Xia Hong 75 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVES OF LIFE-WORLD Life�world is one of the key words in Husserl’s last work, Herbert Spiegel� berg has pointed out that, “the most influential and suggestive idea that has come out of the study and edition of Husserl’s unpublished manuscripts thus far is that of the Lebenswelt or world of lived experience”. 1 Since then, the contents of this concept has been developed continuously. The German so� ciologist N. Luhmann has also pointed out that life�world is the most fruitful made word in the last century. 2Heidegger, Schutz, Merleau�Ponty, Gadamer, Lenivas, Habermas, and Derrida have done much research on this concept and enriched its connotation or meaning. During the course of its develop� ment, there are two mainly basic but slightly different conceptual perspective understandings of life�world. One is the phenomenological perspective; the other is the sociological one. In the context of phenomenology, the core con� notation of life�world is embodied in the prefix of this word, which is ‘life’. This connotation can be seen from the analysis to this concept from two important phenomenologists, Husserl and Heidegger. But in the context of sociology, the core connotation of life�world is embodied in the suffix of this word, which is 1 Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960, p. 159. 2 Niklas Luhmann, »Die Lebenswelt���nach Rücksprache mit Phänomenologen«, Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie, LXXII (1986), S. 176–194. ‘world’. This connotation can be seen from the analysis to this concept from Schutz and Habermas, two important sociologists. Although they are differ� ent from each other, there is a family resemblance between these two mainly conception: Life�world is the trinity of subjective, objective and social worlds. 1. The Concept of Life-world in the Tradition of Phenomenology First, let us focus on how Husserl illustrates this basic concept. According to Husserl, life�world is a totality which comes to the fore when we are in the state of perceiving the objects in a “natural attitude”, or in other words, life�world is a “pre�scientific”, and therefore “a realm of original self�evidences”,3 to which any test validity on mathematics and other natural sciences should finally ap� peal. It is the life�world that provides a starting point and founding basis for “all our acts, whether of experiencing, of knowing, or of outward action”.4 This understanding of life�world aims at the positive science. During the 19th century, the influence of positive scientific worldview has dominated these people who inquiry the meaning or value of human activities, the introduction of the concept of life�world blazes a new way for considering these problems. It is well known that people are deceived by the “prosperity” caused by scientific achievement in the second half of 19th century. As a result, the basic explana� tions to the objective world from the perspective of positive natural sciences have replaced the traditional worldview on the world with a complete new one. In fact, the old worldview is a hybrid which contains the religious, theologi� cal, artistic, cultural, theoretical and practical understandings of the world in which human beings live. It is these hybrid understandings that human be� ings have lived in the pre�scientific world, and constituted their own beliefs or convictions to the world. However, with the advent of the appearance of “sci� entific world”, which is mainly the mental product of scientists, the world that human beings live in seems to be real and reliable by way of positive scientific explanations, and the other understandings to the world from the perspectives 3 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences: An Introduction to Phenomeno- logical Philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970, p. 127. 4 Ibid., p. 144. 76 PHAINOMENA XXVI/100�101 of religions, mythologies, theologies and so on are unreliable, and should be put into question, even be refused radically. If the world in which people live from the natural attitude, that is the life�world, is replaced by the world that is regarded as the scientific object by scientists, a serious result will happen: the crisis of European sciences, or the crisis of European humanity. As he points out in his Philosophy as a Rigorous Science: “the spiritual need of our time has, in fact, become unbearable… far more than this, it is the most radical vital need that afflicts us, a need that leaves no point of our lives untouched.”5 So, ac� cording Husserl, if we use scientific world which seems objective in the terms of positive science, traditional norms will be doubted or mistreated irrationally and the cultural model or values will be relativized, for the positive sciences will exclude in principle “the questions which man, given over in our unhappy times to the most portentous upheavals, finds the most burning: questions of the meaning or meaninglessness of the whole of this human existence”. 6 Husserl strictly discusses the problem of what “life” is. According to him, any life is “taking a position”.7 This behavior of taking a position is, to a certain degree, a Noesis that is relative to the Noema. A person without his conscious� ness or in a vegetative state cannot take a position or live a real life. Husserl’s understanding to life is analogous to Marx’s. Marx points out that the differ� ence between human life and animal life activity lies in that: “The animal is immediately identical with its life�activity. … Man makes his life�activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He has conscious life�activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life�activity directly distinguishes man from animal life�activity.”8 By identifying human life with position�taking, Husserl shows the essential difference between the human life and animal activity. This identification is 5 Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (Q. Lauer Trans.), New York: Harper & Row, 1965, p. 144. 