LIFEWORLD AND THE POSSIBILITY OF

Husserl’s theory of the lifeworld undermines the above-mentioned belief. According to this doctrine, the world of science is not the final one. It is founded on the lifeworld in which we live. The lifeworld is prior to the world of science in three senses. First, the lifeworld is prior historically, both in human history in general and in the development of the individual. Further, the lifeworld is universally given, whereas the world of science is not: not all cultures or persons have the natural world as described by modern science. In contrast, every culture has its own lifeworld and possesses its own everyday, practical experiences of all things. This is the case as much for societies with modern science as for those without it.1 The third and much stronger sense of priority which Husserl attributes to the lifeworld is priority in the order of Seinsgeltung. That is, he argues that the world as posited and described by the sciences is a high-order construction attained by abstraction, idealization, and (in the case of the natural sciences) induction from the concrete intuitive bases provided by the lifeworld. Thus, if there were no lifeworld with Evidenz-grounded existential validity for us, then neither could the world of science have existential validity and so "be" for us: the abstract or theoretical entities of the sciences could not be thought and given in intentional acts. Therefore, the lifeworld is the foundation of the world of science.

However, the lifeworld is not merely a sensible world, but a full-fledged cultural-historical world. It contains all the sedimentation of past cultural-historical and ideal activities, and hence varies more or less dramatically from one culture and period to another. For this reason, there cannot be a common lifeworld, but plural and different lifeworlds, each intentionally referenced ("relativized") to a special intersubjective community as the group for which this world is "there". This means that different peoples have different lifeworlds. Statements of this position are found even in Husserl’s major published works,2 but in his personal manuscripts the plurality of concrete lifeworld is asserted repeatedly in the clearest and most unambiguous terms. For example, in manuscript A V9 of 1927 entitled "Umwelt und `Wahre’ Welt", Husserl writes:

Thus for the Zulu, the things we know and experience as sciences, scientific works and literature, are simply not there as books, journals, etc., although the books are there for the Zulu as things, and possibly as things imbued with this or that magical property; that is, with interpretations which in turn are not there for us. If we take what presents itself in the subjective consensus (subjektiv-einstimmig) of experience, or in the consensus of experience nationally or socially in the historical community, if we take this to belong to the concrete world of experience of this human community, then we must say: every such human community has a different concrete world.3

"We do not share the same lifeworld with all human beings. Not all humans `on the face of the earth’ have in common with us all the objects which constitute our lifeworld and determine our personal acting and striving, even when these persons come into actual contact with us, as they can at any time. . . . Objects which are there for us — although admittedly in changing, now harmonious, now conflicting apprehensions — are not there for them, and this means, the others have no apprehensions, no experience at all of them as these objects. This is the case even when they see them, and as we say, see these same objects of ours. . . . If we add a Bantu to this human community, then it is clear that faced with any of our works of art, he does see a thing, but not the object of our surrounding world, the art work. He has no opinion, no apprehension of it — as this object, the art work — that is in `our’ world as the David of Michelangelo with the `objective’ determinations belonging to this work."4

Similarly, I cannot see why I must perceive the world as constituted of monads while I understand what the monad means in Leibniz’s philosophy. Given Husserl’s theory of the lifeworld, it should be that intercultural understanding is possible in an authentic sense, if it means to understand the other cultures as the Other; otherwise it is impossible, because we cannot transcend our lifeworld or remove its constraints upon our understanding. Even if the lifeworld is the horizon against which all things stand out and without which they could not appear to us,5 the "fusion of horizons" should be limited. After all, there is no common lifeworld, and the difference between lifeworlds cannot be eliminated. In fact, Husserl is aware of this and recognizes that the lifeworld is itself relative. He writes in the Crisis:

[The lifeworld] is the spatio-temporal world of things as we experience them in our pre- and extra- scientific life and as we know them to be experien-ced. . . . Things: that is, stones, animals, plants, even human beings and human products; but here everything is subject-relative (subjektiv-relativ), even though normally in our experience and in the social group united with us in the community of life, we arrive at ‘secure’ facts’. . . . But when we are thrown into an alien social sphere, that of the Negroes in the Congo, Chinese peasants, etc., we discover that their truths, the facts that are for them fixed, generally verified or verifiable, are by no means the same as ours.6

The embarrassment of the relativity of the lifeworld disappears as soon as we consider that the lifeworld does have, in all its relative features, a general structure. This general structure, to which everything that exists relatively is bound, is not itself relative.7

Indeed, the natural sciences presuppose that despite cultural-historical differences there is basically a single normal human experience of the spatio-temporal realm of sensible bodies. Thus the empirical verifications carried out by a member of a particular lifeworld could in principle be carried out by a member of any lifeworld, and the judgments of natural science are (at least potentially) of universal intersubjectivity. Similarly, the mathematician and the logician presuppose that the concepts employed in their judgments are universally accessible, and that the judgments themselves can be re-enacted again and again, in any historical period or cultural context — and always with exactly the same meaning and always attaining the same Evidenz. But if mathematical and logical concepts are themselves formed by abstraction from and idealization of the concrete intuitive objects of the lifeworld, then the assertion of the universal intersubjectivity of mathematics and logic also presupposes that there is a common structure running through all lifeworlds.8

Nevertheless, ironically, the position is valid only under the condition that the world of science is given, not constructed, that is, it is the primordial world. But that would contradict Husserl’s doctrine of the lifeworld, since a common character of logic, mathematics or natural sciences is their constructiveness. In the final analysis, they are something like the rules of a game which are accepted universally. That is why their judgments are intersubjectively valid, unless we can verify that there is only one world and that natural sciences are the mirror of it. And, as David Carr argues, the plausibility of the claim that a universal structure actually exists is seriously undermined once we realize that the lifeworld includes not only things and persons, but also the sedimentation of historically contingent philosophies, religions, sciences, and other cultural formations. These penetrate so deeply into our way of apprehending reality that not only the content, but also the very structure of experience is affected. Thus even at the most basic levels of sensible perception, lifeworlds may differ fundamentally depending upon the theories and interpretations prevalent in them. "It becomes harder and harder to distinguish between the world as experienced and the world as interpreted by this or that theory. The theory has become part of our way of experiencing."9 In fact, there are different spatio-temporal concepts relative to different cultures and different historical periods.

Furthermore, Husserl’s presupposition of a common structure of lifeworlds suggests that he would not allow for a complete incommensurability of lifeworlds. In the final analysis, however, Husserl’s justification of the common structure depends upon the solipsistic tendencies of his phenomenology, according to which the transcendental self is primary. On the one hand, for Husserl the world is a "universal mental acquisition . . . , having developed and at the same time continuing to develop as the unity of a mental configuration". As such it is a sense formation of a universal, ultimately functioning subjectivity.10 On the other hand, even where the Other disagrees with me, this disagreement itself and its ground must be capable of being given to me as a phenomenon. In the final analysis, the Other is constituted by me. Although it permits the Other to remain the Other, I constitute the Other after the I as the transcendental ego. It is I that bestows the sense of the Other’s being. Husserl’s justification for according the primacy to the self follows from the principle of all principles: my own intentional life is immediately given, whereas the intentional life of the Other is appresented on the basis of my own. One of the guiding aims of the crisis thematic is to elucidate phenomenologically the lifeworld itself on the basis of the original sense-bestowals of transcendental subjectivity. Thus the commensurability of lifeworlds is actually founded on a subjective structure, not a universal or intersubjective one. It follows that for Husserl the intercultural understanding could only be to understand the Other as the Same, not as the Other. The general structure by various lifeworlds in reality can only be a subjective one of a certain lifeworld.

In the face of a rising tide of irrationalism and nationalism, both political and philosophical, Husserl appeals for rationalism and "Europeanism" in his writings during the 1930’s. According to Husserl, the crucial feature which distinguishes "European" rationality from the more natural-pragmatic rationality of other cultures (including those he classes as "quasi-philosophical", such as the Indian and the Chinese) is its goal-idea of absolute truth, i.e. truth which is the same for everyone and for all times, and ultimately grounded.11 Thus the culturally imperialist-sounding rhetoric of the Crisis suggests that Husserl’s attempt to place Europe "as a spiritual shape" at the telos of human civilization is in reality to claim the universality of European culture. Given this aim, the construction of the general structure shared by different lifeworlds is necessary theoretically for Husserl, but it can never be justified if we insist on the original difference and plurality of lifeworlds. It seems quite obvious that often, and with good will, we look for a sameness or likeness in our encounter with other cultures and with persons from those other cultures -- but a sameness that, in actuality, tends to assimilate the Other to oneself. If the intercultural understanding is to look for the sameness, what is its necessity and significance for us? It would be meaningless to discuss the possibility of this kind of intercultural understanding, because it would be absolutely possible anyway, but its necessity and legitimacy would be in question. Given the incommensurability of concrete lifeworlds, real intercultural understanding is possible only when we understand the Other as the Other, not as the Same. Yet if we, like Husserl, presuppose a common structure running through all lifeworlds which consists in the fact that the transcendental ego, this null-point of subjectivity, must justify all "objective" validity, it is impossible for us to understand the Other as the Other. We necessarily reduce the Other to the I of the Same. By contrast, acknowledging the radical alterity of the Other does not mean that there is no way of understanding the Other. Incommensurable languages and traditions are not to be thought of as self-contained windowless monads that share nothing in common. Our linguistic horizons are always open. This is what makes possible intercultural understanding, and sometimes even a "fusion of horizons" possible.

CONCLUSION