Beyond the Clash between WorldViews : Revisiting Husserl ’ s Concept of the LifeWorld

Husserl shares the European view whereby (physical and psychic) nature is the common denominator upon which the diversity of cultures are built, a vision that motivates the quest for the conditions of possibility of encounters beyond cultural differences, truth beyond multiple perspectives, and moral reconciliation beyond antagonisms. The American-Indian worldview seems to challenge that view, for it rather proposes a multinaturalism built upon a type of human and spiritual community common to every cosmic being. Husserl’s notion of the “life-world” is revisited, whereby what appears at first sight as “in-compossible” world-views shows indeed traits of an amazing proximity.


Introduction
Certain contemporary philosophical reflections-among which the contributions of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology are found-have dedicated themselves to examine the intersubjective conditions that foster encounters beyond cultural differences, truth beyond multiple perspectives, and moral reconciliation beyond ideologically motivated antagonisms.The presupposition behind these reflections is that the differentiated multiplicity of cultures and perspectives emerges beyond the natural common world of humanity and other living species, dragging with it potential conflicts.But the ideal telos of a humanity entirely reconciled beyond its differences is also forged with this plurality.
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, in a relatively recent anthropological study entitled "Perspectivism and Multinaturalism in Indigenous America" (2003: pp. 191-243) where he describes the worldview of Amazonian (Brazilian and Peruvian) ethnical groups, seems to challenge seriously the dominant and generalized Western European worldview in some of its core convictions.Indeed, the Amazonian ethnical worldview does not conceive nature as the common soil upon which the diversity of cultures and worldviews are erected, but it rather conceives nature as the terrain of diversity and multiplicity.It is thus a cosmological "multinaturalism", whereby the unity ("universality") of a cosmic spirit rises above the diversity (or "particularity") of the natural bodies (Viveiros, 2003: p. 192).Although this worldview is not symmetrically opposite to the Western one, since it does not have the same contents or statute, it is totally heterogeneous to it.Indeed, the Western view that issues from Cartesian dualism and the subsequent mathematization of bodily nature with its "physicalist" and "objectivistic" interpretation purports the unity of nature (its "universality", "objectiv-ity"), and its founding character.Correlatively, it purports the "subjective-relative" particularity and multiplicity of "secondary qualities" and of the human psychic realm, as well as, a fortiori, the particularity and diversity of the product of that psychic realm of cognitions, volitions, emotions and instincts, namely, of the spiritual realm of human cultural performances.Now, if one briefly examines the structure of Husserl's Ideas II, subtitled Phenomenological Investigations on Constitution (Husserl, 1989; forthwith Ideas II), it seems that his views share the Western logo-and Eurocentric view, for the constitution of the spiritual or cultural worlds (cf.Ideas II: § §48-64) is there preceded by the constitution of animal nature and psychic reality (cf.Ideas II: § §19-47), through the body (cf.Ideas II: § §35-42) and in empathy (cf.Ideas II: § §43-47), and this in its turn is preceded by the constitution of physical nature and of bodily things in general (cf.Ideas II: § §1-18), which appears with a "founding" character in relation to the different strata of the constitution of sense and validity.Seen from the surface, I repeat, Husserl keeps sustaining this idea mutatis mutandis later on, for towards the end of the twenties (Sowa, in Husserl, 2008; forthwith Hua XXXIX: p. lxx), in his research manuscripts on the "life-world", he keeps proposing the task of bringing to light the "nuclear abstract stratum 'nature' from the concrete world of experience" (Hua XXXIX: p. 259 ff.), by means of an "abstractive deconstruction of everything subjective from the concrete world of experience in view of obtaining mere nature" (Hua XXXIX: p. 265 ff.) or the "natural nucleus of the world" (Hua XXXIX: p. 275 ff.), whereby the structure "nature" has precisely, so Husserl, a "founding" character (Hua XXXIX: p. 281 ff.).
