Tag: MA Dissertation Journal

MA Dissertation Journal #5: Spirituality and Carnality, Time and Conclusions

~ Liam Greenacre ~ Leave a comment

I have now submitted my MA Dissertation. In this final journal entry, I want to discuss some of my other findings (apart from the plurivocality of experience) and raise potential areas of research.

A finding that excites me a lot and raises lots of interesting questions is how time acted for Gregory. I would suggest it was completely unlike a linear conception of time. For Gregory, the experiential temporal boundaries were collapsible. In other words, the past, present and future all intersected with each other. In Gregory’s Homilies on Ezekiel we find out that prophecy makes this possible. Gregory writes ‘sometimes the past is proven through future events, sometimes the future from the past.’. He also states ‘sometimes the Prophet is touched from the past and present and also the future.’ Although a nonlinear conception of time is not alien to modern thinking, for example consider how Derrida comments on the deferred nature of consciousness, we do not often use it when thinking about how we understand the past. However, how would this alter our practice of history and how does it contribute to my meta-theory that aims to understand Gregory the Great’s experience?

Mainly, we would be required to see references to scripture as more than just a literary exercise. For Gregory, the past, present and future all blended with each other when it comes to experience. Thus, in the story of Nonnosus, in Gregory’s Dialogues, we find that there is a miracle that is similar to 2 Kings 4:1-7. In both instances, we have a miraculous filling of a jar. Meanwhile, Libertinus’ resurrection of a child through using Honoratus’ sandal is compared to the Elisha using Elijah’s mantle to clear a path through water. Different events indicate a period of time different from their own. Past, present and future are blended. I see my argument, in this instance, as a pointer to a possible direction of future research, perhaps we need to think about how we approach time when studying Late Antique history?

The other main finding of my dissertation centred around the spiritual/carnal divide. The spiritual refers to matters of the interior, whereas carnal indicates the bodily. There is plenty of discussion of this issue in the literature on Gregory. For example, Markus and Moorhead focus on the interiority of experience, in other words that Gregory cared more about the inwardness of experience rather than the outer. Meanwhile, Demacopoulos and Evans take an intermediary approach, suggesting that the spiritual and carnal seep into each other on occasion. Straw, who I agree with, sees the spritual and carnal as points on a continuum, in other words they interact with each other on plenty of occasions. Her proposition is radical and forces to rethink how understand Gregory’s world. The divine and mundane intersect on a continuing basis.

My evidence for this in the Homilies on Ezekiel came in two forms. Firstly, one needs to look at the importance Gregory attaches to the flesh. For example, he states that are minds are to be cut off from carnal pleasures, ‘but not from the necessary care of the flesh.’ He also describes how the body is given life from God. The second form of evidence comes through the presence of figurative language. Gregory writes the the body has eyes and that Israel has a hard forehead. The body is used to discuss spiritual truths, so instead of seeing them as opposites, we must instead see them as poles on a continuum.

Based on my discussion of spirituality and carnality, I came up with three propositions:

  1. We must consider other radical ontologies that were part of Gregory’s experience.
  2. Metaphysically speaking, the landscape of the world is imbued with spirituality.
  3. The inward/outward division needs to be abandoned when discussing Gregory- he was neither ‘in’ or ‘out’ of it.

These, of course, are radical propositions. While I do not want to go into detail in this post, I do want to suggest ways that my ideas might be applied practically. Firstly, the idea that there are other ontologies refers to the fact that there were unique ways of being in the Dialogues. In particular, possession by a spirit would change how think about the composition of a person, in them the spiritual and carnal would touch even closer. Some Lombards, for example, were possessed by a spirit when they entered the Church of St Lawrence and a nun was also possessed for eating a lettuce without the customary blessing. Instead, of viewing such instances as ‘culture’ or as psychotic, we should take these other forms of being seriously. The spiritual and carnal were not separate. I admit, I would like to return to this topic at some point, especially whether people with such experiences are ontologically different from those who do not have them (including in modernity, as well as Late Antiquity).

