David Clements

In this article, we conceptualise intercultural education through a phenomenological lens to explore an alternative way of reconsidering its philosophical foundations. This allows us to promote an understanding of interculturality as an existential condition rather than something to be acquired and hence to critique some current approaches to interculturality from a different perspective. We begin with an interrogation of the premise and the meaning of being intercultural in education. Following insights from the phenomenological tradition, we contend that Heidegger’s distinction between the ontic and the ontological offers a valuable framework for understanding intercultural education. Coupled with Lévinas’ insight on the encounter with the Other as the foundation for any ethical relation, we can claim that at the ontic level, interculturality manifests as an integral part of everyone’s lived experience; at the ontological level, however, it escapes our ability to give an account of it.A phenomenological lens, therefore, reframes both human existence as inevitably intercultural, and education as an inherently human endeavour. In practice, this means that intercultural education is grounded in the complexity of lived experience, and this challenges the notion that cultural diversity is an exception to the norm.