2018 年 12 巻 p. 23-34
One important task in internationalizing Japanese education is educating Japanese citizens to become “global citizens.” This paper is a philosophical analysis of how Global Education deals with the problem of cultural-moral difference (moral conflict that arises between different cultures). The usual approaches taken in Global Education and Kokusai Rikai Kyôiku are a mix of cultural relativism and moral anti-relativism. Teachers often take one of the following strategies to dismiss cultural-moral difference: utilitarianism, absolutized human rights, rational justification, or “two-layer” approaches (suggested by Will Kymlicka). But these fail to balance the need for both openness to the other and moral engagement. As an alternative, I discuss Watsuji Tetsurô's search for moral unity in the empty dynamic of individualization and harmonization that is then expressed as culture. This unity is sought through a “hermeneutics of moral action,” which considers how people are emplaced in multiple relational contexts in space and time. I sketch how this can be applied through a class on “Ethics across Cultural Difference.” This alternative (Buddhist-Confucian) approach thus suggests a second sense of internationalizing Japanese education—using Japanese traditional theories to provide solutions for a global problem.