The idea that the landscape is imbued with spirituality means we have to consider the metaphysical ‘otherness’ of Gregory’s world. For example, consider how ‘water’ occupies a position in two stories in the Dialogues. In Honoratus’ story, water prevents two Goths from crossing a river after stealing a horse. Meanwhile, in Libertinus’ instance, water provides the necessary conditions for a fish to miraculously slip in a bucket, in an area where virtually no fish are found. Water, one of the constituents of the world, is directed spiritually.

Finally, the inward/outward division should be abandoned. In other words, beings are not separate from the world, but are part of it. The prime example, for Gregory, is Christ who inhabited the world through a body. Humans are not at a distance from the world, but are part of it.

I have briefly described some of my findings and ideas, hopefully this has provided some insight into my dissertation, even if this post cannot be comprehensive. I will now end this dissertation journal entry by raising two conclusions. I begin by suggesting it may be possible to go ”beyond Gregory’ with the hermeneutic phenomenological aims of my dissertation. Firstly, it might be possible to establish a experiential or phenomenological community, which Gregory and others were part of. In many of Gregory’s letters we find scriptural references, suggesting his ideas might have had influence beyond his own personal experience. Letter VII: 7 quotes 1 Corinthians, Psalms and 2 Kings among many other Biblical books. Meanwhile, Letter III:53 contains references to Wisdom and Matthew. The ideas found in Gregory’s exegesis, and their matching points in Ricoeur, may have influenced the experience of others beyond an individual level. It may even be possible to expand the temporal boundaries of my ‘meta-theory’. In 914, a monk called Gomez, composed a manuscripts of Gregory’s Commentary on Job and in 1275 a manuscript of Gregory’s Homilies on Ezekiel was in circulation. Of course, such a proposal needs further research, but perhaps reception studies would be a good framework for exploring this topic.

Finally, I want to end with reference to some of my ideas as outlined in my first MA dissertation journal. In this, I proposed a new model of history based on comparing modern and Late Antique insights. I even called myself an empiricist (though not in the sense of looking for ‘facts’). In other words, I wanted to question whether Gregory and Ricoeur’s thinking were compatible with each other. What I would say is that my dissertation suggests they partially are comparable, especially on plurivocality. Based on this, future research could take the direction of pursuing the possiblity of creating meta-theories, such as the one in my dissertation. Can we apply theory within an empirical framework? Such a discussion is not only potentially fruitful, but necessary for our understanding of Late Antiquity.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my dissertation journal entries. I have thoroughly enjoyed my project and believe it not only shines light on Gregory the Great’s experience, but opens up potential future areas of research. Nevertheless, my project still questions different aspects of Gregory’s experience from the unique vantage point of hermeneutic phenomenology.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Anonymous, Gregory the Great’s Homilies on Ezekiel. Accessed 05/10/2021 at https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/pfp/id/3219

Gregory the Great, Dialogues in St Gregory the Great: Dialogues translated by Odo J. Zimmerman. New York: Fathers of the Church Inc, 1959.

Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel in Homilies on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel translated by Theodosia Tomkinson. Perrysville: Centre for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2010.

Gregory the Great. Letters translated by James Barmby. Accessed 10/10/2021 at https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3602.htm.

Gomez, Gregory the Great’s Commentary on Job. Accessed 05/10/2021 at https://www.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/view/MS-LATIN-00083/1

Secondary Sources

Demacopoulos, George E. Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor and First Man of Rome. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015.

Evans, Gillian R. The Thought of Gregory the Great (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)

Markus, Robert A. Gregory the Great and His World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Markus, Robert A. Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,1996.

Moorhead, John. Gregory the Great. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005.

Straw, Carole E. Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

MA Dissertation Journal #4: Gregory the Great and His Plurivocal Interpretations

~ Liam Greenacre ~ Leave a comment

In this post, I aim to discuss what I believe is one of the key findings of my dissertation. The idea that Gregory the Great thought there multiple senses of scriptural interpretation is not novel, but the idea this multiplicity affected his experience of the world is. This post shall discuss this finding.

I want to start by using some analogies. I did this in one of my chapters. Imagine a crime scene with multiple witnesses and a detective who is investigating it. Note how each person would take something different from their observations. A neutral observer is shocked by the events that have happened. Meanwhile, a family member is overwhelmed with emotion. Finally, a detective looks at the cold hard facts. In some instances, a person may take multiple interpretations of the events, for example, the family member is also shocked while also being emotional. Nevertheless, the point is clear- multiple interpretations of the same event are possible.