6 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences: An Introduction to Phenomeno- logical Philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970, p. 6. 7 Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (Q. Lauer Trans.), New York: Harper & Row, 1965, p. 144. 8 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Mani- festo (M. Milligan Trans.), New York: Prometheus Books, 1988, p. 165. 77 XIA HONG more important in that it shows that human life itself is not a subjective causal thing: human life must obey a certain Sollen (must), that is, norms with ab� solute validity. In Husserl’s words, ‘So long as these norms were not attacked, were not threatened and ridiculed by no skepticism, there was only one vital question: how best to satisfy these norms in practice.’ Here Husserl only to il� lustrate that the crisis is not because of the lack of norms, but “any and every norm is controverted or empirically falsified and robbed of its ideal validity”.9 So, according to Husserl, the reason of ineffectiveness of life�norms lies in the science itself, the problem can be solved only through science. The solving path is: scientific criticism and a radical, rigorous science with reliable founda� tion, which is the philosophical science.10 Husserl has insisted on this convic� tion without any interruption: it is only through science that this crisis can be solved. Getting rid of rationalism and the ideal of science is no use for overcom� ing this crisis. Contrarily, only rationalism is radicalized, the ideal of science is only reduced to its most original and grand sense, that is to say, to the life� world, can this crisis be overcome. Husserl suggests that people should abide by Descartes’ method and use it to find out the absolute clear and grounded basis on the one hand, and should improve this method for the sake of unilat� eralism on the other hand. “Die Rationalität, die Descartes von der Philosophie fordert, als die er vor sich und jedermann vertreten könne, ist nichts anderes als der äußerste Radikalismus der philosophischen Selbstverantwortung.”11 The treatment method must appeal to life itself, for “what is actually first is the ‘merely subjective�relative’ intuition of pre�scientific world�life”.12 The problem of rationalism is this fact: concrete sciences are always replacing the relative truth with the universal and general truth, to overcome the subjectivities so as to attain the ‘being’ itself. While doing so, they forget the life�world. The fact is that the life�world is a realm of original self�evidence which provides 9 Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (Q. Lauer Trans.), New York: Harper & Row, 1965, p. 144. 10 Ibid., p. 144. 11 Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzenden- tale Phänomenologie, Haag, Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, S. 427. 12 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences: An Introduction to Phenome- nological Philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970, p. 125. 78 PHAINOMENA XXVI/100�101 the foundation of ultimate confirmation, so it is also the basis which objective truths are founded. From the perspective of Husserl’s understanding to the life, we can infer that life�world is an all�inclusive and universal realm which cannot be thema� tized and questioned. As he points out: “the life�world, for us who wakingly live in it, is always already there, existing in advance for us, the ‘ground’ of all praxis whether theoretical or extratheoretical... To live is always to live�in�cer� tainty�of�the�world.”13 The meaning or value of ‘scientific world’ provides from the perspective of positive science ultimately should return to “life�world”, this is the world which human beings live in and endow it with the meaning and value. It is also the world that connects human daily consciousness, so it is not an abstract one, but be given “pre�scientifically” “in a subjectively relative way”.14 Only in the course of human life, can people find that the so�called “objectivity” is just the endowment of their subjectivity, the objective world is forever the Noema of human consciousness, and only in human actual life, can people find the crisis coming from positive science. Heidegger also emphasizes the importance of life meaning in the concept of “life�world”, which can be read in his distinguished book “Being and Time”. He claims that philosophy and science since ancient Greece had reduced things to their presence and regarded their presence as “Being”, this kind of philosophy is doomed to be rootless one. According to Heidegger, the root of philosophy is the “Dasein”(being�there) which is always “to be”(Zu�sein). Dasein is always a being engaged in the world: neither a subject, nor the objective world alone, but the coherence of Being�in�the�world.  