It could thus seem that Husserl's conception is trapped within a euro-and logo-centric worldview that would entail its "cosmic antagonism", alongside the rest of Western culture, with American-Indian primitive worldviews, thus seeing itself seriously affected in its foundational pretenses to become a first and universal philosophy.
Before returning to this question, and of reexamining central elements of Husserlian phenomenology in order to determine whether it really possesses enough tools to face those challenges or not, let us briefly review Viveiros de Castro's conclusions on the "perspectivism" and "multinaturalism" of American-Indian worldviews.

The "Relativity of Perspective" and the American-Indian Animism
A common view shared by many indigenous people of the American continent is what various authors name "relativity of perspective" (Gray, 1996).This Amazonian "perspectivism" means that they consider the inner form of all cosmic beings (such as "the moon, the serpent, the jaguar, and the mother of smallpox", as well as spirits such as the gods, the dead, plants, meteorological phenomena and geographical accidents, among others), as "spiritually anthropomorphic"-namely, as "human"-according to which their habits and behavior belong to some sort of culture.Now, although there is an inner anthropomorphic form common to all beings, according to their "perspectivism" each species of cosmic being sees itself and sees other species and the world in a different way as how other cosmic beings see themselves and see the others and the world.Indeed, all cosmic beings see others either as preys or as predators.
Nevertheless, according to mythical narratives, originally there was an undifferentiated stage among humans, animals and the rest of cosmic beings, whereby the "difference of perspectives is at the same time annulled and exacerbated" (Viveiros, 2003: p. 197)."The myth, universal starting point of perspectivism, speaks of a state of being in which bodies and names, souls and actions, the I and the other, interpenetrate each other, submerged in the same pre-subjective and pre-objective milieu" (Viveiros, 2003: p. 197).However, this original condition is not that of the animal, whence humanity rises, but rather the contrary.Nature sprouts from culture, and not the way around.Animals, according to these myths, tend to lose the inherited attributes that are maintained by humans.Animals used to be humans, and not the contrary, and they still are "although not in an evident manner", "Humanity is primordially the matter of the plenum, or the original form of practically everything, not only of animals" (Weiss, 1972: pp. 169-170), as the Peruvian Campa mythology sustains.Thus, Amazonian "animism" 1 purports a sort of ontological continuity between nature and culture, according to which human dispositions are attributed to natural beings.
But "what is then the difference between humans and animals?" (Viveiros, 2003: p. 208).For Westerners and American-Indians what defines the human character differs substantially.Indeed, a subject or a person is the one that possesses a soul endowed with capacities such as intentionality and conscious agency-this being the case of animals and spirits.Animals and other animated entities are not subjects because they are humans, but are humans because they are (potential) sub-jects (Viveiros, 2003: p. 213).Both, humans and wolves, see themselves as humans, and yet "if the common condition of humans and animals is humanity, not animality, it is because humanity is the name of the subject's general form" (Viveiros, 2003: p. 213).However this should not be interpreted as the typical "anthropocentrism" of Western views that projects consciousness and intentionality upon non-human beings.But rather, Amazonian anthropomorphic animism says that any animal may be human.Now, if according to this animistic perspectivism each species appears reflexively to itself as human, on the other hand-and asymmetrically-it does not appear as human to other species (Viveiros, 2003: pp. 215-216).

Amazonian "Multinaturalism": Epistemological Identity and Ontological Plurality
This takes us back to the Amazonian "multinaturalism" that arises from a quite different "perspectivism" than that of Western "relativism"2 .Indeed, it should not be understood as if different species have "multiple representations" of the "same world", but rather that these species represent different worlds the same way3 .Thus Viveiros de Castro argues that we here face a sort of "identity" or "epistemological sameness" versus an "ontological plurality" or "diversity" of worlds.As a consequence, animals see other things than what we see, even though they may see them the same "way" we do.
