An individual, who in the course of his or her life had undergone a genuine contact with some otherness, such as other culture, other language, foreign music etc. has in his or her immediate experience something that does not require justification. This may sound a little banal, but to some extent even when we visit some further relatives of ours, we have an experience that the way they cook, the way they speak, the way they arrange space etc. is significantly more different than expected from the fact of having a common heredity. What stance can we assume in that situation? We can always criticize and decide that what and how we have at home is essentially different (and by default: better) that what and how it is at relatives’ home.
Or, we can assume that what the grandparents had taught was apprehended in different manner by different branches of the family. (See that although it is said in a less confrontational manner, there is still an emphasis on difference in expression, on opposition).
But a best common sense reply to being in such circumstances would probably be reserving a degree of freedom for ourselves and relatives. Maybe we find their cooking mediocre, but at the same time we like how they are as people? Maybe we do not like the interior design of their home, but it sparks some new inspirations for our home?

Family visits are not simple events. The multitude of layers and interactions make them more an open field of interrelated communications, exchanges and shifts. Cross-cultural situation also does not come down to some prescribed model of interaction. We do not have a problem in intuitively determining a respectful and conflict-less model for interaction with one’s own relatives. But in philosophy to say such commonplace thing as that yes, we can communicate between cultures, yes, we might have biases but ultimately with some effort there is possibility for peaceful contact, and yes, cross-cultural philosophy is possible with a caveat that we are always interpreting – this in philosophy always requires justification and wholesome references in specialist literature. We do not need justification to treat our relative in respectful way. But to have a respectful methodology – it is an obsession. This justification paranoia creeps in and causes two things. First one is the belief that philosophy is detached from the concrete life. To defend something in philosophy is to apply some special rules of justification, which apparently at the same time work and do not work in the everyday life. They work because philosophy has to write about them as if they work in every case. They do not work, because philosophy writes about them, although we do not need a theoretical justification to respect somebody. We have experience of being respectful and it guides our behavior in life – but to claim a respectful attitude toward other cultures is to construct a theoretical system in which we can convince the receiver that respect is granted. 

---

---