The rapid spread of ICT and the “internetization” of living infrastructure in recent Chinese society, brings about the emergence of so called “management society” or “surveillance society” where the government of big company control people’s behavior using the accumulation of huge personal information and social architecture formed by such information.

  There has been a lot of controversial debate over such a “surveillance society” in western countries, including Japan. In these discussion, it was recognized that the spread of “surveillance societies” caused by technology progress, was an unstoppable phenomenon. And the focus of the argument is shifting to how civil society should check the control or surveillance using big data by big companies or governments.

  On the other hand, in modern China, where concentration of power to CCP and president Xi Jinping is getting strengthened, we cannot hope that such “monitoring by citizens” against the government’s surveillance could work well. If so, does the progress of “surveillance society” in an authoritarian state such as China, just mean the arrival of a horrific dystopias which are completely different from the Western countries?

  However, there seems to be a kind of utilitarian idea that prioritize the social convenience and security over personal privacy, on the background that “surveillance society” has been accepted by most of people. So, we think that it could be impossible to clearly draw a line between the acceptance of “surveillance society” in China and that in the “Western developed countries.”

  In considering such problems, we cannot avoid passing through the difficult question how to achieve both “civil society”, which is established based on the pursuit of private interest, and the realization of “publicity”, in these days when the advent of “surveillance society” has become almost obvious. On the other hand, in contemporary China, the theory of civil society is actively discussed, confusion has arisen over how to understand the “civil society”, because the author’s political position may have a major impact on how to understand “civil society”.

  In this paper, we will re-examine Chinese society under the Xi Jinping administration, which is stimulating the desires of the people in economy, and also strengthen the degree of authoritarianism, from the perspective of such as “governance through technology and architecture,” or “relationship between self-interest and the publicity”.

  This paper overviews the social thought of the Ryukyu-Okinawa Islands from prehistoric times to the present, and offers a clue to reconstruct the study of Asian social thought from the European and state-centered paradigm to the global-balanced perspective.

  In the Ryukyu-Okinawa Islands, people had maintained a small-scale, egalitarian, nomadic society for a long time from about seven thousand years ago, and had inhibited excessive development that would be destructive to the island’s survival environment. From the 7th century, village communities cooperated in trade, and from about thousand years ago, they began to operate small states. Since that time, they have adapted to several civilizations developed on continent area in each era, such as the shellfish trade network between ancient royal powers, the international trade system of the Chinese Empire, the modern nation state of Japan, the international human rights movement, and sought to maintain life in their limited environment through that continuing interact with the outside diverse world.

  Unlike the civil society in Europe, people of the islands have avoided identifying themselves as the subjects who form or oppose the centralized state, and have survived by transferring states to one after another. In the maritime history of the Ryukyu-Okinawa islands, it can be said that states are only vehicles for the community. From the viewpoint of modern thought, they have formed a trinity formation; basically the society is founded on community autonomy fulfilled with the anarchism and its spirit of mutual aid, on one hand, it defends the archipelago against the destructive effects from outside through Okinawan nationalism, on the other hand, opens new avenues through cosmopolitanism that transcended the ocean.

  Such an open maritime way of dealing with state powers points us to the historical existence of an intermediate world between the state-centered society and the “Society against the State” (Pierre Clastres). Either unlike tribal societies in South America and the outback of Asia that have rejected the centralization of coercive power, the society in the Ryukyu-Okinawa islands has been trying to pursue the autonomy and prosperity of the community regardless of holding its own state or not.

  Based on these discussions, this paper poses a clue to rebuild the study of social thought in Asia on truly global value and cultural basis.

  The so-called East European revolution symbolized by the collapse of “the Berlin Wall” in November 1989 was apparently the trigger of the world history which facilitated the restoration of “the theory of civil society” during the past 30 years at the global level. The trade unions, Catholic society, as well as citizen forums had created the various types of citizen’s power “from the bottom,” and a series of movements represented a strong unified resistance to the state power as a party dictatorial organization of socialism under the framework of “civil revolution.” However, Tiananmen Square incident which took place just before the collapse of the Berlin Wall (June 1989) had a completely opposite implication in the contemporary history of the world in the respect that the civil movement in seek of democracy and freedom was brutally cracked down by its military power. In addition, the authoritarian political system which suppressed such “civil movements” has remained unchanged in China where the nature of such suppressive regime seems to have been further intensified since 2013 under the new leadership of Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of Chinese Communist Party. In 2013, he promulgated the strict policy of “seven unmentionable topics,” and these taboo areas include universal values, press freedom, civil society, citizens’ rights, the party’s historical aberrations, the “privileged capitalistic class,” and the independence of the judiciary. It is evident that all of these “taboos” should be interpreted as against the idea of “civil society.”

  Under such leadership, however, people in Taiwan and Hong Kong were not always obedient to the Chinese government. In Taiwan, the Sunflower Student Movement was associated with a protest movement driven by a coalition of students and civic groups that came to a head in March and April 2014 where the activists protested the passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) by the ruling party Kuomintang (KMT). In Hong Kong, the Umbrella Movement was upheld as a political movement that emerged during the Hong Kong democracy protests of 2014 which widely extended passive resistance to the Hong Kong Police during a 79-day occupation of the city demanding freer elections of Hong Kong’s chief executive. Against these backgrounds, the paper mainly attempts to describe the fundamental changes in academic society in China which took place since 1990s after introducing the theory of western-standardized “civil society,” and continues to discuss the implication of new social policies which have been adopted under the above-mentioned difficult conditions of “civil society” in contemporary China.