If different species see different things it is because their bodies are different.However, Amazonian cosmology does not view "bodies" as distinctive physiologies, but rather as a "group of ways or manners that constitute a habitus".What marcs their difference with other species or beings is thus their bodies, not their souls (since animals also have them) (Viveiros, 2003: p. 220).American-Indians never doubted that Europeans also had souls; they doubted rather that Europeans had the same type of body, for example if their corpses would also be affected by putrefaction.Thus, according to Viveiros de Castro, American-Indians "imagine a metaphysical continuity and a physical discontinuity among cosmic beings " (2003: pp. 220-221).The first gives rise to animism; the second, to American-Indian perspectivism.
Perspectivism is intimately related to the exchange and reciprocity of perspectives; it is thus a "relational ontology" (Viveiros, 2003: p. 223) characterized by a "cultural universalism" in collusion with a "natural relativism" (Latour, 1991: p. 144).This is the meaning of "multinaturalism".In this context, the body is the great "difference maker" for American-Indians, with an intense semiotic use of bodily languages and ornaments in the definition of personal identity and social values.The body is the confrontation site between humanity and animality, as well as the basic instrument of the subject's expression.It is simultaneously a privileged object for the other's vision.If the body's archetype is the animal body (and thus its greatest social objectification is carried out with ritual animal feathers, colors, masks and prosthesis), the paradigm of spirits is human spirit.Animals never dress as humans, whereas humans use animal skins and feathers as costumes.

In-Compossible Worldviews
The conclusion of this examination is that the Amazonian worldview is totally in-compossible with the Western worldview if one tries to reach their "com-possibility" from a Western point of view-namely, merely as another "worldview" or "culture" pertaining to an alien "personality of a higher order."The author of the text that presents the American-Indian view, concludes that if both worldviews are compared to a two-legged compass the Western worldview leans on the leg of nature (as its stable, underlying stratum) so that the other leg (that of the various cultures and worldviews) may freely spin round.On the contrary, the Amazonian worldview leans on the leg of culture or spirit (as its stable, underlying stratum) so that nature may be subject to continuous inflections and variations (as multiple worlds of nature) (Latour, 1991: p. 234).However, Viveiros concludes with two remarks.First, that both compasses-the Western one and the American-Indian one-are articulated in their vortex-namely in an original point that precedes the distinction between nature and culture.Consequently, so Viveiros de Castro, the Western modern vortex would reveal itself only as an "extra-theoretical practice," whereas in the Amazonian worldview this vortex is the object of mythology as the virtual origin of all perspectives according to which the absolute movement and infinite multiplicity of the external form of nature's material is not to be distinguished from the frozen immobility and unfathomable unity of the inner spiritual form (Latour, 1991: p. 114;quoted by Viveiros, 2003: p. 234).Second, that the difference between Western and Amazonian cosmologies is not a cultural difference, let alone a mere difference between mentalities, but rather a difference that con-cerns worlds not merely thoughts 4 .
My question at this point is whether Husserl's phenomenology finally fails in its attempt to overcome the apparent incommensurability and relativity of plural cosmological perspectives when it succumbs to the Euro-and logo-centric Western universalism, or if it contributes something new into this discussion.
Indeed, as we were initially saying, Husserl's static phenolmenological inquiries have their starting point in constituted objectivities serving as "guidelines", such as those that he finds in the pre-given surrounding world.It should be pointed out in passing that his static interrogation, that leads to the constitutive experiences of the sense and validity of those constituted objectivities, finally turns into a genetic interrogation that attempts to "reconstruct" the formation of those same constitutive experiences themselves.This genesis, originated in the primal instinctive affection, equally marcs the beginning of subjectivity in the first infancy, and ultimately it is the genesis of "world constitution" itself (cf.Hua XXXIX: pp.409, 445 ff., 466-481).
