迂回された近代

和辻倫理学におけるカント受容

抄録

One of the key thinkers who influenced the Ethics of Watsuji Tetsuro is undoubtedly Kant. As a representative figure of Modern European Philosophy, Kant was referred to in many places in Watsuji’s Opus, both positively and negatively. However, Watsuji’s estimation of Kant changes as his thinking develops. In “Person and Humanity” (1931) Watsuji criticizes the individualistic tendency in Kantian ethics and tries to develop from its concept of “humanity” an intersubjective ethics, in Watsuji’s own term, the “Ethics of betweenness”. In the article “Ethics” (1931) which is the prototype of “Ethics as the Study of Human Beings” (1934), Watsuji praises Kantian philosophy because it traces human existence in its “aprioristic” condition. The “Ethics of betweenness”, though it begins with empirical observation of human relationships, must also go into the “apriority” of human beings. In these works Watsuji grapples seriously with Kantian ethics and tries to develop his own Ethics from it.

This close connection to Kantian ethics is, however, erased in the later version “Ethics as the Study of Human Beings”. In this work Watsuji no longer refers to the “apriorism” of the “Ethics of betweenness” and defines its method differently. Its main task is now to correct the individualistic view of Modern European Philosophy, and this can be achieved through the empirical studies of human relationships as in sociology or anthropology, which Watsuji often uses in his major work “Ethics” (1937, 42, 49). The concreteness of these empirical observations is by itself a sufficient critique of the abstract nature of Modern European Philosophy including Kant. With this change, however, Watsuji did not overcome European modernity, but rather avoided from serious confrontation with it, which is actually needed for a true overcoming.