日本近世思想の合理と非合理

Abstract

It has been admitted that the early modern period in Japan was the time when the secularrational ideas developed gradually and they became the bases of modernity. It was the reason why such rational ideas became the main topics in the research of the thought of early modern Japan. In truth, irrational ideas were shared among the early modern people which could not be resolved in rationality and it became the subject of the philosophical theories how to deal with such problems. This article discusses the problem in the following way. 1. I introduce the terms ken (the manifest field) and myō or mei (the hidden field) for discussing the problems of rationality and irrationality. ken means the field of the persons and things which are interpreted by the rational languages and it makes the publicity. On the contrary, myō is the field of the dead, gods and Buddhas who are not explained by the rational languages. It is thought that ken became broader and broader in the process of modernization. It is true, but myō did not disappear. It is not correct to see the early modern and modern period only from the standpoint of rationality. Ⅿyō was transformed and remained important, no matter how rationality developed highly. 2. In the early half of the early modern period, it was Buddhism which had the central role for the relation with myō. In contrast to Confucianism, that had the standpoint of secularrationalism, Buddhism taught samsara (cycle of rebirth) of past, present and future lives. It offered the basis of secular ethics because it taught that good deeds in this life lead to the happy state in the next life and bad deeds lead to the unhappy state. This theory of rebirth was taught in the works of kana zōshi. Suzuki Shōsan (1579‐1655) was the representative writer of kana zōshi of this type. He was a monk of Sōtō sect and the leading philosopher in the early Tokugawa period. After Shōsan, Shiryō gedatsu monogatari kikigaki (The record of a story of the salvation of the dead soul) was the representative story of the salvation of the dead soul at the end of the seventeenth century. 3. While the creative activity of Buddhism was stopped in the latter half of the early modern period, a new movement of Shinto arose and developed Japanese native ideas. Masuho Zankō (1655‐1742) was a forerunner of this movement. He taught that the basis of human activities was love of male and female and emphasized the irrational aspect of human activities which cannot be reduced to rationality. The idea of love as the basis of human activities was succeeded by the founder of kokugaku (Japanese national studies) Motoori Norinaga(1730‐1801). However, the clarification of the world of myō was insufficient in their works. It was Hirata Atsutane (1776‐1843) who developed a new idea on this problem. He thought that the world of the dead was not different from the living and both the dead and the living were together in this same world. His ideas gave a great influence upon the movement of sonnō jōi (reverence for the Emperor and the expulsion of foreigners) in the nineteenth century and the driving power of Meiji restoration. For this reason, Japanese modernity also depended upon the irrational aspect myō of the world.