The Pragmatic Theory of the Life-World as a Basis for Intercultural Comparisons

Abstract

This contribution examines how far the concept of life-form can be used for intercultural understanding and comparisons. It agues that life-forms must be understood as a synthesis of forms of speech, action and thought whose basic structures can be disclosed by the means of Schutzian theory of the life-world. It is shown that the Schutzian approach, stressing the innerwordly transcendence of multiple realities on the one hand and the necessity to bridge that transcendence by semiotic systems and communication on the other, always respects the authentic strangeness of others and of their life-forms without giving up the possibility of understanding and therefore can avoid ethnocentrism and “westernization” of foreign cultures. Therefore it can be used to generate a comparative meta-language which is based in the structures of life-world. In accordance to the Schutzian perspective, the paper develops some basic items of such meta-language and shows that they can be used to synthesize the relevant results of social and cultural sciences and thus to bridge the controversial positions in the present discourse on intercultural comparison.