Abstract
In this contribution I will analyze the specific experience of the foreignness of a foreign culture. I attempt to understand in which way I can experience things, actions and convictions in a foreign world “as foreign.” But before we can answer this question, we have to know how the cultural sense of things is constituted in our own home-world. Thus we have to know how in our own home-world this cultural sense is familiar and known-in-advance, how it is acquired and how it is fulfilled. With this knowledge we are able to understand how and to what extent the cultural sense shows itself in a foreign world. In this respect what is most interesting is how the cultural sense shows itself as being-hidden-to-us. A hermeneutics of the cultural sense has to make clear how in the experience of foreignness this sense can show itself as precisely evading my understanding.
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Notes
Both concepts are introduced in Husseri’s Manuscripts of 1931/32, which are found in Husserliana vol. XV. All references to Husseri’s works refer to the critical Edition of Husseri’s Works in the Husserliana. I mention some important articles for my theme: K. Held, “Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eine Welt, ” Phän. Forschungen 24/25 (1991), 305–337,
and K. Held, “Husserls These von der Europäisierung der Menschheit, ” Phänomenologie im Widerstreit, ed. Chr. Jamme and O. Pöggeler (Frankfurt, 1989), 13–39.
Cf. also the contributions of B. Waldenfels, “Erfahrung des Fremden in Husserls Phänomenologie,“ Phän. Forschungen 22 (1989), 39–62
and L. Landgrebe, “Welt als phänomenologisches Problem, ” Der Weg der Phänomenologie (Gütersloh, 1978), 50. In Hua XV we can find other concepts of the world: nearworld (Nahwelt, Hua XV, 428), world of experience (Erfahrungswelt, Hua XV, 196, 217, 229 ff.), personal world (personale Welt, Hua XV, 142), cultural world (Kulturwelt, Hua XV, 142, 205, 214), life-world (Lebenswelt, Hua XV, 197, 205, 215, 411), surrounding life-world (Lebensumwelt, Hua XV, 215, 232), every-day-world (Alltagswelt, Hua XV, 411).
Cf. Hua XV, 205, 221, 428 ff., 627 f
On the concept of oriented constitution cf. Husseri’s investigations on the constitution of other persons in my primordial sphere in the Cartesian Meditations (Hua I, §§ 42–62) and the observations of K. Held in: “Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eine Welt, ” and E. Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin, 1970), 224 ff.
Cf. M. Merleau-Ponty, “Von Levi-Strauss zu Marcel Mauss, ” Leibhaftige Vernunft, ed. B. Waldenfels and A. Metraux (München: Fink Verlag, 1986), 20.
In German “das Eigene” is, in this context, a substantiation of the elements of culture which are particular to our home-world. For this expression I choose “that which is our own” as equivalent.
Cf. B. Waldenfels, “Verschränkung von Heimwelt und Fremdwelt, ” Philosophische Grundlagen der Interkulturalität, ed. Mall/Lohmar (Amsterdam, 1993), 51–56,
R. A. Mall, Philosophie im Vergleich der Kulturen (Darmstadt, 1995), 39–54, J. N. Mohanty, “Den anderen verstehen, ” Philosophische Grundlagen der Interkulturalität, 121.
Cf. B. Waldenfels, “Verschränkung von Heimwelt und Fremdwelt, ” Philosophische Grundlagen der Interkulturalität, ed. Mall/Lohmar (Amsterdam, 1993), 59.
Cf. K. Held, “Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eine Welt, ” ibid. 309.
Husserl understands this cultural education as a presupposition for understanding foreign cultures: “As I was educated as a child into my generative human world, if I am trying to understand the Chinese and the Chinese world, I had to be educated into this world. Living in it, I had to learn the apperceptions of this foreign world, how and in so far as it is possible ...” (Ms. A VII 9, Transkr. p. 15). Sometimes Husserl compares this process of learning the cultural sense with education in the sense of a re-education (Selbstumbildung, cf. Hua XXVII, 163).
In so far as Husserl disregards the role of language in communication in this analysis, we might understand the hermeneutical situation as the situation of an anthropologist facing a completely unknown tribe. This is a very informative hermeneutical situation but we cannot reduce Husserl’s question to it. He tries to analyse a principal hermeneutical difficulty and is not interested in this concrete problem.
Cf. M. Merleau-Ponty, “De Mauss a Claude Lévi-Strauss, ” Signes (Paris 1960), 151.
Concerning Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of a “région sauvage” cf. also the article of L. Tengelyi, “Das Eigene, das Fremde und das Wilde. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität und der Interkulturalität, ”Mesotes 4 (1994), 423–432.
Cf. B. Waidenfels, “Verschränkung von Heimwelt und Fremdwelt, ” 62 and “Der Andere und der Dritte, ” Ethik und Politik aus interkultureller Sicht, ed. R. A. Mall / N. Schneider (Amsterdam, 1996), 79.
Cf. also the hints of E. Schütz “Über Verstehen und Verständigtsein, ” Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik 57 (1981), 386–399.
This analogous apperception could be compared in some—but not in all—respects with Husserl’s solution to the problem of the other person in his Cartesian Meditations. But at this moment I cannot treat the breaches of and difficulties with this complicated analogy.
Cf. E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg, 1972), 34 f.
In the typical apperception the sensations of different fields of sensation are brought in a synthetic connection and this connection allows me to perceive the sensuously given thing. Perception demands a carefully aimed selection and coordination of different fields of sensation. The empirical type (“Typus”) of things guides this synthetical activity, which yields the perceived thing. If I perceive something which stands out against the background and I perceive it “as something, ” then a typical but movable expectation of the whole of this thing arises which delineates the expected sensations which will present this thing. Therefore the familiarity in which an unknown thing is apperceived is, at least in one sense, literary, because the patterns of typical apperception arise out of former experiences. The details which I expect typically are to be understood as “modifications of similarity” of concrete, individual, already known things. In an other respect the expectations of the typical apperception are very common. If I see a cow, then I expect its characteristic way of moving without knowing where it will move. I expect it to moo without knowing whether it will be loud or quiet. All these expectations lie within the realm of the typical expectation.
Cf. B. Waldenfels “Fremderfahrung zwischen Aneignung und Enteignung, ” Der Stachel des Fremden (Frankfurt, 1990), 57–79 and also Waidenfels “Erfahrung des Fremden in Husserls Phänomenologie, ” Phänomenologische Forschungen 22 (1989), 39–62.
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Lohmar, D. (1998). The Foreignness of a Foreign Culture. In: Zahavi, D. (eds) Self-Awareness, Temporality, and Alterity. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 34. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9078-5_12
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