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Watsujiō Tetsur's Rinrigaku: Ethics in Japan (Modern Japanese Philos
Watsuji's Rinrigaku (literally, the principles that allow us to live in friendly community) has been regarded as the definitive study of Japanese ethics for half a century.
393 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1996
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October 30, 2022
“Watsuji’s fundamental inspiration and focal project," according to Carter's appended essay, "was to redress the imbalance of undue emphasis on human individuality and egoity that predominates in the West, by reintroducing a vivial sense of our communitarian interconnectedness, and our spatial and bodily place in the betweenness between us, where we meet, love, and strive to live ethical lives together, as one and yet as individuals” (354).
This basically summarizes the book, which is an effort to sketch out what it means to be a human being, which, in Japanese, as ningen sonzai, means something like "to endure as the between," where "endurance" names the temporal dimension of our existence and "betweenness" the spatial. Influenced by Buddhism, and articulating it in a Hegelian manner, Watsuji argues against Western philosophy that man is not a substantial, independent individual but rather a fundamental emptiness. This is because for Watsuji, the community into which we are born and in which we live out our lives—what he calls "absolute negativity"—is an a priori condition of who we are, and it is only by revolting against this community, i.e., by negating it, that we can become individuals. Accordingly, this "original sin," as it were, is badness. A truly good individual, one who wishes to be authentic, must then negate this negation by rejoining the community qua individual; one must "return home." Thus, dialectically, man is the negation of community, and community is the negation of man; however, he is both, simultaneously. Hence, existence is dynamic rather than static. It is only in relation to others that we can conceive of ourselves, whereas all efforts to the contrary, as epitomized from Descartes to Heidegger, derive from abstraction, namely, a failure to account for our inescapably social way of being.
Toward the end, Watsuji goes into very detailed, careful expositions of certain Neo-Kantians and phenomenologists, which was rather boring and confusing; so that, by the time he got to temporality and thereafter, I was less engaged. Nonetheless, I found his analyses fascinating; and as much as my Western mind cringes at the emphasis upon intersubjectivity and "dissolution into the totality," I did find many of his arguments compelling, if only on a concrete basis. Unfortunately, the actual attention to ethics is rather lacking; he criticizes Kant's formalism, insisting that ethics must be contextual, then he says that society is founded upon trust and truthfulness, which is good and all, except that it posits nothing substantial. Then again, this is only the first volume of Watsuji's ethics, the rest of them being untranslated as of right now...
This basically summarizes the book, which is an effort to sketch out what it means to be a human being, which, in Japanese, as ningen sonzai, means something like "to endure as the between," where "endurance" names the temporal dimension of our existence and "betweenness" the spatial. Influenced by Buddhism, and articulating it in a Hegelian manner, Watsuji argues against Western philosophy that man is not a substantial, independent individual but rather a fundamental emptiness. This is because for Watsuji, the community into which we are born and in which we live out our lives—what he calls "absolute negativity"—is an a priori condition of who we are, and it is only by revolting against this community, i.e., by negating it, that we can become individuals. Accordingly, this "original sin," as it were, is badness. A truly good individual, one who wishes to be authentic, must then negate this negation by rejoining the community qua individual; one must "return home." Thus, dialectically, man is the negation of community, and community is the negation of man; however, he is both, simultaneously. Hence, existence is dynamic rather than static. It is only in relation to others that we can conceive of ourselves, whereas all efforts to the contrary, as epitomized from Descartes to Heidegger, derive from abstraction, namely, a failure to account for our inescapably social way of being.
Toward the end, Watsuji goes into very detailed, careful expositions of certain Neo-Kantians and phenomenologists, which was rather boring and confusing; so that, by the time he got to temporality and thereafter, I was less engaged. Nonetheless, I found his analyses fascinating; and as much as my Western mind cringes at the emphasis upon intersubjectivity and "dissolution into the totality," I did find many of his arguments compelling, if only on a concrete basis. Unfortunately, the actual attention to ethics is rather lacking; he criticizes Kant's formalism, insisting that ethics must be contextual, then he says that society is founded upon trust and truthfulness, which is good and all, except that it posits nothing substantial. Then again, this is only the first volume of Watsuji's ethics, the rest of them being untranslated as of right now...
December 29, 2023
I took a module that was an in-depth study of this book and it is one of the best things I have ever done. The writing style is a little repetitive and dialectical but the ideas...??? I used to really think ethics was boring and a 'philosophy bro' subject before reading this but Watsuji's views are SO interesting and different.
I genuinely can't recommend this enough !!!
"Betweenness" SLAYS
I genuinely can't recommend this enough !!!
"Betweenness" SLAYS
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews