Zanghellini, A. and Sato, Mai (2021) A critical recuperation of Watsuji’s Rinrigaku. Philosophia 49 (3), pp. 1289-1307. ISSN 0048-3893.
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Abstract
Watsuji is recognised as one Japan’s foremost philosophers. His work on ethics, Rinrigaku, is cosmopolitan in engaging the Western philosophical tradition, and in presupposing an international audience. Yet Watsuji’s ethical thought is largely of niche interest outside Japan, and it is critiqued on the ground that it ratifies totalitarianism, demanding individuals’ unquestioning subordination to communal demands. We offer a reading of Rinrigaku that, in attempting to trace the text’s intention, disputes these arguments. We argue that Rinrigaku makes individual autonomy central to ethical action, despite the fact that its treatment of coercion may lead one to think otherwise; that it does not reduce ethical obligations to whatever demands any given society imposes on its members; that it draws a distinction between socio-ethical orders that are genuinely ethical and those that are not; and that, in insisting on the grounding of individuals in the Absolute, it makes adequate room for individuals’ resistance to unjustifiable socio-ethical demands.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Crime & Justice Policy Research, Institute for |
| Depositing User: | Mai Sato |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Apr 2025 15:10 |
| Last Modified: | 09 May 2025 14:58 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/55296 |
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