Page 41 - Contribution To Phenomenology

34 LESTER EMBREE

reflective actions, which is to say actions that bear not only upon ways
in which to relate to the world but also upon how the world is as related
to; either way, the course of events is affected. Can an attempt to show
what the species of cultural disciplines have in common as well as how
they are differentiated serve to foster those disciplines? Can a clariflcation
of the background for their convergencies enhance the efforts of
phenomenologists of the cultural disciplines? It will remain to be seen (or
evidenced) whether a literary action of editing and introducing a volume
of essays chiefly from a conference can fulflll practical purposes with
either or both of these effects.

V. The Existence of the Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines

The chapters in this volume as well as other efforts by the same and
other authors show that philosophical reflection of a phenomenological
sort with respect to the cultural world or cultural life exists. Some
examination of the forms of that reflection is in order. While the above
characterizations of what it is to be phenomenological and to be
philosophical can be left for others to examine, one can still ask about
the background concern, the obliqueness of the approach, the relevance
of the proposed tri-specification of the cultural disciplines, and whether
or not the requisite mutual awareness and sophisticated preparation has
been attained such that a philosophical discipline must be recognized.
There is a general concern with the cultural among upwards of a
score of creative phenomenologists. Besides the chapters below, some of
the many "cultural issues," as they may be called, that arose in the
round-table session at the research symposium may be mentioned to show
the richness of the region that the cultural disciplines and their philo-
sophy address. (The symposium was held in May 1992, when ethnicaUy
charged conflicts had recently occurred in Los Angeles and in the former
Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, South Africa, in Southwest, South,
and Southeast Asia, and elsewhere.) Firstly, there are questions about the
ethnic identities of individuals and whether there are non-ethnic
individuals, as some in the United States curiously believe the so-called
W.A.S.P.S, i.e., the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, to be. Are racial
differences not more adequately and thus properly considered ethnic
differences? The same question can be asked regarding the gender and
also the class identities of individuals. In such respects, the need to