This may not exactly be a shocking revelation- but I want to argue that one person can simultaneously experience things on multiple levels. One person can interpret one thing in multiple senses. Imagine a person with symptoms of psychosis. They may interpret an event in light of their hallucinations , but then later reflect and identify what ‘really’ happened. Of course, some could argue, this analogy does not reflect ordinary experience- but I would raise, especially in a Late Antique setting, psychotic symptoms are far from unusual. For example, Bachrach and Kroll have have compared 134 medieval visions with the experiences of 23 hospitalised patients in Minnesota, they identified that in the former case most of the individuals were not considered psychotic. Therefore, I think my point, about multiple interpretations by an individual stands to an extent.

One question that has been pivotal in my study, is making the leap from text (scripture) to world (experience). I have explained this through how text and world both contain things that signify. However, I believe my analogies reinforce this connection. If multiple interpretations are possible in both world and text, then we can say that there is stronger evidence for comparing them.

Now that I have established this, I now want to focus on what Gregory says about the senses of interpretation. He does not provide an exposition of it in his Homilies on Ezekiel, however if one looks at the Commentary on Job you find out that his interpretative strategy consists of three senses; the historical, allegorical and moral. However, this picture can be complicated further by suggesting that there can be multiple instances of one sense at the same time. When discussing the four creatures that appear at the beginning of the Book of Ezekiel, Gregory suggests they are an allegory for the Four Evangelists, Christ and preaching in the four corners of the world. However, if this appears complex, then one needs to also consider that words can also signify multiple meanings at the same time. ‘Fire’, according to Gregory, signifies the Holy Spirit, despitefulness of mind and God because he cleanses the soul. So what we are faced with is an intricate web of signification, however because of the connection I established earlier between world and text we must also consider how this all affects experience.

This brings me to the final chapter (bar the conclusion) of my dissertation, which aims to apply my meta-theory, including the plurivocal aspect, to Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, a hagiographical collection. The purpose of this is to test my theory and to see how it alters our view of Gregory’s and potentially Late Antique experience in general. It is worth pointing out here, that Ricoeur, the later thinker I am examining for my dissertation, also believes in the plurivocality of scripture, therefore in my meta-theory multiple interpretations hold a prominent place. However, we still have to consider how to make the jump from the Homilies to the Dialogues. How do we know that the meta-theory developed through Gregory and Ricouer is applicable to the Dialogues‘ more everyday accounts as well as scripture? The answer is in Joan Petersen’s 1984 book The Dialogues of St Gregory the Great in their Late Antique Cultural Background. Part of this book argues that Gregory’s Biblical typology can be applied to the Dialogues as well. The connection between the Homilies and the Dialogues is proved by the latter’s constant allusions to Biblical figures. St Benedict is compared to Noah. Honoratus, like John the Baptist and Moses, has the Holy Spirit descend on him. These two instances only form part of the constant reference to the Bible, suggesting Gregory’s interpretative strategies can be applied to the everyday accounts of the Dialogues as well.

However, what actually happens when we apply the scriptural strategies to experience? If one is doing this through the Dialogues, one needs to read between the lines, as while they do contain lots of Biblical allusions, Gregory does not provide exposition on the multiple meanings that events, things, or objects may have in the Dialogues. To illustrate how an account of experience might affected by this plurivocality, I will use the example of Honoratus. This Holy Man abstained from meat and his parents laughed at him. However, when a servant went to collect a bucket of water for him, a fish slipped in that provided enough food for an entire day. The historical sense of interpretation would suggest that a fish genuinely jumped into the bucket, which, although unlikely, is not impossible. The allegorical sense would suggest that Honoratus received spiritual nourishment from God due to his abstinence. The moral sense would be that the man was cleared of ‘dishonour and ridicule’ by the discovery of the fish. As you can see, it is possible to theorise multiple meanings from one account, experience signified all three of these meanings simultaneously.

I hope this post has given some insight into plurivocality and how it relates to an aspect of my meta-theory. The idea that multiple interpretations are possible by an individual is one of the key components of my dissertation and in this post I have discussed some of my ideas pertaining to it.

