solely allocated to humans, but organizations are not mere objective facts of brick and mortar, either—they are the nexus of present and past human subjectivity offering vi Existential dwellings for group-in-fusion praxis directed toward horizons of organizational and societal freedom. Barnes reinterprets Sartre’s position on interpersonal relationships as Hell with an alternative view of others as Heaven. She recognizes the serious lack of philosophical development of love in Existentialism with the majority of discussion devoted to cynicism, despair, and bad faith in human relations. Her philosophical development on love begins with the concrete and particular. Primarily, she believes that within the framework of Existentialism, good faith toward the Other, as a free subject, cannot be denied or destroyed; however, she asserts that Existentialism must move beyond this perspective through love, imagination, and communicative learning. Under these conditions, decision-making in organizations is moved out of the mind of the individual to engagement with others where Existential projects are fulfilled and meaning is discovered together. The Existential self may be understood as a temporal embedded identity, which is always in flux and always connected to others’ stories and larger dwellings. Barnes posits that people are not necessarily authors of their stories, but narrators who interpret their place in a story from a particular point of view. She presents the idea of people as a unique universal, which accounts for the influence of time and place on one’s being as well as self-making. As one’s place temporally changes from where one projects oneself into future possibilities, so too does reflection on one’s past change temporally. Barnes challenges people to act in good faith—to meet Existential moments by choosing values within situations and with others. Barnes’s perspective has been omitted in recent vii discussions of Existentialism in Leadership scholarship. Her contribution provides the necessary next step to develop a theory of Existential Leadership. Barnes, who referred to herself as a teacher first and philosopher second, has a great deal to offer to Existential education. Her works provide constructive insight for questions emerging about a crisis in business schools. Humanism has been offered as an answer to the crisis and as a paradigm shift from Modern Capitalism. While Humanism appears to have good intentions, its presuppositions of universality and individualism may result in a counterfinality of unintended consequences. Humanism grants universal rights to all, which ignores the question of who determines these rights by assuming a homogenous view of human rationality. Additionally, universality does not recognize alterity of human perspectives, cultures, and histories—it implies a sense of sameness. At the same time, individualism places the individual above human traditions granting confidence in the ability to reason above ‘the place’ upon which