Watsuji Tetsuro Research Articles

Bungen—An East Asian Philosophy of Culture in Terms of Intercultural Interactions and a Reinterpretation of Watsuji’s Concept of Aidagara

Influenced by Hegel, modern Chinese philosophers (e.g., Mou Zong-San, Lao Sze-Kwang, etc.) and Japanese philosophers (e.g., Nishida Kitaro) were inclined to narrate Chinese or Japanese culture in terms of the Hegelian concept of ‘spirit’. Nevertheless, the Hegelian philosophy of culture assumes the existence of an unchangeable cultural spirit and was therefore criticised by Watsuji Tetsuro. Watsuji denies the existence of an unchangeable cultural spirit and argues that cultures arise from the aidagara (interactions) between Ningen (human society) and Fudo (nature). Yet Watsuji’s narration of culture overemphasised the aidagara between Ningen and Fudo but disregarded that culture may also arise from the aidagara among cultures. Therefore, by reinterpreting Watsuji’s concept of aidagara, this paper proposes the concept of Bungen to explain the formation of cultures in terms of intercultural interactions and therefore highlight the diversity of East Asian cultures.

What is lost from climate change? Phenomenology at the “limits to adaptation”

Abstract. Defining experiences of climate change loss and damage (L&D) is the topic of contentious debate across the social sciences and humanities. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by making loss(es) from climate change better legible. After detailing the complexity of the L&D debate from both a political and scientific perspective, we turn to phenomenological theory (Martin Heidegger, Tetsuro Watsuji, Bernhard Waldenfels) in order to make sense of climate's presence and the absences generated from changing climates. The phenomenology of loss we develop promises to help account for experiences of climate change that escape more traditional (social) scientific approaches to both economic and non-economic losses. More broadly, we present an alternative approach to applying phenomenology to research in social science (on climate change).

Caminos entre la diferencia: pensar la educación desde el rinrigaku de Watsuji Tetsurō

This article invites us to think on education from the ethical system of rinrigaku, a system thought by the 20th Century Japanese philosopher, Watsuji Tetsuro. To this end, we start from Barbara Cassin’s perspective on languages and tongues as untranslatables, understood as those words that can never stop to be translated. A breakdown of some of the elements that Watsuji mentions, from Europe to Asia, is necessary. This will allow us to think on the educational aspects that can be decantated from this ethical proposal. In this sense, we must continue with the dialogue between Europe and Asia thinkers and traditions. How can we think on education from other knowledge traditions? Even though our purpose does not lie in making or finding an equivalence, the oscillation between terms and definitions is what, at the end, will lead us towards a reflection on education, which could be defined as all the aspects that make us humans. Rinrigaku talks about how we are linked: the human being is all and one, at the same time. If we are individuals and simultaneously, we are the community, how do we learn to be so? The biggest commitment of human beings does not lie in the relationships that we establish, but in how we establish them: through the sincerity of the spirit. Watsuji and Japanese Philosophy invite us to think on education from another point of view, to question all the aspects that we have thought that ought to make a human being and to look at oneself (at us) the way we (one) is.

Re-envisioning personhood from the perspective of Japanese philosophy: Watsuji Tetsuro's Aidagara-based ethics

This paper re-envisions the personhood of severely disabled children, who are often excluded from the category of human beings in the academic literature due to their perceived lack of mental faculties, based on Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro’s concept of human beings (ningen). It begins with Carl Elliott’s claim that personhood should be used as a thick ethical concept. This concept has two features. First, it represents a fusion of fact (describing someone as a person) and value (taking an ethical attitude toward a person). Second, it is embedded in our rich and culturally specific forms of life. This paper suggests that Watsuji’s concept of ningen also has these features. Watsuji criticizes how Western ethicists take individual consciousness or will as their starting point for determining personhood. Instead, he argues that neither a subject nor a community exists as an entity in itself, but that the relationality between them (aidagara) is essential to their identity and that our communication is embedded within rich and social contexts. Through his etymological study of Japanese word ari, Watsuji points out that in making statements, one both discloses the world and becomes aware of the attitude one should take toward other beings. Some commentators, such as Sakabe Megumi, have suggested that such self-awareness entails the transformation of our sense of relationality. This paper leverages Watsuji’s concept of ningen to re-envision the relationship between caregivers and severely disabled children as relationality-based and therefore open to complex and rich communication.

