Cross-cultural encounters reveal that one’s own life-world is not beyond question

Evidence

Husserl did not look for such a simple lost world. When he wrote about history, he was drawn to more sophisticated periods, especially those when cultures were encountering each other through travel, migration, exploration or trade. At such periods, he wrote, people living in one culture or ‘home-world’ (Heimwelt) meet people from an ‘alien-world’ (Fremdwelt). To those others, theirs is the home-world and the other is the alien-world. The shock of encounter is mutual, and it wakes each culture up to an amazing discovery: that their world is not beyond question. A travelling Greek discovers that the Greek life-world is just a Greek world, and that there are Indian and African worlds too. In seeing this, members of each culture may come to understand that they are, in general, ‘worlded’ beings, who should not take anything for granted. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 428

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Husserl’s key technical terms Heimwelt (home-world) and Fremdwelt (alien-world), and the idea that cultures are ‘worlded’ beings.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s prior interest in standpoint theory and how perspective shapes knowledge (from Feminist standpoint theory mentions in their library). — connects to: Encountering another culture can dissolve one’s own sense of meaning — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 14; Estrangement from one’s own culture enables genuine judgment of it and others; Senses themselves have a history and differ across lifeworlds. (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Encountering another culture can dissolve one’s own sense of meaning #expands (0.92) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 14
• Estrangement from one’s own culture enables genuine judgment of it and others #expands (0.85)
• Everyday interaction rests on unproblematic, taken-for-granted world-certainty #complicates (0.85)
• Cultural premises determine whether a stranger is even seen as human. #exemplifies (0.78) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 49
• Senses themselves have a history and differ across lifeworlds. #exemplifies (0.75)