|
Article Excerpt
Abstract
An existential-dialectical-phenomenological approach is applied to the understanding of the universal tensions between multicultural and transcultural value-laden modalities of existence. Differences in cultural comportments are described as variations in local human ways in dealing with universal and bipolar existential modalities, values, or needs, such as freedom versus limitation, independence versus (inter)dependence, and connectedness versus separateness. Cultures are described as being organized around and as providing their members with ways of dealing with these value-laden dialectical dilemmas. Cultures are further depicted as legitimating one dialectical pole to the detriment of the other dialectical pole. Some cultures, for example, legitimate the dialectical poles of freedom, independence, and separateness, while deemphasizing or denying the dialectical poles of limitation, (inter)dependence, and connectedness. Other cultures legitimate the opposite. These one-sided value orientations of cultures are referred to as cultural tilts. The implications for the practice of multicultural counseling and phenomenologically-based qualitative research are delineated.
Keywords
phenomenology, culture
Dialectics, Phenomenology, and Culture
Edmund Husserl, the founding father of phenomenology, understood culture as a dynamic, intersubjectively constructed and objectified way of life that is collectively experienced by a people from generation to generation. For Husserl, culture is embodied, among other things, in the sensible and spiritual dimensions of living. Our consciousness, which operates dialectically, is culture-laden. Our perceptions are laden with our cultural values (including our ideals) and disvalues. We constitute and are constituted by our culture. Many of the things we value and disvalue, like or dislike, deem good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly are culturally constituted. Our cultural inheritance, however, can be a blessing and a burden. It can be a source of strength and blinding rigidity. As humans who are existentially open to possibilities and alert to the call of our potentialities and as individuals who are condemned to belong to at least one culture, although in all likelihood we are all multicultural through and through, it is our individual and collective responsibility to contribute to the betterment of our cultural heritage by increasing our cultural blessings and decreasing our cultural burdens.
In his "Study of Religion in Husserl's Writings," the Husserlian scholar James G. Hart (1994) states:
Husserl thinks of culture properly as the intersubjective constitution of idealities in sensible materials which have an abiding validity and which shape a people. He claimed also that it is the way the active life of a people objectifies itself. Objectification is not merely self-expression but also an externalization in sensibility and physical substrates of the spiritual life of the people, the meaning of which is able to be experienced by subsequent generations. Such an experiencing of culture may be an occasion for ever renewable spiritual strength or a source of distractions and burdens. (p. 265; my emphasis)
Based on his in-depth analysis of Husserl's work, Hart states that for Husserl what distinguishes us humans from animals is that we not only have instincts, but we also have norms and that this consciousness of norms permeates all our conscious acts so that everything we experience we experience as right or wrong, beautiful (lovely) or ugly, meaningful or meaningless (pointless), suitable or unsuitable. Three things need to be noted here. First, "the lower level of mythic culture is somewhere between norms and mere instinct" (Hart, 1994, p. 268). From this we can surmise that "the development of norms and the development of religion [or culture] are interwoven" (p. 268); my insertion). In other words, the development of our consciousness of norms goes hand in hand with the development or refinement of our culture. Second, according to Hart, in Husserl's theory, values are mirrored in objectifying acts. These objectifying acts are "presentations of things in the world, [which] themselves are inseparable from the apperceptions of ... culture" (p. 275). From a phenomenological perspective, consciousness is always consciousness of something. We realize that this something is already and always permeated, to a certain degree, by culture or, to be more precise, by cultural norms. Our "basic perceptions of things are qualified with values, but these, i.e., the esteemed things or events, in turn are interwoven into ... mythic [cultural] ... representations" (p. 275). Third, for Husserl, consciousness operates dialectically. Take rationality and irrationality, for instance. For Husserl, "the rational depends upon the irrational and ... the rational requires a kind of irrationality for its sustenance" (Hart, 1994, p. 286). Our susceptibility to the irrationalities of everyday life and the accidents of fate challenge our rational life. Hart comments that it was "increasingly evident to Husserl that these forms of 'irrationality' were essential, perhaps dialectical features of the meaning of rationality" (p. 288; my emphasis). For Husserl, our belief in ideals and our adoption of grand metaphors or worldviews, and our religious beliefs are, in a sense, irrational because they are not grounded in original intuitive evidence. Instead of evidence, our human desire and faith are given priority. Humans can be rational to the point of irrationality. "That is to say, reason itself can seem to be madness, caprice, or absurdity" (p. 289). "In these respects, rationality and irrationality are contrast concepts" (p. 288). Though contrasting, they are functionally related phenomena that require each other.
A Dialectical Approach to Understanding Culture, Multiculturalism, and Transculturalism
Dialectics refers to the art of dialogical discussion and the...
|
