EDITORIAL PREFACE

Author(s): Tadashi Ogawa and Barry Smith

Source: The Monist, Vol. 78, No. 1, Cultural Universals (JANUARY 1995), pp. 3-4
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27903413
Accessed: 28-06-2016 17:06 UTC

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 EDITORIAL PREFACE

Today, at the close of the twentieth century, we are confronted by radical

changes in the nature of intercultural relations. Those who in previous centuries
were unable to venture far from their native villages are today able to visit foreign
lands as a matter of course, not only as tourists but also for reasons of commerce
or employment. A high degree of intercultural understanding is manifested
thereby. But at the same time there arise cultural conflicts and friction. How is
that sort of understanding which transcends cultural frontiers possible at all? And
what is the root of the different sorts of failure to achieve intercultural communi
cation? These are pressing problems by which mankind as a whole is confronted,
and they are problems which philosophers, too, are called upon to face.
The different cultures are, by degrees, becoming ever more closely interwo
ven with each other, giving rise to conditions under which the problem of
intercultural understanding has become decisive, first of all for the well-being of
multicultural societies, but then also for the future existence of our species as a
whole. This insight has penetrated everywhere into contemporary society, as we
recognize, to use Husserl's formulation, that we all have to survive on a single
and sole ark, the earth.
Humanity is divided into peoples and cultures who differ among themselves.
How can they coexist in this single world? Do the different cultures presuppose
in their multiplicity a single humanity as a basis of cultural universals? These
questions have forced philosophers and others to rethink the underlying problems
of translation and intercultural communication. Beginnings of solutions to these
problems are to be found not least in the work of Husserl and Heidegger. As No?
points out in his paper below, there are passages in Husserl's last works where he
seems to come close to defending racist views in his conception of European
reason as the teleology of universal human reason as a whole. Superficial mis
readings of Husserl's Crisis drawing on these passages have indeed been
defended by Derrida and his epigones. Careful readings suggest, however, that
Husserl's project should be conceived along the lines of what we might think of
as a "methodological Eurocentrism," parallel to the "egocentrist" project of his
earlier writings. The later Heidegger, for his part, concerned himself especially
with the problem of the tension between the idea of a single "planetary society"

"Editorial Preface" by Tadashi Ogawa & Barry Smith,

The Monist, vol. 78, no. 1, pp. 3-4. Copyright ? 1995, THE MONIST, La Salle, Illinois 61301.

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4 TADASHI OGAWA & BARRY SMITH

held together by technology and what we each of us think of as our "heimatlich

er Boden" or "native soil."
The contribution by Klaus Held, in what follows, offers an account of inter
cultural understanding that is indebted to this phenomenological tradition. That of
Leonard Talmy, at what is in some respects the opposite end of the methodolog
ical spectrum, offers an account of the same matters from the point of view of
contemporary cognitive science, conceiving cultural universals and the possibil
ity of intercultural communication as rooted in certain highly specialized struc
tures in the human brain. The other contributors fall methodologically between
these two extremes. All confront in different ways the question of cultural and lin
guistic relativism, a question controversial also amongst anthropologists and
familiar to philosophers of science under the heading of "incommensurability."
The present collection offers a range of different possible solutions to the
problem of cultural universals. The great diversity in expressions of human cre
ativity are here tackled with a diversity of different theoretical orientations, and
the fact that the different authors, too, derive from a variety of eastern and
western cultures contributes to the breadth of the spectrum of material that is here
offered for discussion.

Tadashi Ogawa
Barry Smith

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