The Ethic of Sincerity as Aporia: Based on Tetsuro Watsuji and Shuichi Katsuta’s Ethics and Theory of Moral Education

The Ethic of Sincerity as Aporia: Based on Tetsuro Watsuji and Shuichi Katsuta’s Ethics and Theory of Moral Education

On the Issues Raised by the Ethics of Sincerity of Tetsuro Watsuji and Shuichi Katsuta

On the Issues Raised by the Ethics of Sincerity of Tetsuro Watsuji and Shuichi Katsuta

«Интер-» как метаморфоза мышления – метод Т. Вацудзи и его применимость в современном интеркультурном дискурсе

The article presents and describes the range of problems intercultural philosophy deals with, shows their specificity and relevance. The main characteristic features of intercultural philosophy are claimed to be 1) its polylogical nature, i.e. regarding the Other as a sine qua non for philosophizing, 2) readiness to wide philosophical discussions, and 3) the study of the special dynamic space “inter-”, which is the “meeting place” for different cultures, spiritual traditions and philosophical positions. The space “inter-” is what makes it possible to carry on a dialogue between cultures, to foster mutual understanding between them, and to stimulate the process of cognition. Primary attention is paid to the analysis of the intercultural method, declared as an innovative alternative to those approaches that were developed in the tradition of European, predominantly metaphysical, thought. The method of the famous Japanese philosopher Tetsuro Watsuji (1889–1960) is considered as an example. Although Tetsuro Watsuji cannot be called an intercultural philosopher, his approach to the interpretation of philosophical texts and, above all, the concept of “ningen” (“man”) proposed by him enable us to conclude that his works initiated the development of intercultural philosophy. Watsuji used the notion of ningen, or a person as an individual and at the same time social being, on the one hand, as an instrument of criticism of the European philosophical tradition, centered around the thesis of the autonomy of the subject, and on the other hand, as a creative concept provoking a metamorphosis of thinking. It is this metamorphosis that led to discovering the field of intercultural philosophy.

Local tradition of mountain farmers in Japan and Batak area in industrial era 4.0

Traditional societies have local knowledge in managing human relations with humans, human relationships with nature and human relations with God. Modern Japanese society recently still maintains its tradition, so it is often called Japan runs on two sides of culture, namely modern and traditional. In mountain farming in Japan, now agricultural activities are still carrying out ritual events such as the ritual of planting rice, rites weeding and repelling pests and rites of harvest and post-harvest. Japanese farmers do not kill wild animals in their fields but take precautions, so that wild animals do not come in to disturb their agriculture. Compared to mountain farming in North Sumatra, the traditional beliefs of the people have changed; they no longer carry out the traditional rites. Now farmers have hunted wild animals such as birds, bats, and snakes. Therefore, this situation is damaging the ecosystem because wild animals have been used as food so that there are many mice and planthopper pests/insects and for that, they use a lot of chemical poisons. This results in poor harvests and consequently, farmers being poor. Researchers use Fudo’s theory (The relationship of climate with the way of life of Watsuji Tetsuro) and the historical development theory of Saburo Ienaga and theories of comparative culture in examining the local wisdom of farming communities in these two ethnicities. This research shows how two nations which have relatively similar natural conditions but in historical development have different ways of life.

On the Problem of the Universality of Modern Western Philosophy Conceptual Framework: The Japanese Case

Many years the academic community has been discussing issues of a universal metalanguage as the general conceptual framework of modern social and humanitarian research, especially of philosophy. The article questions the claim that the language of Western philosophy was already accepted as a unified tool in the 20th century. The peculiarities of perception and further application of Western philosophical terminology in Japan in late 19th – first half of the 20th centuries are investigated here as a factual evidence base of argumentation. Special attention is given to examples of translation and interpretation of some concepts of Western origin, such as metaphysics, ethics, logic, substance, subject, etc., as observed in the works of eminent thinkers Nishi Amane, Inoue Tetsujiro, Nishida Kitaro, and Watsuji Tetsuro. The paper provides examples of new original concepts (as they did not have Western equivalents) developed by modern Japanese philosophers, such as Kimura Bin, Hiromatsu Wataru et al. The author concludes that the general conceptual framework that modern philosophy operates with is a very dynamic and open system, capable of transforming in different cultural contexts and in keeping with newly emerging issues that require analysis. The article identifies factors that provide philosophical communication between different cultures at the conceptual level, that is, the presence of a common circle of problems and presence of partial overlap between the key concepts. The author poses the problem of the emergence of new approaches and ideas in a situation of “conflicting interpretations,” or incomplete equivalence of similar notions when used by the parties in a dialogue, casting doubt on possibility, necessity and reasonability of exact reproduction of meanings and “complete domestication” in other cultures.