Bibliography:

Primary Sources

Gregory the Great, Commentary on Job. Accessed 29/09/2021 at http://www.lectionarycentral.com/GregoryMoralia/Epistle.html

Gregory the Great, Dialogues translated by Edmund G. Gardener in The Dialogues of St Gregory the Great. Merchantville: Evolution Publishing and Manufacturing, 2010.

Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel translated by Theodosia Tomkinson in Homilies on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. Perrysville: Centre for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2010.

Secondary Sources

Bachrach, Bernard and Jerome Kroll, “Medieval Visions and Contemporary Hallucinations,” Psychological Medicine 12 (1982): 709-721

Joan Petersen, The Dialogues of St Gregory the Great in their Late Antique Cultural Background. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984.


MA Dissertation Journal #3: Can Derrida Be Applied Historically?

~ Liam Greenacre ~ Leave a comment

In this post, I will expand on some thoughts I have had while doing my dissertation, which nevertheless cannot fit in my thesis. You may know that I am interested in whether theories can be grounded in evidence. After all, one of my dissertation’s aims is to see if Paul Ricoeur’s ideas can be compared to Gregory the Great’s. In this post, I will explore the controversial and radical idea that the ideas of Jacques Derrida are not only sound but can also be applied in a historical context within an empirical basis. Admittedly, much more research needs to be done to verify my argument, but I am using this post as an opportunity and tangent to investigate the idea’s potential.

The first comparison between Derrida and Late Antique thinking centres around semiotics and language. But first, I want to highlight how semiotics again plays a pivotal role. In my previous post, I talked about the importance of semiotics to connecting the world and text. However, I am now becoming aware, as my dissertation progresses, that signs and language are crucial topics in philosophy, many ideas cannot be addressed without dealing with the relevant issues.

One Derridean theory that might be applicable to Late Antiquity is différance. This idea has its origins in Ferdinand de Saussure’s conception that words receive their meaning through their relationship with others. Derrida, building on this, suggests that words can never fully summon their meaning because of their interdependence. However, why is this idea potentially useful for Late Antique studies? Moorhead, in his introduction to Gregory the Great, writes ‘the need to interpret the Bible allegorically, and the possibility that that something could have more than one meaning, allowed Gregory to see words as unstable in what they signified. Furthermore, Markus, in Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity, describes signs as ‘ambivalent’ and that ‘their meaning has to be struggled for.’ Both these two authors are using evidence for these points, Markus is using Augustine’s works, while Moorhead is using Gregory the Great’s. In the Late Antique conception, signs were seen as complicated and unstable. Naturally, we have to appreciate the fact that Augustine’s ideas vary from source to source and that Gregory never wrote a full treatise on semiotics, but it appears différance may have a historical basis when talking about Late Antiquity.

What are the implications of this? Well for one thing it means that the meaning of a text is never quite fully realised. The Bible, because of the ambivalently of its language, is open to different interpretations. Moorhead recognises this while discussing Gregory the Great, he writes ‘the deepest books are those which are most open to different readings and, in a sense, allow themselves to be perpetually remade as people read them in various ways’. He also adds ‘The Bible positively invites different kinds of interpretation, for it has a kind of flexibility which enables it to adjust itself to the capacities of its reader and grow with them’ This sounds a bit like Derridean Deconstruction- the Bible is not internally coherent and its contradictions can be exposed. Different readers have different readings. However, this only describes one sense of what Deconstruction actually is and not its other senses (the word, intentionally, is very hard to decipher).

