Enhancing Cultural Awareness by the Construction of Culture-Inclusive Theories

Inspired by Charles Taylor's (1989) theory on the making of modern identity and ontological hermeneutic (Taylor, 1973a, 1973b, 1985a, 1985b), this article indicates the insufficiency of hermeneutic model of culture and hermeneutic view of self as suggested by Christopher, Wendt, Marecek, and Goodman (2014) for psychology students to sharpen their cultural awareness. It is emphasized that the epistemological strategy for the construction of culture-inclusive theories proposed by Hwang (2015a, 2015b) may be used by indigenous psychologists of non-Western countries to analyze any cultural system. For the sake of illustrating the application of this approach, the scientific interpretation of Confucian virtues will be provided to explain the transcendental formal structure or inescapable horizon for social interaction in Chinese society.