  Some scholars have argued that Thomas Hobbes is a political advisor, but they ignore the debate on proper counsellors held in England in the seventeenth century. He claims that Parliament is inappropriate for the people’s representative whose role is to counsel the king, rebutting the parliamentarian idea that Parliament is the king’s best counsellor. Earl of Clarendon and John Bramhall criticise Hobbes for such a ‘misunderstanding’ of the English constitution, labelling Hobbes as a philosopher who only studies science. They show that Hobbes is divorced from the traditional idea of politics in which the nobility and experiential knowledge are crucial, to demonstrate that he is unsuitable for a counsellor. Hobbes nevertheless demonstrates in Leviathan that experiential knowledge provided by counsellors is useful and even necessary. He argues that counsellors support the administration of the commonwealth directly managed by the sovereign, which suggests that there is room for practical wisdom as well as prudence in Hobbes’s idea of politics. He is a new type of counsellor who not only presents politics as science but also propose that diverse actors should assist the sovereign. He recognises the limit of rigid science in practice and makes a practical proposition.

  The theory of sociability (Geseligkeit) by Kant has been underestimated in the long history of Kant-study. However, Kant notes that sociability is important for his moral philosophy, although in a vague way. So, my final aim in this paper is to clarify the role and meaning of the theory of sociability in his moral philosophy. I mainly focus on two points. (1) I will position his theory of sociability, not in the metaphysics of morals a priori, but in the applied moral philosophy. Kant’s main reference to sociability is found in his Anthropology in pragmatic point of view and there is a good reason to interpret this reference as his applied moral philosophy. (2) I will argue for the moral importance of politeness (Manieren) in the social intercourse. In fact, Kant notes that politeness can moralize oneself and others. After explaining politeness as practice of world-prudence (Weltklugheit), I especially, focus on how politeness as illusion can moralize others. And finally, I argue that politeness can act to others as a kind of play (Spiel) according to the distinction between deceit and illusion.

  This article studies John Stuart Mill’s unfinished “ethology” or a science of the formation of character from the perspective of intellectual context in nineteenth-century Britain. Although Mill’s “ethology” has been discussed by scholars like Carlisle (1991), Ball (2010), and Rosen (2013), they seem to have failed to understand two significant points. First, they neglect the fact that Mill himself quoted positively the Rev. Sydney Smith’ work on an inquiry into the formation of female character. I will argue instead on the reason why Smith’s “Female Education” (1810) was regarded as an important article by Mill. Second, the scholars ignore the fact that Mill was not able to complete his “ethology” at least by the time he published Subjection of Women (1869). My argument places particular emphasis on the following passage in it. “since no one, as yet, has that knowledge, (for there is hardly any subject which, in proportion to its importance, has been so little studied), no one is thus far entitled to any positive opinion on the subject”. I conclude therefore that Mill’s “ethology” was not completed in his lifetime as his unfinished project. However, Mill in the Subjection of Women developed a radical departure from Smith’s aristocratic view of women, and presented the philosophical view that all women ought to be free and independent individuals.

  This thesis reveals the establishment and changes of the concept of motherhood (Bosei) of Itsue Takamure (1894-1964), which was the fundamental concept of whole of the works by Takamure such as feminism and anarchism writings, and her research of women’s history. Motherhood was originally developed by Ellen Key as Swedish word moderskap. The first appearance of motherhood in Japan was in 1910s, Raicho Hiratsuka turned it into Japanese Bosei from motherhood by Key’s English translated book. Motherhood in Japan has had various definitions in 1910-20s. Akiko Yosano understood motherhood as just an experience of a mother. Kikue Yamakawa explained it concern with the problem of the female labor. Hiratsuka and Waka Yamada thought it as the mother’s role from their home to the nation.

  While Takamure also established original definition of motherhood too, she defined motherhood on her own logic which was more radical than any other writer. In her early works in later 1920s, she got back to the roots of motherhood concept. She criticized to the eugenic thought of Key, and referred to the theory of social evolution and made motherhood as a key factor of “evolution of love”. Her evolution theory has had a feature that it rejects any discrimination because of “love of mother” which included in motherhood, whereas many debaters criticized that her insistence was just a utopia. Afterward, from 1931, Takamure began a research of Japanese women’s history. She tried to find the ideal and scientific model of motherhood-based society in the ancient matriarchy society through the research based on Marxism’s historical materialism. Though its research rejected and ignored by other researchers for obsolete theory, finally Takamure synthesized her evolution theory and historical research, and forecasted the new era in her book Josei no Rekishi (the History of Woman) in 1958. In the future named “the century of love”, she explained, “love of mother” will bring “love for live”, which connects to “love of living together”. No one will be left behind or denied in that love, Takamure said. At last, Takamure has found the principal concept applicable to everyone for peaceful world as an original universal ideology.

  Takamure’s motherhood was not just a mother herself, an essence of mother nor the role of mother. It realized the thought of rejection of discrimination with the scientific theory for affirmation of life without the god. That was fulfilled by positioning motherhood on the evolution theory and the historical materialism. Moreover, it finally brought her a universal ideology beyond various ‘-ism’.