The Formation and Fluidity of Moral Subjectivity
Religion establishes a standard for good and evil by the commands
of God, whereas rinrigaku establishes a foundation for morality with scientific principles.
—Inoue Enryō, An Outline of Ethics, 1887
As the new discipline of ethics began to emerge out of the social disruption and moral disorientation of early Meiji, it contended with reli- gion for the authority to speak for “the good.” At stake in this contest between ethics and religion was the human interiority. To what extent, if at all, should the state play a role in shaping the individual’s moral conscience? Rinrigaku schol- ars argued that if the state is barred from such a role, moral unity will never be realized. For many religious apologists, on the other hand, the autonomy of one’s conscience was inviolable. This struggle over interiority was carried out in the form of competing representations of religion. Rinrigaku academics sought to expel religion from legitimate ethical inquiry and to establish ethics as an academic discipline guided by reason and scientific principles. By represent- ing religion as irrational and as socially harmful and thereby undermining its ethical claims, rinrigaku asserted its own rationality and social utility. In this way, rinrigaku strove to establish for itself a space of legitimacy from which to critique alternative ethical views and the truth-claims upon which they were based and, vested with the authority of “science,” to become the dominant arbi- ter of the good and the true. Religious apologists, of course, contested these representations of religion.1 In hopes of enhancing the legitimacy of their own
positions, Buddhist and Christian apologists drew upon the same authorita- tive conceptual vocabulary woven throughout the language and methods of academic ethical inquiry. Evolution, reason and rationality, the law of cause and effect, social utility—these concepts, each rooted in and drawing authority
from the epistemology of representation discussed in the preceding chapter, dominated early Meiji moral discourse. Few hoping to advance an authorita- tive moral theory could ignore them. Yet, as religious thinkers reconfigured their respective moral views so as to be consistent with the prevailing rules for legitimacy in moral discourse, they indirectly contributed to the author- ity of rinrigaku, if only by drawing upon the same conceptual vocabulary that
rinrigaku academics posited as the basis for legitimate moral discourse. More-
over, their engagement with rinrigaku and the broader epistemology of repre- sentation in which it was grounded transformed the religious moralities they struggled to defend. An examination of this encounter illustrates the (re)for- mation and fluid nature of moral subjectivity.2
Religion as Irrational
For scholars of rinrigaku, religion (shūkyō) was irrational and therefore inap- propriate as a basis for morality. To call religion irrational was to claim that it was “inconsistent with ri” (the laws governing the external realm of nature, and reason governing the internal realm of the mind).3 Thus, rinrigaku academics
asserted that religion’s truth-claims could not legitimately be called “knowl- edge” because they were inconsistent with the laws of nature (butsuri) and with the human faculty of reason (shinri).4
One of the clearest examples of the call to separate ethics from religion came from Inoue Enryō, one of Buddhism’s most articulate and prolific pro- ponents. As both a Buddhist apologist and academic moral philosopher (he defended Buddhism, as I will discuss below, but also attacked religion, in this case Christianity, as a basis for morality), Enryō provides an excellent example of the tension between science and religion. In Outline of Ethics (Rinri tsūron, 1887), Enryō called for an ethics entirely outside the realm of religion. While both religion and ethics, according to Enryō, concern the morality of the indi- vidual, “[religion] establishes a standard for good and evil by the commands of
God, whereas [rinrigaku] establishes a foundation for morality with scientific principles.” Enryō favored science, rather than the Christian God, as a basis
for morality. “Scholars of today,” he urged, “must endeavor to establish rinri as an academic discipline based on the rules of science, making it one type of pure science.” 5 He therefore applauded efforts of Western scholars to establish
a foundation for morality without relying upon religion (shūkyō), but remained dissatisfied with the way they continued to employ to some extent the supposi- tion of God (tentei) in their moral philosophy.