Only “Dasein” and its state are ex� plained, can the entrance to the Being be found. Then, how about is the state of “Dasein”? It is “being in the world” among the secular things. Dasein is revealed by projection into, and engagement with, a personal world.15 For Hei� degger, “Dasein” denotes a structured awareness or an institutional way of life. But at the same time, Being�in�the�world is the spanning site of human Dasein. The spanning means is the projection (Entwurf), that is to say, it is by way of 13 Ibid., p. 142. 14 Ibid., p. 23. 15 Herman Philipse, Heidegger’s Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999, p. 120. 79 XIA HONG ili , projection that something turns to be something or not to be something. The object in the world can be meaningful or valuable only through the activities of Entwurf (projection), Anwendung (utilization), Zuhandene, ready�to�hand, of Dasein. “Sorge” (or Care), which includes Besorge (care for something) and Fürsorge(care for somebody) is the basic structure of Dasein. However, pro� jection, utilization, ready�to�hand and care are life itself. Although Heidegeer seldom uses the word “life�world”, “… yet the whole of Sein und Zeit springs from an indication given by Husserl and amounts to no more than an explicit account of the ‘natürlicher Weltbegriff’ or the ‘Lebenswelt’ which Husserl, to� wards the end of his life, identified as the central theme of phenomenology,… ”16Heidegeer use the word “in-der-Welt-sein” (Being�in�the�world) to illustrate the state of human being, this word has the same meaning as the word of “life� world”, which is also pre�given and must be accepted as a proposition. 2. The Concept of Life-world in the Tradition of Sociology Alfred Schutz has thought highly of Husserl’s understanding to the life� world, and emphasizes that precise analysis to this concept will be beneficial to the philosophical anthropology. According to Schutz, life�world is actually a realm which consists of the partners, these partners are the same as I, and they can communicate and understand each other. Husserl emphasizes the transcendentality of life�world. However, Schutz highlights its secularity for two reasons. First, the realms that sociology and philosophy deal mainly with are not the same. Philosophy should focus on the transcendental life�world, but it is not necessary for sociology. Secondly, the purpose of transcendental phenomenology is neither to deny the real exist� ence of actual life�world, nor to prove it as the deluded vision influenced by the pure natural or positive science, but only to explain how the present life�world is possible. According to Schutz, life�world is a pre�given framework that we take for granted without any doubts. “‘unquestionably’in the sense that it is un� questioned until further notice but may be called into question at any time”.17 If 16 Maurice Merleau�Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (C. Smith Trans.), London and New York: Routledge, 1962, p. viii. 17 Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality (M. Natanson Ed.), 80 PHAINOMENA XXVI/100�101 a we explain the life�world like this, the world itself is an everyday world that we live there and then or “ a commensense world” or “a cultural world”, it is also an intersubjective world of culture, because “we live in it as men among other men, bound to them through common influence and work, understanding others and being an object of understanding for others”,18 and it is this world that provides a pregiven framework for us to theoretical and practical activi� ties. This kind of explained life�world is actually the “repository” with which we can change our lives or give a novelty interpretation. This “commensense world” can also be called “social world”, for com� mensense or culture is social in the sense of being enjoyed or recognized by society. First, its constructure is socilized, the reason is that, if I adopt way of the “pairing” with my partner in Husserl’s sense, I would experience the same part of the world with the same perspective as his. Schutz calls this “idealiza� tion of the reciprocity of perspectives”. Secondly, it is socialized from the per� spective of genesis. The reason lies in that most of our knowledge, whether in its contents or in its form, is obtained in the course of communication with others, and should be socially recognized by others. Thirdly, it is socilized in the sense of distribution. The reason lies in that: any individual recognizes only a small part or special part of the whole world, and maybe attains to its clarity or definity in certain community. However, the meaning or the value of this kind of clarity or definity is different from each other. Habermas has accepted Schutz’s intersubjective understanding to life� world and his emphasis on the significance of communication in catching up with life�world. However, he does not think that Schutz actually interprets the life�world from the linguistically intersubjective structure. So he emphasizes the role of language in understanding the meaning of life�world. And he insists that “the logos of language embodies the power of the intersubjective which precedes and grounds the subjectivity of speakers”.19 A speech act refers to the objective world, subjective world and social world. If a man wants to arrive at agreement with others by way of language, he will raise three valid claims, that The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967, p. 145. 18 Ibid., p. 133. 19 Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003, p. 11. 