Abstract

In everyday life, we find ourselves in the midst of an already meaningful world; "world" is taken for granted as the total domain of objective being in which we as human beings are situated, and to which the whole of our experience is directed. In ordinary experience, our awareness of the world as such goes largely unquestioned; for philosophical reflection, however, this mundane grasp of "world" invites analysis. If the meaning of "world" is "clear" in daily life, then it is less than clear, upon reflection, how its meaning is attained. How is the world given to experience as a unified theme of experience? The world is not experienced as an object among objects, but as the total domain of objects; how is the meaning of "world" derived from our experience of objects? How are objects given to experience in such a way that, immediately and unreflectively, we grasp them as objects in the world? And how is our grasp of objects, as "worldly," fundamental to any theoretically refined conception of objectivity? Theoretical science advances its own conception of the world as a domain of exact objectivity; how is this strict conception of "world" related to our sense of the world as it is experienced in ordinary life, as a world of inexact appearance? ;Taking a phenomenological approach, based in the work of Edmund Husserl, I attempt to frame these questions of "world." I seek to clarify the way in which "world" is given to experience as a unified theme, and I try to show how awareness of "world" as such is fundamental to any understanding of objective being. The world experienced in daily life exhibits its own "style" of objectivity, an objective structure native to it as it is given to experience. Elucidating the structure of the life-world, I suggest that our tacit familiarity with its features serves as the point of origin for any more specialized, scientific interpretation of the world. I examine the way in which scientific theorization tends to obscure the meaning of the life-world as the fundamental ground of all interpretations. Philosophical reflection, with regard to scientific theory and praxis, must recover the meaning of the life-world as such, as the original and originary ground of all human enterprises, including science itself.