Page 156 - Contribution To Phenomenology

CULTURAL LOGICS AND NATIONAL IDENTITIES 149

concept of modernization will have to be treated with care, since in some
cultural contexts it may assume a symbolic significance that differs from
its own enlightened purposes and rationality.
Given these concerns, it is possible to trace a transcendental logic for
an eidetic articulation of broader symbolic designs of awareness within
whose complex contexts one could make sense of the searches either for
national or ethnic identity, and their relationships to modernization and
even globalization. The best method for this venture is the epoche of the
human sciences; it allows for an identification of invariants, their
relationships, and their presence in various contexts of symbolic design.^
In addition, it falls within the parameters of the epoche that if a
particular explanatory thesis is offered, it will be treated equally as an
aspect of a symbolic design of awareness.

I. Logics of Cultural Awareness

There is a tendency among scholars of cultural awareness to offer an
encompassing, yet radically "clean'' models of symbolic design. Such
models range from binary all the way to quaternary structures. Sorokin's
research presents an example of the binary type that separates cultural
awareness into two major dimensions: ideational and sensate, each
assuming different variations within cultural parameters, such as idealism
vs. empiricism in the modern West and pure transcendence vs. polluting
rescendence in Hinduism. Nonetheless, for him the Oriental awareness is
basically ideational, although the Confucian mode of awareness allowed
for mixtures. The same is the case with Islam, apart from a couple of
periods that allowed the sensate awareness to have its say.^ The
ideational emphasis is a hindrance to dynamic tensions and resultantly to
modernization. The West, in contrast, is deemed to be dynamic owing to
a constant shift between the ideational and sensate awareness. The shifts
are regarded sequentially; as soon as one modality of consciousness is

^ T. Seebohm, "Die Begrundung der Hermeneutik Diltheys in Husserls Transzen-
dentaler Phaenomenologie," mDiltheyund die Philosophic derGegenwart, edited by E. W.
Orth, (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 1985), 98.
^ Pitrim A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (New York: American Book
Company, 1937), Vol. I & II.