Tetsuro Watsuji’s Milieu and Intergenerational Environmental Ethics

The concept of humans as relational individuals living in a milieu can provide some solutions to various obstacles of theorization that are standing in the way of an ethics of sustainability. The idea of a milieu was developed by Tetsuro Watsuji as a web of signification and symbols. It refers to the environment as lived by a subjective relational human being and not as artificially objectified. The milieu can neither be separated from its temporal—or historical—dimension as it is directly related to the “now” of perceptions and actions in the world. In other words, elements of the natural milieu can be said to have a constitutive value as they contribute to our well-being by helping us make sense of our life and our world. In their temporal and relational dimensions, Watsuji’s notions of the milieu and human being are thus directly related to the notion of sustainability. This concept offers some convincing solutions to overcoming the problem of temporal distance, by shifting the center of argumentation from unknown, passive, and biologically dependent not-yet- born people to the transmission of a meaningful historical milieu. The turning point here is that if what matters is the survival of ideal and material projects that people live (and sometimes die) for, then future generations have tremendous power over them, as the actions of those future people will determine the success or failure of the projects started by present generations.

Made in Japan: Connecting the Dots through Contemporary Communitarianism’s Intellectual History

ABSTRACTTwenty-five years ago, Christians, Ferré, and Fackler’s (1993) Good News: Social Ethics and the Press proposed the then-radical notion of communitarianism as an alternative moral philosophy for media ethics. This article evaluates communitarianism as a media ethic, but not only according to the work already done by Christians and colleagues. Instead, this article extends the communitarian ideal by connecting it, in a new way, to notions espoused a half century earlier by Tetsuro Watsuji, a Japanese philosopher whose prescriptions of ethics in Rinrigaku in 1937 have been largely ignored by media scholars.

存在概念の由来としての「自身」概念と他者概念 : ニーチェ・和辻哲郎による存在批判からの可能性

存在概念の由来としての「自身」概念と他者概念 : ニーチェ・和辻哲郎による存在批判からの可能性

和辻哲郎『人間の学としての倫理学』における倫理的存在論の着想 : 東洋倫理思想による存在論転換の試みの今日的可能性について

和辻哲郎『人間の学としての倫理学』における倫理的存在論の着想 : 東洋倫理思想による存在論転換の試みの今日的可能性について

The ecology of ‘we’ and ambient warmth: Richard Neutra's ecological architecture

The article seeks to generate a more nuanced version of environmental ethics than the current positivistic approach taken towards the ecological crisis by referring to the sense of ecology as evident in the practice and writings of Richard Neutra. Despite the whiteness of his architecture, Neutra's architecture was ecological in a profound way in which the ethics of the inter-personal and related dwelling activities of inhabitants are as important as measuring energy performance. For him, more fundamental than man's relationship with nature or natural resources was the inter-personal sharing of ‘we’, in which scarcity itself is the medium of a proportionate joining. Put differently, the reciprocity between the natural and the inter-personal, in which the former reinforces the latter, was the key to an ecological setting.In the process of underpinning Neutra's sense of the reciprocity between the natural and the inter-personal, as well as the shared inter-personal communication in an atmosphere, this article draws ideas from Japanese intellectual tradition such as Tetsuro Watsuji&s notion of fudo, or climate, and its correlate inter-personal ethics, and Kitaro Nishida's account of a trans-subjective mode of communication of the ‘we’. Referring to this Japanese tradition in which Neutra was deeply interested, the article interprets Neutra's architecture based not upon the ego-oriented mode of the ‘I’ but upon the ego-less mode of ‘ek-sistere’ that reinstates the condition of the human being as a pre-reflective corporeal being, or what I would like to call a ‘common subjectivity’ to be articulated into different, yet conjoined, ‘I’s to form a joint measure. In this fashion, the article demonstrates how one's relationship with the natural necessarily involves the dimension of the inter-personal, while illuminating the goal of Neutra's practice: securing a place for the inter-personal through the coordination of natural forces.