Enryō’s aim in Outline of Ethics was to establish an academic discipline of ethics that would be in accord with a scientific methodology and to replace
dōtokugaku with rinrigaku, that is, to replace Buddhism, Confucianism, Tao-
ism, and Christianity with the science and philosophy of the West. His ethics reflect the authority that utilitarianism and evolutionism held in early Meiji. “The aim of life,” Enryō stated, “is the complete happiness of self and other.” The promotion of happiness, then, according to Enryō, must be the standard for the distinction between good and evil. He supported his arguments with references to the law of natural selection and the law of evolutionary competi- tion, in much the same way as Inoue Tetsujirō and Katō Hiroyuki.6
In fact, many academics opposed the Christian doctrine of creation to the “scientific law” of evolution. Katō Hiroyuki, the thinker primarily responsible for the introduction of social Darwinism into Japan, referred to “the survival of the fittest [yūshō reppai]” as “a universal law that is eternal, unchanging, and constant.” 7 By contrast, “the doctrine that a creator had . . . created all things in
accord with certain objectives,” he argued, “is not the result of experimenta- tion.” According to Katō, this doctrine was “directly at odds with the doctrine of causality [ingashugi]” and therefore “could never be espoused by anyone who is cognizant of the empirical laws governing all things in the universe.” 8 For
Katō, then, truth results from experimentation and is consistent with the laws of nature.
The early writings of Inoue Tetsujirō provide another example of this emphasis on the need for a morality based upon the “unchanging laws of nature.” In his New Theory of Ethics, Inoue proposed a theory of ethics based upon evolutionism, arguing that the law of survival of the fittest means that only those who strive after their own moral and intellectual improvement survive.9
He attacked Christianity’s truth-claims as an unsubstantiated basis for morality, asserting that with the rise of evolutionary theory, “the dawn has broken for the first time” on the “mistakes” and “falsehoods” of Christianity. Christian beliefs were “false” because, as Inoue asserted, “they cannot be proven.”
I must laugh at religious apologists who often tell in detail of the conditions of the next life. Think for a minute. Why would God create people, then lead good people to heaven and cast evil people into hell? What purpose would God have for doing this? What benefit would He derive? The religious try to answer this by saying that the mind of God cannot be grasped by human knowledge. But saying that God bestows rewards and administers punish- ments upon the dead is an idea produced by the religious themselves. In terms of scholarship, this cannot be proven.10
Like Katō, Inoue’s primary critique of Christian knowledge concerned the doc- trine of creation, as this directly contradicted the laws of cause and effect, and evolution. “It is reasonable,” Inoue asserted, “that the condition of the universe is such that there was a cause that gave rise to the beginning of the world. To claim this is not so is the same as saying that for an effect there is no cause, and this runs counter to the laws of science.” 11 “Evolution theorists,” Inoue stated,
“explain the impossibility of things coming into being all at once as asserted in the Bible. With this, religionists . . . fear that, if the theory of evolution is accepted, religion will be torn apart because its ethics will be seen as lacking in authority.” 12 Here, Inoue draws a clear connection between truth-claims sup-
ported by evidence and the authority a social ethic can be seen to possess. These texts uphold proof established through experimentation and scholarship, and an agreement with the laws of nature and the methods of science, as requisites for the verification of truth-claims.
In response to these attacks on the doctrine of creation, some Christian apologists, rather than contesting evolutionary theory, argued that evolution in no way undermined the basic tenets of Christian belief. J. A. Ewing, for exam- ple, a professor at Tokyo University, maintained that evolution was only a par- tial explanation of the world, and that behind evolution lay the design of God. We are wrong, he stated during a Methodist lecture series in 1883, to believe that we know how a thing was produced when we can merely explain how it has grown.13 Yet Christian apologists had to fend off not only rinrigaku attacks but
the criticisms of Buddhists as well.
A common strategy among Buddhist apologists seeking to defend Bud- dhism was to appropriate the conceptual vocabulary legitimized by rinrigaku and use it to deflect the rinrigaku critique of religion onto Christianity alone. Inoue Enryō, for example, equated the Buddhist doctrine of cause and effect, or karma (ingasetsu), with “the scientific principle of conservation of energy.” 14 A
similar example can be found in A New Discourse on Buddhist Morality (Bukkyō
dōtoku shinron, 1888) by Buddhist historian Murakami Senshō (1851–1929).
“For every cause there is an effect and every effect has a cause—this is a uni- versal rule that includes all things. . . . [I]t is a natural law of heaven and earth with a direct connection to ethics.” 15 Murakami aligned the Buddhist notion
of karma with evolutionism and was thereby able to call Buddhism’s theory of cause and effect (karma) “a true religion that is in agreement with the rules of philosophy and science.” He attacked Christianity and its doctrine of creation, calling it “a false religion that is inconsistent with the rules of philosophy and science.” 16 Murakami’s argument, contrasting karma and creationism, relied for
its effectiveness on linking karma to the law of cause and effect in evolution, hence Buddhism was in agreement with the rules of science.