The other meaning of Deconstruction, as explored in Of Grammatology, is that it attempts to reveal the that oppositions, like those of speech/writing and nature/society can be undermined. Historically, such binaries have dominated philosophical thinking. Moorhead, for example, comments ‘one of the key structures in Gregory’s thought is the distinction between the inward and the outward, and his invariable tendency to see the former as being the most important.’ It would appear initially that the Derridean examination of binaries does not apply to Gregory the Great. However, Straw, in Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, reveals that this sense of deconstruction is in fact applicable to how Gregory viewed the world. Straw’s approach is almost Derridean and the binary she examines in most depth is the spiritual/carnal one, which is of course very important for the phenomenological dimension of my dissertation. She writes, on this topic, ‘Gregory sees the carnal and spiritual realms as interrelated, as connected as endpoints of a continuum.’ Carnal signs also point to ‘the spiritual world beyond’ and ‘the visible world of flesh and blood and mere human experience reveals a variety of mysteries links with the transcedent, invisible world of the spirit’. However, one can go even further in making the link between Derrida and Straw. A large part Of Grammatology is dedicated to analysing the works of the philosopher Jean Jacques-Rosseau. Derrida looks at the binary of north/south in his work. Straw similarly attempts to examine north/south in the writings of Gregory the Great, she writes ‘the cold north wind is the raw numbness of the evil spirit, while the south wind warms and thaws the Holy Spirit.’ However, simultaneously the role of north/south and cold/warm is reversed, as Straw states that Gregory writes that one may burn with carnal desires and be cooled by holy thoughts. Thus, in Gregory’s thought, binaries such as the ones discussed can be examined, inverted and analysed.

To summarise, some of Derrida’s ideas seem to not only be present in the scholarship on Gregory the Great, but are also found in the evidence used by the discussed writers. What does this mean for how we should approach Late Antiquity? Well, for me, it proves modern theory can have a basis in the evidence. There does not need to be contradiction between the theoretical and the empirical. Now of course this post is only a brief elaboration of one of my thoughts while doing reading for my dissertation, but it opens up a whole new area of research. What else can Derridean theory do to change our understanding of Late Antiquity?

Bibliography

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.  Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press 1977.

de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. Translated by Wade Baskin.  New York City: McGraw-Hill Paperbacks, 1966.

Markus, Robert A. Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996.

Moorhead, John. Gregory the Great. Abingdon: Routledge, 2005.

Straw, Carole. Gregory The Great: Perfection in Imperfection. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

MA Dissertation Journal 2: Rereading Signs and Meanings, World and Text in Ancient Christianity

~ Liam Greenacre ~ Leave a comment

In 2019, I published an article on Markus’ Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity. Now I want revisit this collection of lectures in light of my dissertation, which is inspired by it. When writing my review, I had foresight of some of the issues that would occupy my thinking. For example, I mentioned Markus’ concept of ‘linguistic communities’ and the fact that he covers semiotics. I now want to expand my discussion of these issues, as well as cover his chapter on Gregory the Great, the most relevant to my dissertation

Lets begin however by reiterating the central thesis of this collection, that is how individuals read scripture influenced their worldview or how the way they ‘read’ the world. My work looks at this, but through a comparison with Paul Ricouer. If scripture influences how we interpret reality, then we need to look at if modern hermeneutical theories can be compared with historic ones, in order to understand whether they can be applied to the past. This forms the core of my dissertation. I am therefore heavily indebted to Markus for my project.

However, I now wish to comment on Markus’ treatment of Gregory. Compared to Augustine, Gregory gets very little space- only one chapter. However, Markus nevertheless has some interesting things to say. A sentence I raised in my review was as follows: ‘The complexity of Augustine’s world had collapsed into simplicity. Compared with Augustine, Gregory could take for granted the settled contours of his spiritual landscape.’ However, I would raise Gregory’s view of the world was far from simple. He read scripture in multiple senses, meaning he also read the world in multiple ways. His insistence on the importance of allegory would have also complicated this picture- he would have seen allegory all around him. Furthermore, we need to consider, admittedly as Markus mentions, the turmoil in Italy during the period he was alive. Markus writes ‘convinced of the crumbling away of the fabric of the material world around him, of the remnants of the Roman past, he was driven to look beyond’. Essentially, Markus is suggesting that Gregory distanced himself from the world of immediate experience (which was perhaps equivalent to the historical sense) to focus more on spirituality. But surely a spiritual reading of the world is more complicated than a sensory one? I would argue that Gregory’s view of the world was far from simple.

An interesting point raised in the chapter on Gregory is that ‘understanding a miracle is like reading a script and understanding its meaning’. This point of view has implications for my chapter on Gregory’s Dialogues. That book contains miracle stories and my study shall aim to understand how Gregory read these scripts of events and how he viewed the world in relationship to deciphering their meaning.