Now, as we have already pointed out, our "acquisition" of the world follows according to Husserl the order of "apperceptive types" starting from "inanimate things," passing through "animals, cultural objects," until it reaches "object-subjects as carriers of cultural meanings."(Hua XXXIX: pp.426 ff.)Thus, he first describes the "constitution of material nature" as the basic, stable stratum of experience upon which the "constitution of animal nature" is rendered possible as well as the "constitution of psychic reality by means of the body."Finally, he concludes that in the "constitution of the spiritual world"-that presupposes the previous strata of constitutive experiences-the person appears as the center of a practical surrounding world of finite ends and interests, both cognitive as practical sensu stricto (Hua XXXIX: pp.307-308), wherein the diversity of personal communal associations is in its turn constituted, and finally the various historical cultural communities.Each one of them constitutes for itself a "familiar world" of typicalities, (Hua XXXIX: p. 157) where the same customs and traditions are shared, the same goals are pursued (cf.Husserl, 1973; forthwith Hua XV: pp.220 ff., 224 ff., 430), and the behaviors and the course of perceptions can be horizontically anticipated within a context of "normality" (Hua XV: pp.430-431; see also Hua XXXIX: pp.207 ff. and 215 ff.).This is the "proximate familiar world" that begins with the "family" and that increasingly extends in concentric circles to the community, the nation, the continent, etc. (Hua XXXIX: pp.145 ff., specially pp.154 ff.).Each cultural community initially identifies its own "familiar world" with the world itself, and it identifies itself with humanity as such.The "alien" worlds appear instead as "distant" (Hua XXXIX: pp.175-179), because we cannot analogously anticipate in them their customs, traditions nor behaviors; even their perceptual worlds appear under a "spiritual" or "cultural" light.The appearance of an "alien world" within the context of experience of the "familiar world" constitutes a first threat to the view that the latter has of itself as supposedly coincident with the world and with humanity as such (Hua XXXIX: p. 339 ff.).But Husserl remarks that, just as in our own "familiar" world there are "anticipations" of the "unknown in the style of what is known to us", the possibility of opening up to "alien" worlds already belongs to our familiar world.Thus, a child grows and learns new things within its own community (Hua XXXIX: p. 158), until a time comes whereby the first "familiar world" recognizes a "foreign world" as another familiar world that has its own validities and convictions (Hua XXXIX: pp.158, 170).Simultaneously the convictions and validities of the first familiar world lose their absolute and unique character.Suddenly there arises the possibility of multiple "worlds" and "humanities" (Lohmar, 1993: pp. 74-75), as well as the "inter-intentional connection of alien people" (Hua XXXIX: pp.345 ff.).In this context of reflection, Husserl believes that in Ancient Greece an additional step was taken towards the constitution of "universality", of "an objective world for all" (Hua XXXIX: pp.354 ff.) when the multiplicity of familiar worlds finally gave rise to the idea of one world, one humanity, one nation, one ethics, one rationality and one science, "not tied to a familiar world" (Lohmar, 1993: pp. 76-83)  5 .According to Husserl, this did not happen as a mere projection of the Greek "familiar world", imposing itself over other Mediterranean cultures, but rather by constituting the idea of a "super-nationality" by means of a "fusion of horizons" on the occasion of maritime commerce, that rendered possible an en-counter, exchange, and personal mediation of Greek sailors and merchants with the 4 "We may yet discover some day that in both mythical as in scientific thinking the same logic is operative, and that man has always thought well.Thus, the progress-if we are allowed to apply the term in this case-would not have consciousness as its theater, but the world, where a humanity endowed with constant faculties would find itself confronted, in the course of its long history, with new objects" (Lévi-Strauss, 1955: p. 255;quoted by Viveiros, 2003: p. 235). 5Lohmar asks whether it is possible an "ethics not tied to a familiar world", and simultaneously argues in favor of "reasonable foundations for the preservation of a plurality of forms of familiar-worldly ethoi" (1993: pp.83-91).Although his concept is wide, for he also refers to it as an ethos, we deliberately extend the field of interrogation to the possibility of recognizing the universal as such in its relationship to the simultaneous preservation of particularity in general.
representatives of other cultures (Husserl, 1993; forthwith Hua XXIX: p. 338).Only that personal encounter "broke the normality" of the Greek familiar world, relativized the national myths and allowed the spiritual foundation of philosophy6 .Thus, the peaceful encounter among a plurality of familiar worlds, not the factual imposition of a cultural community over others, enabled the development of the spiritual idea of a universal common point of view, a supra-national humanity and the idea of theory and science in a common world (Hua XXXIX: pp.158, 677-680), beyond the particularities and diversity of perspectives.
