Capabilities and Weaknesses of Different Approaches to Western Studies: Towards a Phenomenological Model

Any encounter with a phenomenon is inherently accompanied by a theoretical approach that unconsciously influences various aspects of understanding the subject. This means that the conscious or unconscious application of a theoretical approach impacts the entire cognitive process. Theoretical approaches to understanding the West are no exception to this rule. However, what capabilities and shortcomings does each of these approaches possess? Broadly speaking, three common approaches to understanding the West can be distinguished: Western-centric, anti-Western, and indigenous. In the Western-centric approach, indigenous lived experience is often either underestimated or analysed under the rubric of Western-constructed ideologies and their inherent dualistic oppositions. The anti-Western approach has either utilised concepts generated within its own tradition, which usually leads to hermetic thinking (closed-mindedness) in understanding the West, or it has fundamentally employed parts of Western thought to critique the West, generally adopting a selective stance. Thinkers who have adopted the indigenous approach have also typically reconstructed and refined their concepts and ideas in engagement with other concepts and ideas (i.e., those from the West). Based on this premise, the present article seeks to reconstruct the indigenous approach based on a phenomenological model.