Phenomenological Exploration of Cultural Difference

How phenomenology deals with the problematic of cultural difference?The present paper explores this question in the frameworks of Edmund Husserl(1859-1938)and Alfred Schutz(1899-1959).Husserl dealt with the problem of cultural difference and cultivated the position of cultural universalism in his phenomenological thinking.He insisted on the idea of universalism that originates in ancient Greek and he demonstrated this idea of universalism through the discourse of the life-world.Even though Husserl does not focus on the issue of cultural difference,yet his notion of appresentation is useful to explicate this issue.Schutz also handled the problematic of cultural difference with help of appresentation,though in implicit manner.Aiming at an exploration of cultural difference on the track of both Husserl and Schutz,the present paper concludes that the concept of appresentation proves to be crucially relevant in this respect.

Husserl's Intercultural Implication of Ethical Renewal and Theoretical Rationality:A Reappraisal from an East Asian Perspective

In the Kaizo articles,written between 1922 and 1924,Husserl touched on the intercultural relationship between"the European"and"the non-European."Husserl addressed Japan as he dealt with ethical and cultural renewal in his Kaizo articles.Husserl wished to spread the European spiritual gestalt,which he comprehended as a universal theoretical rationality to remote cultures.At that time,Husserl imagined China as unfamiliar and remote.He even used China as a typical example of alienworld when he dealt with the problem of cultural difference.This paper reappraises Husserl's thesis by exploring Eurocentrism as a factor that might impede the willingness for non-Western or non-European cultures to accept the idea of European spiritual gestalt.This paper suggests that the non-Western or non-European cultures should take delight in learning from Europe and carry out what Husserl had in mind about the meaning of"renewal."