I now wish to comment on semiotics. I understated the importance of this topic in my review of Signs and Meanings , I now believe this topic to be crucial in linking text to world. Markus writes ‘signs are the most indispensable means of directing the mind’s attention to things, and that nothing, therefore, can be learnt without the use of signs’. Signs are present everywhere in the world, but they are also present in a text. Text and world both share the same system of signification, one uses words, the other uses all the senses. Yet how one person reads the world is vastly different to how another reads it. We need to consider the fact that the self (where the scriptural interpretative ideas reside) needs a connection to the world as well. Idhe, in Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, comments ‘man is language’. We therefore have three things connected, the self, text and world all by language. Semiotics plays a crucial role, in three layers, when we discuss how scripture influences worldviews.

I therefore want to propose the relationship between the world and the self is determined by their mutual linguisticality. Originally, I believed the answer lay in emotions. I thought this for two reasons. The first was due to William Reddy’s idea of emotives. He argues that emotional utterances automatically confirm the world outside of language through failing at representation- my belief was that this created a bridge to link the world and the self. Secondly, Markus, while commenting on Augustine, writes that love is the emotion that urges the mind to discover the meaning of a sign in reality. Therefore, mind and world are connected again by emotions. However, this position no longer seems tenable, it is now clear that language conditions on three fronts therefore uniting them, to an arguable extent, by their shared characteristics of reference.

This post has made me think long and hard about semiotics, the relationship between world and text, and at times I have went on a bit of a philosophical ramble. However, I believe that the purpose of these posts is to give me a way of developing ideas and showing them in the creation stage. Therefore, my answers need refining, but I hope so far you have been given insight into my thinking.

Strangely, emotions also get another mention in this post (I took an undergraduate course on emotions). Barbara Rosenwein introduced the concept of emotional communities to help understand Late Antiquity. However, Markus, writing before Rosenwein, already theorised the Late Antiquity consisted of linguistic communities that shared the same world of reference. I think communities are a useful concept, however we need to be careful when using them as an idea. How do we define their boundaries? What about the relationship between the self and others? How can we be sure that individuals were viewing things or objects the same way? This sounds like a radical scepticism, but I have few answers to these questions at this stage. What I would like to say is that if language conditions the self then surely a being’s mind has similar features to that of another being’s (which is also determined by language).

Markus argues that it is through signs we discover the shared world of reference. Yet people read the world in different ways. This is problematic. Again, I need more time to ruminate on this. I will hopefully be able to tell you my answers when I have finished my section on going beyond ‘Gregory’ with the ideas of my dissertation. Nevertheless, it is hoped this post has provided insight into my thoughts and the stimulating intellectual challenges I am facing as I discuss the relationship between hermeneutics and phenomenology.

Bibliography:

Idhe, Don. Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971

Markus, Robert A. Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996.

Reddy, William. “Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions.” Current Anthropology 38, no. 3 (1997): 327-51.

Rosenwein, Barbara. Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006.

MA Dissertation Journal #1: Introduction

~ Liam Greenacre ~ Leave a comment

I have decided to keep a dissertation journal for my MA thesis. I did one for my undergraduate dissertation on my old blog, but it seems fitting to do one for this blog, given its philosophical themes. This post, in particular, will introduce my ideas and reveal some of the questions I am interested in. This post is general and about big ideas, that inspire me, I will get down to the detail in later posts.

I picked up an Oxford World Classics’s edition of Aristotle’s psychological works, including ‘On The Soul’, the other day, from Waterstones. I mention this not because my dissertation will focus on Aristotle, though I may use some commentaries on him for later projects after my MA, but because it illuminates some of the questions I am interested in. After browsing through the book, I noticed some themes, such as perception and subject-object relations. In summary, the anthology has a number of chapters that focus on how the self relates to anything outside the self. My MA dissertation will focus on this relationship between the ego and what is outside.

