Philippine E-Journals

Phenomenological Reflections on the Conditions of Cultural and Ideological Encounters and Conflicts

Rosemary R.p. Lerner

Discipline: International Relations, Cultural and Ethnic Studies

 

Abstract:

This paper was mostly motivated by Peru’s intense social and economic problems that exploded in an internal armed conflict of exceeding violence, from 1980 to 2000. The author uses the experience within her country as an exemplification of more global cultural and ideological antagonisms among countries, regions or hemispheres, and to ask whether an encounter beyond cultural differences and reconciliation beyond ideologically motivated antagonisms is at all possible, and upon which bases. Husserl left descriptions that indicate how “plurality” and difference dwell within the most intimate core of one’s “oneness” and “identity”, offering clues as to how we are able to conceive and build “common worlds”, “common truths” and even “objective truth”. The author finally confronts these transcendental-phenomenological accounts with some elements of certain Amazonian ethnic groups’ world-view, which may seem totally “incompossible” with the Western view that finally nourishes some of Husserl’s basic notions.