I would single out three major aspects in the concept of the life-world. First of all, the life-world is understood through opposition to the scientific world. Secondly, the life-world is understood as the everyday world of direct experience. Thirdly, the life-world is analysed as a priori of historical and cultural differences of life-worlds. The name of the life-world indicates that here the world is discovered from the perspective of life experience. If the world is examined without rejecting the practice of life for the sake of scientific objectivity, then, when turning towards valuable and pragmatic ways of experiencing the world, it appears that the world is not just the scope of natural extended bodies, but the scope of references and meanings. When describing how the life-world is given from the first-person perspective, it appears that the world is experienced as the significant surrounding world whose centre is me with my body. It is this aspect by which the living world is personally oriented towards the world of culture and history. The concept of the life-world is crucial to show how consciousness is embedded in a world of cultural activities and meanings. Is the living world as a cultural world universal or is it particular?
The purpose of the paper is to reveal the concept of the life-world by reflecting on the tension between universality and particularity. I argue that a phenomenological analysis of the life-world reveals the duality of the life-world. There are many living worlds, but they all share a universal a priori. Even more, the tension between universality and particularity in life-worlds manifests itself as a tendency toward universality. Husserl and Patočka examine this universalisation of the lived world through the idea of Europe. Patočka, like Husserl, formulates an ambiguous idea of Europe. On one hand, Europe is understood as a universal civilisation, which is based on knowledge of the world common to all, on the other hand, Europe is understood as a particular culture. This ambiguity arises because the idea of a universal civilisation as a philosophical culture, as a new type of community, emerges particularly in European culture. On the other hand, a community open to all rational subjects and the historical dynamics of civilisational unification appear together with the process of Europeanisation. However, in order to understand how a common world is possible for all, why the universality of the life-world is the common basis of different ethnic cultures, it is necessary to separate the concepts of Europe as an ethnic geographical identity and as universal or supra-civilisation. Husserl and Patočka understand Europeanisation not as the spread of European ethnic traditions and customs, but as the adoption of elements of universal civilisation, as the discovery of common and repeatable insight.