81 XIA HONG is, normative rightness,  theoretical truth  and expressive or subjective truthful- ness. However, these three worlds are latent as a communicative background in daily speech acts and related to thematization of any world while communi� cation or speech act refer to. These three worlds as a background form an or� ganic unit. This unit, according to Habermas, is the life�world. The life�world is brought out by way of communicative action and speech act. It is important to point out that the social world is only one part of the outside world, which can be divided into two parts, which is “objective world and social world”, 20 the particularity of the social world lies in that: “as the totality of legitimately ordered interpersonal relations, it has a different ontological constitution from the objective world”.21 Influenced by Marx’s thought that social existence can be distinguished into economic base and superstructure, Habermas thinks that social existence can be distinguished into system and life�world, the former is the realm of mate� rial reproduction, and the later is the realm of reproduction of communicative action and its meaning. The later exerts influence on the former.22 According to him, traditional subjective philosophy interprets the society as a unit which comprises of the political citizens or free united producers who belong to their countries. This interpretation is based on the basic principle of positive soci� ology, and cannot fully clarify the course of social development. Habermas discards the thinking model of subjective philosophy, and interprets the so� ciety as “life�world constructed by symbols”.23 According to the relationship between two systems (that is, economy and administration) and life�world, he divides the course of social development into four stages, and explains how the subsystems of economy and administration has detached from the life�world, and resulted in “colonization of life�world” which is just the plight of western modernization. 20 Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (T. McCarthy, Trans.), Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984, p. 278. 21 Jürgen Habermas, Justification and Application ( C. Cronin, Trans.),Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993, p. 39. 22 Pip Jones, Introducing Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003, p. 169. 23 Jürgen Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken, Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988, S. 95. 82 PHAINOMENA XXVI/100�101 a er as, a er as, According to Habermas, the system and life�world forms a unit at the first stage of the archaic society, and they have advanced synchronically in the small tribes. In the later period, the exchanges of goods between different tribes are more frequent than ever. However, the frequent exchanges do not result the professional labor divisions in the modern sense, for the categories and realms of exchange are limited. As a result, the social reproduction is coordinated and cooperated in terms of conventional norms, and daily exchange activi� ties and execution of tribal power are confined in the sphere of life�world. In hierarchized tribal societies, the rigorous rituals and conventional customs which are original from traditional cultural life have changed into obligatory legal rules. These rituals and customs function in the integration of whole so� ciety to certain degree. The result is that the executor of legal rules are gradu� ally changing into the dominators or holders of the governing power, and this power for which life�world provides legitimacy is gradually highlighted, and has become a self�regulating and autonomous force, and finally separated from the life�world. However, because of the special sense of mystery, the handling of power has not moved beyond of circumstance of the life�world, state and so� ciety is incorporate wholly. In the period of politically stratified class societies, the complexity of social things has increased so quickly that a new medium, which is the money, has gradually become an important means and obtained its self�consistency in regulating the relationship between different levels of so� ciety. The medium of money is “specifically tailored to the economic function of society as a whole, a function relinquished by the state; it is the foundation of a subsystem that grows away from normative contexts.”24 The subsystem of economy, by way of the medium of money, is also highlighted from the life� world which provides for the meanings basis, and gradually gets rid of and finally is independent of life�world. The result is the separation of civil society and the state. The governor of a state can attain to its collective goal by way of its subsystem of power, such as administrational management, military and legal institutions on one hand, and coordinate the relationship among different social levels and groups by way of money on the other hand. 24 Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2 (T. McCarthy, Trans.), Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987, p. 171. 