However, my dissertation’s starting point has theological as well as philosophical undertones. You may remember in 2019 I reviewed Robert Markus’ Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity. This book examines hermeneutics, most notably Augustine’s and Gregory the Great’s, but its most interesting point is that the author’s scriptural views influenced how they interpreted the world. This forms one of the bases of my thesis, I want to examine how Late Antique hermeneutics affected one’s experience of the world. My dissertation therefore has a phenomenological dimension as well. I have chosen Gregory the Great’s Homilies on Ezekiel as my main primary source for this task of exploring how the self relates to what is outside. I decided on this because it covers a range of interesting themes, like prophecy and visions, which are sure to add an extra layer to the discussion surrounding interpretation. There was also a practical reason, I can do the Homilies on Ezekiel justice in 20,000 words and I could not have done this for the more famous and more studied Commentary on Job.

However, the Homilies on Ezekiel shall not form the only text I will study in my dissertation. One section of it will compare the writings of Gregory the Great to the continental philosopher Paul Ricoeur. I have chosen the latter writer because he takes a phenomenological approach to hermeneutics, which is kind of what Markus does without necessarily stating clearly stating it. There are other writers who hermeneutic phenomenologists, like Gadamer and Heidegger, but I chose Ricouer because he has written a lot on religion and scriptural interpretation. This would allow a more direct comparison with Gregory the Great. I was also advised to narrow down my focus.

There is a purpose to comparing Gregory and Ricoeur and it goes beyond identifying similarities or differences. I want to see if it is possible to build a meta-theory of interpreting Late Antique experience. Can modern insights, like those of Ricoeur, be applied to the past with a base in the evidence? I often think modern theories may not be the best tools for understanding the past. It is, in my opinion, better to seek out theories from the time period themselves then test modern theories against them. I believe doing this could lend great support to modern theories, especially if they are supported by evidence. This all makes me sound like an empiricist and I think I am. However, not in the narrow sense of looking for facts. I am empirical in the sense of wanting to understand how people came into contact the world- how they sensed it. There is no reason not to believe people in the past experienced the world differently to us in terms of how they perceived and indeed interpreted the world. My use of interpretation here may seem to go against my empiricism, but it does not. Interpretation and hermeneutics directly affect how we pick up the world.

Some, who have read my posts, may find it odd that I have declared myself as an empiricist. I have written on postmodernism quite a lot, such as Cillier’s synthesis of postmodernism and complexity theory or on postmodern theology. I believe postmodernism is not necessarily at odds with my empirical vision, if its theories can be grounded in comparative evidence. One of the main purposes of my dissertation is to establish this comparative approach between modern and historic theories. I believe this is pivotal if we are to understand the past. Critics would likely raise here that we do not necessarily always have the evidence for such comparisons. This is a question my dissertation will explore, given the fact we only have several hermeneutical texts by Gregory the Great. It is hoped my dissertation will contribute to an effort to see if such a vision of history, as I have declared, is practical.

You could be wondering at this point what have my ideas got to do with practical research. Well, that is why I am dedicating a chapter to applying the potentially developed meta-theory to Gregory the Great’s Dialogues. I want to consider how big questions affect practice. What happens if we apply this envisaged theory to a text? Gregory, may have experienced the world differently to us, so what happens when we apply the combined Late Antique and Modern theory to a source? Does it stand the test? How can we understand texts differently?

I have a lot of questions and ideas at this stage, as you can see, and these will likely be narrowed down. However, it is hoped this post has given some insights into my thinking at an early stage of my dissertation and also the philosophical questions I am interested in. With regards to future posts about my dissertation, they will likely have a more specific focus. I will discuss the different stages I am at and how research has reformulated my questions and answers. I may also do smaller posts containing interesting points that I have discovered or found out. Regardless, it is thrilling to be doing this project and I hope in the end it can provide some clarity on my big questions.

Bibliography:

Primary Sources

Aristotle, On the Soul translated by Fred D. Miller Jr in Aristolle: On the Soul and Other Psychological Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Gregory the Great, Dialogues translated by Edmund G. Gardener in The Dialogues of St Gregory the Great. Merchantville: Evolution Publishing and Manufacturing, 2010.

Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel translated by Theodosia Tomkinson in Homilies on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. Perrysville: Centre for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2010.

Secondary Sources

Caputo, John. What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernity For The Church. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.

Cilliers, Paul. Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. London: Routledge, 1998.

Markus, Robert A. Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996.