However, seen from the outside, and for example based on a unilateral interpretation of Husserl's "Vienna Conference" (The Crisis of the European Humanity and Philosophy) (cf.Husserl, 1970: pp. 269-299; forthwith Crisis), it would seem that his view regarding the appearance of the universality of theory and science in Ancient Greece is a mere logo-centric projection of his own convictions belonging to a factually-historical European "familiar world".According to this, it would seem that we should agree with the anthropologist's point of view and sustain that Husserl's description of the pos-sible constitution of a "common world" beyond the cultural "familiar" and "alien" worlds, and his description of the con-stitution of an "objective" truth in evident and concordant ex-periences is seriously biased and is nonetheless a unilateral proposal, wholly incompatible and "in-compossible" with alien worldviews.

The Life-World
Husserl himself asks whether the "objection of historical relativity" has any sense, an objection that he expresses thus: "This is your European (and finally personal) mode of thinking, it produces a European truth, a European logic, a European world view, namely, an existing world in the sense of Europe, as well as a European theory of knowledge, etc. Primitives have their own logic, their own worldview, and it occurs with every particular humanity, that it thus completely drifts away from yours in an effective or possible way.If this happens with the human being, does this not happen with his world, his science, his art, his God, etc.?" (Hua XXXIX: p. 170 ff.).But Husserl himself objects this objection: "Is it not rather a nonsense that the universe of my truth and my being may be in an insoluble conflict with the universe of any knowable others, such as the primitive?"(Hua XXXIX: p. 170) or even with all those that do not belong to the anticipated "normality" of our familiar world: such as the mentally impaired, the children or the animals?Husserl indeed asks himself whether we do not have the possibility of confronting our respective "familiar worlds" and "carry out a critique", whereby neither my familiar domestic world nor his/hers may be simply identified with the world, but rather that both "familiar and homely worlds" in their turn be-long to the unity of a wider home, of a unified-true-world that intentionally embraces the various worlds and humanities (Hua XXXIX: p. 171).To be sure, he does not deny "that our mutual understanding precisely does not reach too far, and that the things, the men, etc., of the world that we all experience do not mean for them the same that for me, (…) as is visible from their behavior" (Hua XXXIX: p. 171).In spite of these difficulties, he sustains that "In dealing 'with others' the understanding is broadened, although it still remains something precarious.I practically gain terrain with them on the basis of my progressive, effective, and supposed understanding, and with it I simultaneously attain ways to confirm or correct my second understanding" (Hua XXXIX: p. 171).Furthermore, Husserl adds, in my own surrounding familiar world we prove that our coincident experiences of the surrounding world, which we anticipate as developing within a framework of "normality", are experiences shared with others, our fellow beings, with whom we find ourselves in a "community of thought"; thus, the coincidental experiences of our own familiar world necessarily pass through them (Miteinander und Durcheinander).Thus Husserl thinks that the extension of our knowledge to the knowledge of the alien-other, of the foreigner, is gradually given with the help of our own fellow-beings.He sustains: "We help each other to get to know their alien nature" (Hua XXXIX: p. 172).Now, everything that is previously given in the natural attitude is revealed, so Husserl, to him as a "scientist" of a new kind.He thus proposes a "descriptive science" completely alien to the Western paradigm of "objective" sciences, whereby the methodical concrete exposition consists in abiding by the purely given as such in sensible intuition (Crisis: §45), according to the "principle of principles" of phenomenology (Husserl, 1982: p. 44, forthwith, Ideas I).The object of this new science is precisely the "life-world," namely, this "living in the 'surrounding' horizontic 'pre-given' world of us all," except that with his peculiar method Husserl believes that one may get to know it by determining it "in a gradually more complete way in its typicality".It is thus a "science of the experience of the world" (Hua XXXIX: p. 172), as he argues, not a science of the different surrounding worlds in the natural attitude, not even a science of the European surrounding world, in the natural attitude, but a science of that which involves its experience; it deals with the "how of the life-world's subjective modes of givenness" and of its objects (Crisis: p. 143 ff.).The existing objectivities for each one of the different familiar surrounding worlds, with all their cultural and ideological differences and hues in senses and validations, are taken as mere "indexes" of "subjective correlation systems," namely, as mere "guidelines" for a retrospective inquiry that leads back to their "modes of givenness" or experiences themselves.