83 XIA HONG Habermas has analyzed the relationship between life�world and systems, and concluded that political and economical subsystems have basically run within the circumstance of life�world. Only until the period of later capitalism, the balance between these two subsystems and life�world was broken, and they are independent of each other. This independence leads to the expansion of two subsystems, respectively by media of money and power. During the course of independence, the social expansion and enlargement of social communi� ties, accompanying the collapse of traditional worldviews and religious world� views, these subsystems function thoroughly in the realms of administration and economy and finally in turn dominate the life�world from which these subsystems obtain legitimacy. Habermas calls this phenomenon “the coloniza� tion of life�world”, which is the cause of problems in the modern society. Life�world is an original and self�understanding realm which supports peo� ple in the world the meaning and value of life, and all kinds of human actions can be explained from it. Superficially, the appearance of these two subsystems has made the human contact much easier and organized the human labor ac� tivities more efficiently than ever, but it does not mean that the running rules defined by them should not be used also as rules of the life�world. Life�world should not be controlled by the media of money and power; on the contrary, it should be integrated through the medium of language. The life�world is the realm of activities of reproduction which cannot be integrated by the media of money and power, such as the education of private sphere, the development of personality, and the universal beneficial of public sphere activities. These realms should be handled by communicative actions. We can see that the life�world itself is another expression of society, it is not the assemble of the human beings or objects, but the background of com� municative action which is reproduced by the medium of language. It is in this realm that human beings learn and understand the meaning or value of their life. 84 PHAINOMENA XXVI/100�101 3.The Family Resemblance of Two Conceptual Model of Life- -world The interpretation of life�world from the life perspective pays much atten� tion to the blending relationship between life and world. The world in which human being lives is of its meaning for the sake of human life. The interpreta� tion of life�world from the world perspective emphasizes the importance of self�evident background of human actions; it is this realm that we obtain the meaning and value of our activities, especially our daily ones. These two inter� pretations to life�world emphasize the different aspects of this word, but the difference of these two understanding models is not thoroughly clear defined. Both of them influence each other, and continually enrich the contents of the concept of life�world. For instance, Habermas has agreed Husserl’s basic un� derstanding of life�world which is the spatial�temporal structure. This struc� ture is a framework for better understanding of the relationship among the ob� jective, subjective and social worlds and human lives. It is this understanding that overcomes the limitations which exist in Kant’s philosophy of subject.25 Generally, there is “family resemblance” between these two understanding models of life�world: life�world is not an objective or concrete existence, but a trinity of subjective, objective and social worlds, an unity of nature and human beings( tian ren he yi in Chinese). Husserl declares that “the formal and most general structures of the life� world: things and world on the one side, things�consciousness on the other”.26 That is to say, the life�world is formally the union of the consciousness and its objects. If we express this union in traditional philosophy, life�world is the or� ganic union of objective worlds (including social worlds) and subjective world. In fact, Husserl occasionally talks of the society. However, he uses such terms to express the life�world: “surrounding world”, “the world valid as existing for us”, “world for all”, “world for all actual and possible”, “community of peoples”, 25 Jürgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction (B. Fultner Trans.), Mass. : MIT Press, 2001, pp. 23–26. 26 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences: An Introduction to Phenome- nological Philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970, p.142. 85 XIA HONG , “our common world”.27 From these worlds we can infer that life�world also does not exclude the society itself. In order to highlight the social element of life�world, Husserl sometimes uses the whole of subjective realm to stand for life�world. As he points out: “... it is only by being in possession of the totality of the subjective sphere, in which man, the communities of men intentionally and internally bound together, and the world in which they live, are themselves included as intentional objects...”28 If we identify human life with conscious ac� tivity, this activity must be actually an intentional one combining the subject or subjective world on one hand, and object or objective world on the other hand. The emphasis of organic union of subject and object, subjective world and ex� ternal world is analogous to pragmatism advised by William James, which pays much attention to life, practice and efficiency. For example, William James has pointed out, human life experience itself is a stream of consciousness which dynamically connects with the objects; and for this reason, he calls this stream “immediate stream of life”. 29 Superficially, objective life materials such as air, water, land are essential to our human life, and traditional philosophy has re� garded these materials as objective reality out of human control, however, only when they should be or would be understood or recognized by human being, can they be meaningful or valuable to human being. As Marx has pointed out in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: “But nature too, taken ab� stractly, for itself – nature fixed in isolation from man – is nothing for man.”30 There is no abstract nature without human beings and no outer objective world without human activity. For the need of interpretation of the world, philoso� phers have used the concepts such as “subjective world”, “objective world” and “social world”, however, these concepts can be understood only in the course of life or human practices. It is in this sense that we can affirm that life�world is the trinity of subjective, objective and social worlds. 