Dasein - Monoskop

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PART III
stresses the role of certain actions and interests as universal features
of all life-worlds. It is thus claimed that we understand others, that
is, actions of others, in analogy to our own actions, and that we
understand the products of these actions in the same way. In a
footnote, Husserl suggests the following order to understanding:
1) Understanding of the body as organ, understanding by immediate
appresentation and their immediate confirmations; 2)
together with this and cor relatively: understanding of the immediate
surrounding world as one that is common, normal, sensible
for us; 3) understanding of immediate instinctive needs and of
life in its common form of intimate every-day style; 4) analogy
of spheres of interests that intervene in every-day life, but that
go beyond the sensible every-day life, beyond the immediate. 478
However, Husserl adds that even with these four steps we are
only able to open up the meaning of "the area of the craftmanship"
479 ; for instance the art of another culture cannot be understood
in this way. In subsequent manuscripts Husserl tries to tackle
this remaining problem of understanding strange cultures mainly by
historical and linguistic consideration, i.e., by studying the notion of
tradition, by developing the idea of a historical a priori and by paying
more and more attention to language. This development culminates
in "The Origin of Geometry" where the notion of life-world gains a
historical dimension—the notion of life-world is linked to the notion
of tradition—and is connected to language. On this—final—analysis
cultural objects (of our own as well as of another life-world) become
accessible in their true—original—meaning only by historical analysis;
that is, by an analysis that lays bare the layers or sedimentations
of meaning in and through which cultural objects exist. This analysis
reveals the origin of these cultural objects in basic and universal
features shared by all life-worlds and studies the processes of how
these objects are subsequently handed down in tradition by means
of language. Since these processes themselves have essential features
in specie, Husserl can speak of a historical a priori.
To be sure, in these investigations Husserl does not explicitly
take up the question as to whether different languages are comparable
with and translatable into one another. Nevertheless, the