Varieties of Autonomy and the Intercultural World: Towards a Post- Phenomenological Perspective
Suzi Adams, Monash University
The paper opens with the premise that Castoriadis' radical vision of political and philosophical autonomy needs to be reconfigured along intercultural lines. It seeks to elucidate some of the philosophical preconditions of intercultural autonomy. Promising openings can be found in the interrelated currents of phenomenology and hermeneutics, especially in the emergent field of post-phenomenology. Two questions are raised. First, what are the social-ontological preconditions of interculturality? Here the problematic of the world horizon and its cultural articulation is highlighted. Second, what are the basic categories of interculturality? In response, the idea of the 'strangeness of the strange' is canvassed. The paper concludes by returning to Castoriadis' understanding of autonomy. It suggests that a relativization of his emphatic notion of 'philosophy' to include the more interpretative aspects of 'the philosophical' would open onto a more pluralistic notion of philosophical autonomy.