27 Ibid., p. 104, 109, 256, 259, 336. 28 Ibid., p. 263. 29 William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, New York: Longman Green and Co., 1912, p.74. 30 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the Communist Man- ifesto (M. Milligan Trans.), New York: Prometheus Books, 1988, p. 165. 86 PHAINOMENA XXVI/100�101 Husserl’s grounding analysis to the concept of life�world has also influenced his followers. Schutz, the sociologist, interprets the life�world as a meaning� ful framework which is produced by human life and activities. Human activi� ties are subjective, but, they cannot separate from objective world. “Objective world exists for me” by way of pure conscious life,31 human subjective world is not independent of objective world, but they melts into a union. The activities of combining subjective world and objective world are not sole individual life, but intersubjective life. The world that the life concerns is a world that is shared by me and my partners and experienced and interpreted by us. The life in the world can be actually called social life, and all the phenomena of social life… belong to this life�world.32 Every individual is always in a historically given world of nature, society and culture.33 Here Schutz’s emphasis on the subjec� tivity, objectivity and intersubjectivity of life shows that he has regarded life� world as the trinity of subjective, objective and social worlds. The uniformity of life�world is embodied in its inner structure, that is to say, the life�world is a union of culture, society and personality in the form of symbols, for example, the culture is embodied as the “cultural reservation” of objective world: the society is embodied as “interpersonal order” that should be abided by during the communicative courses; The formation of personality cannot be possible without the cultural influence and socialization of individu� als. There is no sense talking of the personality of an insular person. Grounding life�world on such interpretations, Habermas emphasizes that communicative action oriented toward understanding by medium of language integrates the subjective, objective and social worlds into an interpretive framework, con� trary to the communicative action, the cognitive�instrumental action, the nor� matively regulated action and expressive self�presentation concern respective� ly with only one or two of these worlds. This trinity framework of life�world provides a convictional stock for communicative action oriented toward un� derstanding. In this way, to understand others is to understand other human life�world. From the context of their pre�interpreted life�world, speakers and 31 Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality (M. Natanson Ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967, p.123. 32 Ibid., p. 121. 33 Ibid., p. 312. 87 XIA HONG s hearers “refer simultaneously to things in the objective, social, and subjective worlds in order to negotiate common definitions of the situation”.34 Habermas also has emphasized that “communicative actors are always moving within the horizon of their life�world; they cannot step outside of it”.35 In traditional philosophy, every individual has his own will and his per� sonality; he is his own subjective world. However, he cannot separate himself from objective world in the sense of traditional philosophy. It is because of his subjectivity that he is different from the animals and plants in the nature. At the same time he is a social being, so he cannot separate himself from the community or social world which consists of persons. There is no “Robinson Crusoe” in real life, even if he really lives in an isolated island, he should have an accompany named “Friday”. It is impossible for someone to draw his hair to leave the earth, so is it for anyone to understand life�world without referring life itself. As pointed out by Husserl, modern metaphysics which originates from Descartes has defined the separation of subjective and objective worlds from the epistemological standpoint; this separation hastened the develop� ment of science and also led its crisis. The reason is that, natural scientists interpret the objective world by their own ideas. The objective world concern� ing human being or in another word, life�world is covered by “garb of ideas” in Husserl’s words36, and replaced by scientific world. By doing so, natural science has forgotten its meaning�fundament which should be understood from hu� man life�world. References Habermas, J. (1984). Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 34 Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (T. McCarthy, Trans.), Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1984, p.95. 35 Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2 (T. McCarthy, Trans.), Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987, p.126. 36 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences: An Introduction to Phenome- nological Philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970, p. 51. 88 PHAINOMENA XXVI/100�101 Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2 (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1988). 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