Modern Japanese Philosophy: Historical Contexts and Cultural Implications

AbstractThe paper provides an overview of the rise of Japanese philosophy during the period of rapid modernization in Japan after the Meiji Restoration (beginning in the 1860s). It also examines the controversy surrounding Japanese philosophy towards the end of the Pacific War (1945), and its renewal in the contemporary context. The post-Meiji thinkers engaged themselves with the questions ofuniversalityandparticularity; the former represented science, medicine, technology, and philosophy (understood as ‘Western modernity’) and the latter, the Japanese – ‘non-Western’ – tradition. Within the context, the question arose whether or not Japan, the only non-Western nation to succeed in modernization at the time, could also offer a philosophy that was universal in scope? Could Japanese philosophy offer an alternative form of modernity to the global domination of Western modernity? In this historical context, the philosophies of Kitaro Nishida and Tetsuro Watsuji, two of the tradition's most prominent thinkers, are introduced. Nishida is considered the ‘father of modern Japanese philosophy’ and his followers came to be known as the ‘Kyoto School’. The essay ends with a brief reflection on the influence of philosophy on culture, focusing on the aftermath of the tsunami catastrophe in 2011.

Watsuji’s Balancing Act: Changes in his Understanding of Individuality and Totality from 1937 to 1949

Watsuji Tetsuro - ’s ethics is founded on the idea of the dual structure of human beings: that we are both individual and communal at the same time, and that these two elements constantly negate each other. But the interpretation of this structure shifts over the prewar, wartime, and postwar volumes. In the first volume, double negation is ambiguously explained as either an endless cycle that balances individuality and totality or a three-stage dialectic that privileges totality. Also, totality is seen as shaping a largely obedient but self-aware individual, with no real sense of social change worked in. In the second volume, the individual is largely subsumed beneath finite and exclusive totalities, and social change is restricted to advances in culture. But in the third volume, individuality is reinstated as that which guides social change by intuiting how the totality ought to be. Also, double negation is reinterpreted as heading toward unity-in-difference. These changes can be interpreted historically, with the emphasis on totality rising with the wartime pressures, and the emphasis on individuality rising in postwar occupied Japan. Finally, a historically nuanced and balanced interpretation of Watsuji’s ethics can have contemporary relevance, for instance by contributing to the liberal-communitarian debates. Key terms: ethics, individual, totality, negation, Watsuji

Fudo: An East Asian Notion of Climate and Sustainability

My paper discusses an East Asian notion of climate and its significance for sustainability. A particular reference is the environmental philosophy of Tetsuro Watsuji (1889–1960), a Japanese philosopher who reflected upon the meaning of climate, or “fudo” in the Sino-Japanese linguistic tradition. Watsuji sees fudo not merely as a collection of natural features—climatic, scenic, and topographical—of a given land, but also as the metaphor of subjectivity, or “who I am”. Furthermore, this self-discovery through fudo is never private but collective. By referring to a phenomenological notion of “ek-sistere”, or “to be out among other ‘I’s”, Watsuji demonstrates the pervasiveness of a climatic phenomenon and the ensuing inter-personal joining of different individuals to shape a collective sustainable measure in response to the phenomenon. My paper lastly concretizes the significance of fudo and its inter-personal ethical basis for sustainability by dwelling upon cross-ventilation in Japanese vernacular residential architecture. Cross-ventilation emerges only through what Watsuji calls “selfless openness” between different rooms predicated upon the joining of different ‘I’s soaked in hotness and humidity. Watsuji’s fudo thus offers a lesson that without considering the collective humane characteristic of a natural climatic phenomenon, any sustainable act is flawed and inefficient.

