Abstract
This study analyzes the usages of the word “life”（生命seimei）in modern Japanese philosophical studies and elucidates the influence of these discussions on “life” in current “bioethics”（生命倫理seimei-rinri）. Although Japanese “bioethics” is regarded as a framework corresponding to American “bioethics,” it is widely argued that there are considerable differences in its actual content due to the ideological and historical dissimilarity between Japanese and Western societies. The cultural-historical background of Japanese society, which forms the basis of the uniqueness of Japanese “bioethics,” has not been explored explicitly.
In the early Meiji Era, when philosophical research began in Japan, the term “life” was defined as a physical or biological phenomenon from the perspective of the theory of evolution. However, in the later Meiji Era, influenced by German philosophy, the term “life” began to refer to the fundamental “reality” that enables all phenomena to arise. From this viewpoint, the function of each individual’s
“subjectivity”（personality）was also considered to be founded on this “life.”
The dual use of the word “life,” in the physical and philosophical sense, became common in Japanese society since then. For example, we can find this multilayered terminology in the arguments made in Omodaka Hisayuki’s magnum opus, Essence of Medicine（1945─1959）. Today, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of “bioethics” because he presented “life” in terms of the “dualistic oneness” of “Activity” and “Body.” In his view, human “personality” and “body” are understood as expressions of two aspects of “life.” This idea seems to be one of the bases for
the criticism against the “person theory”─which denies the rights of human beings who have lost their “personality”─that has been proposed in Japanese “bioethics” so far.
