张善若
【摘要】生命世界是一群人由文化继承而获得的“知识储备”，是一张“由预设构成的、巨大的、无法计算的网”。当一个新“情况”在交流过程中出现时，我们需要到自己的生命世界中调动事实、常模和经验 (facts, norms and experiences)作为参照系，并使用已经被预设为合情、合理、合适的推理法将参照系所构成的“过去”与新情况所展现的“现在”联系起来，对其进行诠释，从而完成交流行为。“跨文明交流”，即是“跨理性交流”。跨文明交流的根本困难在于，大洋这一边的听话者与大洋那一边的说话者，生命世界不重合，参照系不共享，推理法不共情。由此，“生命世界，身陷孤岛”“腾空飞起，四面临渊”“临渊垂钓，渊中无鱼”“身临其境，心临奇峰”“中国印象、西方制造”这五重障碍重峦叠嶂，连绵起伏，构成中美交流中难以逾越的鸿沟。
关键词：生命世界；跨文明交流；参照系；推理法；预设网；政治理性
【作者】张善若，美国加州理工州立大学政治学系教授
【Title】Epistemological Barriers in Cross-Civilizational Communication between China and the US
Abstract: Drawing on recent theoretical development on language, reasoning, and argumentation in Western philosophy and social sciences, this article investigates and theorizes five sets of “epistemological barriers” in cross-civilizational communication between China and the United States/the West. I argue that, as they endeavor to interpret and understand Chinese political phenomena, the inability of Western readers/audiences to draw on the “validating references” and “rationalizing inferences” that are routinely used in the Chinese political “lifeworld” creates barriers in political communication between China and the U.S./the West. In a particular political civilization, “political rationality” is a conception that is constructed and reconstructed in an evolutionary process where political thinkers and writers distill “historical lessons” from its history and conceptualize them in such a way as to advance the survival and prosperity of this very civilization. Cross-civilizational communication is thus “cross-rationality” communication.
Keywords: Lifeworld, Cross-Civilizational communication, Reference, Inference, Web of suppositions, Political rationality.