Page 8 - Contribution To Phenomenology

Introduction

Reflection on the

Cultural Disciplines

Lester Embree
Florida Atlantic University

Abstract: The generic concept of cultural discipline and the specific
concepts of theoretical, practical, and axiotic disciplines are clarified
and the attempt made to show how such disciplines can be and are
already related to in philosophy that is phenomenologicaL

There has been philosophical examination of combinations of human
practices ever since, while defending his life, Socrates engaged in the
critical comparison of politics, poetry, craftsmanship, and philosophy. The
proliferation of combinations of practices in the millennia since has been
great, although the philosophical coverage may not always have been as
comprehensive. The present reflection as well as this volume (and also
the research symposium from which this volume has been developed)
originated when the present writer came to doubt the adequacy of the
widely accepted expression "human science(s)" and came to recognize
that there is a number of phenomenological efforts currently underway,
his own included, that reflect on one or another "cultural discipline" and
might benefit from an attempt at some eidetic clarification.
The following exposition is arranged in relation to five questions:
(1) What is a "discipline"? (2) When can a discipline best be deemed
"cultural"? (3) What sorts of cultural disciplines are there? (4) When is
philosophical reflection on an individual, a species, or the genus of
cultural discipline "phenomenological"? and (5) Does the phenomeno-
logy of the cultural disciplines exist?

M. Daniel and L Embree (eds.), Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines, 1-37.
© 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.