Ultimately, this "science of the life-world" is indeed the way to a deeper, transcendental, dimension, which has no affinity with the traditional "immanence" of Cartesian dualism, the psychic immanence opposed to the transcendent character of the world with its real or ideal objectivities.It rather deals with the domain of transcendental "immanence" that is not properly or merely something intra nor extra mentem, but the transcendental realm of intentional correlation-the realm whence emerges the world's sense and validity of being, with its subjective-relative character, as a universal totality (Crisis: pp. 142,151,196 passim).At this level, Husserl's response to the "objection of historical relativity" that presupposes an absolute incommensurability or untranslatability of worldviews, is that this objection is a product of the natural attitude whereby every human being "appears in a mutual externality" (Crisis: p. 255) regarding each other.However, by executing the epoché and the transcendental reduction, "it is shown that for the souls in their own essential being there is no separation among them", that the said "localization of souls in the living bodies transforms itself, in the epoché, in a purely intentional one-in-theother" (Crisis: p. 255), for "All souls make up a single unity of intentionality with the reciprocal implication of the life-fluxes of the individual subjects, a unity that can be unfolded systematically through phenomenology; what is a mutual externality from the point of view of naïve positivity or objectivity is, when seen from the inside, an intentional mutual internality" (Crisis: p. 257).
Thus, briefly summarizing what is discovered in the research on the life-world as a pure world of experience, presupposing already the universal a priori structure of correlation, one could say that it is the realm of "what is perceptible in a wide sense" (Hua XXXIX: p. 41), where "dead things, plants, animals, also human beings, such as they are precisely pre-given in a worldly surrounding way and apperceived as objects" (Hua XXXIX: p. 172) are given.This experience has also a horizontic structure, which means a multiplicity of things.For example, that things are pre-given detaching themselves from non-attended backgrounds in a continuously streaming and changing multiplicity of modes of givenness, whereby are also considered our affections as stimuli of our attention's orientation (Hua XXXIX: p. 23 ff.).For sure, this horizontic structure also implies horizons of empathy, since the surrounding world is given to us as a world shared by us all in an intersubjective present, but also in spatio-temporal horizons of proximity and distance (Hua XXXIX: p. 84 ff.).It is indeed an originary temporal-spatiality, wholly different from its geometric and exact idealization in modern mathematical physics (cf.§9 passim.); it is rather constituted in the perceptive experience that takes place starting from the centrality of our own bodily orientation, and the centrality of our ego regarding conscious life's stream of lived-experiences with its anticipated and recalled horizons.Thus the orientation structure of the life-world means that every access to the surrounding world is both spatially as well as temporally "oriented", and in an intersubjectively oriented praxis (cf.Hua XXXIX: Pt.III, specially No. 19 and No. 16).On the other hand, the surrounding world is oriented from and around my "incarnate human-being", regarding which the "apodictic certainty" that we have of the world that surrounds us by means of the coincidental experience that corroborates its validity, has as its central axe the apodictic certainty of our own body (cf.Hua XXXIX: Pt.IV).Furthermore, that pre-given surrounding world has according to Husserl an "axiological countenance", colored with values, within a "normality" of modes of appearance familiarly anticipated, the course of which is "broken" time and again highlighting the "abnormal" or "alien" elements (cf.Hua XXXIX: Pt.VI).Thus, beyond the world's "natural nucleus" and its "founding structure: 'nature'" (cf.Hua XXXIX: Pt.V), as Husserl points out, the intersubjectively pre-given life-world has a personal, individual and communal countenance, and a cultural countenance, with its tools and goals, determined in each case by its basic needs.Summing up, the subjective-relative life-world of experiences and the modes of givenness of familiar surrounding worlds, involve the following: "horizonconsciousness", the "communalization of experience", and the "basic subjective phenomena of kinesthesis" belonging to the sentient living body, whereby the changes of perspectives of proximity and distance are determined by kinesthetic processes-that have the character of the "I do", "I move", or "I stop", etc.Finally, it also involves "alterations of validity" whereby our concordant experiences within an order of "normality" suddenly see themselves interrupted by unexpected "abnormal" events, that force us to "amend retrospectively" our convictions (cf.Crisis: p. 161).