Ecological Imagination in Moral Education, East and West

Relational philosophies developed in classical American pragmatism and Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy suggest aims for greater responsiveness in moral education. To better guide education, we need to know how perception becomes relevant to our deliberations. Our deliberations enlist imagination of a specifically sort when imaginative structures we use to understand ecosystemic relationships shape our mental simulations and rehearsals. Enriched through cross-cultural dialogue, a finely aware imagination can make deliberations of coming generation more trustworthy.Moral education for 21st century must better enable youths to intelligently negotiate complex systems, from economic systems to ecosystems, in private choices and public policies. Educational institutions must do a better job helping youths to see beyond simple relations of consumers to commodities if we are to respond to a global economic milieu in which affluence sanctifies innocence of consumers - an innocence purchased by ignorance of social, environmental, and inter-species hazards posed by our business as usual behaviors. Contemporary moral perception requires supplementation and expansion beyond speck of self-interest around which most daily consumer concerns orbit.In order to clarify and develop aims for moral education that are relevant to global effects of our choices and policies, we need sustained, crosscultural philosophical dialogue that taps intellectual resources for reinvesting our social and natural interconnections while avoiding moralistic or authoritarian instruction that chokes growth. East Asian and American philosophical traditions, despite paucity of environmental virtues in current majority cultures of either, can help us to better perceive relational networks in which our finite lives are embedded. In first section of this paper explore relational thinking in classical American pragmatism and Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy to help develop, in second section, a concept of ecological imagination. In final section draw from foregoing to clarify appropriate aims for contemporary moral education if it is to contribute to greater responsiveness.1. Relational Imagination, East and WestAcknowledging upfront that comparative projects can tend toward selfcentered, monological, and appropriative modes of ... historical thinking,1 it will nonetheless be helpful to identify several general affinities between relational thinking of American pragmatism and many East Asian traditions, inasmuch as these affinities suggest aims for ecologically responsible moral education. To keep scope manageable, draw primarily on wisdom distilled from Kyoto School.Kyoto University is where modern Japanese philosophy began with Nishida Kitaro's (1870-1945) work reconstructing tools and concepts of western philosophy, such as idea of pre-conceptual pure experience in James, to contribute an eastern standpoint to western philosophy. Nishida built philosophy department at Kyoto University, secured an appointment for Tanabe Hajime, launched career of Watsuji Tetsuro, and attracted Nishitani Keiji among other students, continuing what became known as Kyoto School (Kyoto-gaku-ha) tradition.The Kyoto School philosophers were among first to bring a distinctively East Asian perspective to enlarging and challenging philosophical tradition that began in ancient Greece.4 They are part of an ongoing global philosophical dialogue that extends - or should extend - well beyond confines of Asian Studies or Japanese Studies. When say 'philosophy,' Nishitani wrote, I first of all mean Western philosophy, since this is most influential one. ... To think [the Buddhist] standpoint by way of philosophy is my basic concern.5A. The American pragmatist tradition joins many East Asian traditions in avoiding fallacies of reification that privilege agents over situations, static forms over processes, substantive over transitive - what James dubbed psychologist's fallacy, Dewey recognized as the philosophical (LW 1 : 27-29), and Whitehead labeled fallacy of misplaced concreteness. …

Watsuji Tetsuro, Fudo, and climate change

In this paper, I wish to consider Watsuji Tetsuro's (1889–1960) concept of climate (fudo), and consider whether it contributes anything to the relationship between climate change and ethics. I will argue that superficially it seems that fudo tells us little about the ethics of climate change, but if considered more carefully, and through the lens of thinkers such as Deleuze and Heidegger, there is ethical insight in Watsuji's approach. Watsuji's major work in ethics, Rinrigaku, provides concepts such as between-ness and trust that enable his philosophy of climate to move from a theory of national characters (as Fudo is often seen to be) to an approach to living well within one's milieu.

Re-conceptualizing Critical Subjectivity and Identity in Critical Regionalism: Phenomenological Inputs

Critical regionalism has been consistently influential in architecture since the 1980s. While acknowledging its contribution to the discipline of architecture, this article inquires into two co-related issues in critical regionalism as elaborated upon by Kenneth Frampton: critical subjectivity and identity. Regarding critical subjectivity, critical regionalism demands one to stand critical of both tradition and technological development. It assumes that one can locate herself in a neutral zone unshackled from both conditions so that she can make an unbiased judgment. This article criticizes this form of subjectivity by illuminating the situated nature of the subject in the continuity of tradition within which one always stands. The second issue is identity. Keeping the identity of a region through architecture is accepted as a rule in critical regionalism. However, how we shall understand the identity is unclear. This article introduces a notion of identity as rooted in the dialectics of opposites, and demonstrates it by referring to Le Corbusier's architecture and Tetsuro Watsuji's philosophy of climate. The objective of this series of inquiries is not to shake the validity of critical regionalism, but to renew and extend its significance for contemporary architecture.