生老病死と共に生きる

ケアの臨床哲学にむけて

抄録

The English word “Care” is translated by a myriad of Japanese words depending on context. In this paper I would like to ask what is the essence of “Care” and I shall attempt to argue that it is related to our living with others and with birth, ageing, illness and death.

Birth, ageing, illness and death - these are Buddhist concepts for the four stages of suffering which human beings should trace in their lives. Rather than consider these directly, however, I want to discuss how the situation around these four types of suffering has changed in contemporary Japanese society, especially after the World War II and caused philosophical-ethical problems. Suffering in the original Buddhist ideas refered to the things that a human being cannot change at all, e.g. birth is a gift from the heaven and death is a calling from the heaven, whereas they are now medicalized and become what we are forced to decide to give birth or to die. Considering birth, ageing, illness and death in this new situation is my aim in the clinical philosophy of Care.

Birth, ageing, illness and death seem on the surface to be the phenomena applying to an individual person. On closer examination, however, they are at each stage actually occurrences that take place between persons and in relation to others. Consequently we can interpret living with birth, ageing, illness and death as a relationship of “Care”.