This description is for Husserl valid for all of the surroun-ding and familiar life-worlds.It constitutes the common basis of experience whence each familiar life-world gradually opens itself to the understanding of alien familiar life-worlds, and by means of an inter-intentional connection among alien people, it gradually becomes an all-embracing historicity, as well as it eventually "awaken(s) the interest in an objective world for all" (cf.Hua XXXIX: Pt.III, No. 16 and 17; Pt.VI, No. 36).

Conclusion
In conclusion, as we have already suggested by exposing Husserl, the life-world is according to him a "path" towards a more primitive, originary, realm that definitely transcends the Western opposition between nature and culture.Indeed, transcendental experience or subjectivity, reached only by means of a universal phenomenological reduction, is a realm beyond and previous to those constituted realms of nature (albeit physical and psychical, or psycho-physical) and culture (of objectivities endowed with a spiritual meaning) (cf.Crisis: §71).This domain, wherein the functioning subjectivity is recipro-cally and inter-intentionally involved in a mutual implication with other subjects, is thus that of the world's origins, of the originary constitutive experiences at the basis of the sense and validity of being belonging to all worldly objectivities (natural and cultural) and to the world in general.We had pointed out that phenomenology initially started from these objectivities and the world as "guidelines" of its retrospective inquiries (static, genetic and finally generative) that lead back to the originary domain.Now, similarly, according to Amazonian cosmologies, it seems that it is also possible to step back towards a common cosmological vortex that one reaches through myths, an originnary stage that precedes the difference between the unity of the cosmo's inner spiritual form (culture) and the multiplicity of its material outer nature.Thus, although the world constituted by Amazonian ethnical groups is entirely "other" and diverse regarding Husserl's constituted (first natural, and then cultural) Western world, both are referred to as a previous originary stage whence everything emerges or is constituted.The Amazonian cosmological myths talk about an "undifferentiated stage between humans and animals"-being the "universal point of departure of perspectivism"-where the "difference of perspectives is at the same time annulled and exacerbated", in an original "pre-subjective and pre-objective" milieu in which "bodies and names, souls and actions, the I and the other mutually inter-penetrate each other".Simultaneously, according to transcendental phenomenology, regarding subjectivity "(Heraclitus') saying would doubtless be true of it (regarding the psyché): 'You will never find the boundaries of the soul, even if you follow every road; so deep is its ground'" (Crisis: p. 170).
Likewise, this condition that is referred to by myths as being originally human, whence animality arises, is for transcendental phenomenology mutatis mutandis an "absolute ultimate subjectivity" that does not belong to nature, being neither physical nor psychical.For Amazonian cosmology, and concretely for Campa mythology, in this undifferentiated stage referred to by myths, what prevails is "the humanity (that) is (…) the original form of practically everything, not only of animals", but also of bodily nature.For transcendental phenomenology, absolute intersubjectivity that is accessible by means of a transcendental reduction, is the ultimate origin of every sense and validity, of every being and non-being, of every esthetic and ethical value, of every cultural norm, in sum, of every natural and cultural "object" in the "how" of its modes of givenness and modes of validity.Finally, as Husserl remarks: "(…) we no longer move on the old familiar ground of the world but rather stand, through our transcendental reduction, only at the gate of entrance to the realm, never before entered, of the 'mothers of knowledge'" (Crisis: p. 153).