Watsujiō Tetsur's Rinrigaku

Robert Carter is Professor of Philosophy at Trent University. Yamamoto Seisaku teaches at the Kansai University of Foreign Studies, Osaka, Japan.

"Robert Carter and Yamamoto Seisaku have produced a wonderfully clear and lucid translation of Watsuji Tetsuro's masterpiece, Rinrigaku. Long known by comparative philosophers as a centerpiece of modern Japanese philosophical tradition, Rinrigaku has been made accessible now to Western students and scholars. For anyone who is a serious student of Heidegger, this work is a must read!" — David Edward Shaner, Furman University"Here we have a major treatise by a sophisticated thinker who self-consciously wished to provide a distinctly "Asian" alternative to Western ethical systems—systems he and others saw as conceptually flawed and culturally ethnocentric. Long-suppressed questions about the assumed universalizability of some of the West's most privileged moral modes are posed in and through this work. The study both of comparative ethics and of comparative societies will necessarily be much enriched and enlivened by it." — From the Foreword by William R. LaFleur

• ForewordWilliam R. LaFleurAcknowledgmentsNote to the ReaderIntroductionRobert E. CarterPart I. Introductory EssaysChapter One The Significance of Ethics as the Study of NingenChapter Two The Method of Ethics as the Study of NingenPart II. The Fundamental Structure of Human ExistenceChapter Three The Everyday Fact as a Starting PointChapter Four Individual Moments Making Up Human ExistenceChapter Five The Element of the Whole in a Human BeingChapter Six The Negative Structure of a Human BeingChapter Seven The Fundamental Law of a Human Being (The Basic Principle of Ethics)Part III. The Spatio-Temporal Structure of a Human BeingChapter Eight Private and Public ExistenceChapter Nine The Spatiality of a Human BeingChapter Ten The Temporality of Ningen SonzaiChapter Eleven The Mutual Relation of Spatiality and TemporalityChapter Twelve The Acts of NingenChapter Thirteen Trust and TruthChapter Fourteen The Good and Bad of Ningen: Guilt and ConscienceAppendix: Correspondence with Yuasa YasuoInterpretive Essay: Strands of InfluenceRobert E. CarterNotesGlossary of Japanese TermsBibliography of Works About WatsujiIndexes