Not all Buddhists, however, connected karma and scientific laws as closely as did Enryō and Murakami. Zen Buddhist Shaku Sōen (1859–1919), for example, abbot of Engaku-ji in Kamakura as well as a student in his younger days of Western learning under the direction of Fukuzawa Yukichi, struggled to retain the Buddhist connotations of this term during its reconfiguration as a scientific law.
In some ways, Sōen’s statements concerning karma seem to identify this Buddhist doctrine with the scientific law of cause and effect. In a paper titled “The Law of Cause and Effect, As Taught by Buddha” delivered at the World’s Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893, Sōen spoke of ingasetsu as a “law of nature.” Moreover, certain passages of his paper even resembled those in Katō Hiroyuki’s Reconsideration of Human Rights. He stated, for example, “There is no cause which is not an effect.” But Sōen’s notion of cause and effect only outwardly resembled the cause and effect of Katō’s evolutionary and scien- tific discourse. Cause and effect, as understood by Sōen, was clearly rooted in
samsara, the Buddhist notion of cyclic rebirth. Our present circumstances, our
abilities, shortcomings, and so on, Sōen maintained, all result from the actions of our previous existence. “We are here enjoying or suffering the effect of what we have done in our past lives. . . . [I]n future lives each one will also enjoy or suffer the result of his own actions done in this existence.” Morality was thus a matter of samsara and karma (i.e., ingasetsu). “Would you ask me about Bud- dhist morality? I would reply that in Buddhism the source of moral authority is the causal law. Be kind, be just, be humane, be honest, if you desire to crown your future! Dishonesty, cruelty, inhumanity will condemn you to a miserable fall!” 17
Shaku Sōen’s description of cause and effect indicates that not all Buddhists were prepared to simply identify it with “scientific law” (and thereby allow the term’s Buddhist connotations to be expelled). Katō, who in the early 1880s had appropriated the term inga to signify “cause and effect” in evolution, succeeded in de-legitimizing the Buddhist conception of cause and effect. Defending this term’s Buddhist connotation, for some Buddhist thinkers, was to defend the root of Buddhist morality.
Yet for Murakami, Buddhism required the authority of science and phi- losophy. Buddhism agreed with the rules of philosophy because, as Murakami maintained, it was itself a form of philosophy. “Although I seek the principle and standard of morality in the world of philosophy, these cannot be sought in Western philosophy or Chinese philosophy, much less in Christianity. These are things that need to be sought in Indian philosophy, namely, Buddhism.” 18
Murakami hoped to legitimize Buddhism by linking it to the authority of the term tetsugaku (a term first coined by Nishi Amane in the 1870s to refer to
Western philosophy). This had the further effect of distancing his own moral views from Christianity.
Murakami concluded his work on Buddhist morality with a list of moral standards for adhering to “a general morality for all humanity.” 19 He presented
a moral framework consistent with then-current utilitarian moral categories of altruistic and individualistic hedonism, asserting that moral standards should be directed at benefit to oneself and to others.20 He listed six “austerities” or
modes of conduct that were to serve as standards both for self-preservation and for fulfilling one’s duties to others: charity (fuse), adherence to the Buddhist injunctions (jikai), forbearance or resignation (ninjō), abstinence or diligence
(shōjin), meditation (zenjō), and wisdom (chie).21 It is telling that Murakami
equated this last austerity, chie (Sanskrit prajña), with the term dōri and explained chie as “the wisdom to choose to follow the good and avoid evil.” 22
For rinrigaku academics, dōri usually referred to the human faculty of reason that allowed one to distinguish between right and wrong. Murakami’s explana- tion of the term chie reflects the internalization of the authority and centrality of reason in the moral discourse of his time. Yet once a part of his moral system,
dōri becomes something other than what is was. Murakami redirects the power
of dominant moral discourse such that dōri, a term perhaps too important or authoritative for any moral theory at this time to overlook, is indeed addressed, but becomes a synonym for prajña.
The implementation of Murakami’s morality described above was primar- ily a matter of keeping in mind “the four blessings”: the monarch’s protection, a mother and father’s nurturing, a social livelihood, and the exhortation of the three treasures (of Buddhism, i.e., the Buddha, the sutras, and the priesthood). “If people keep these four blessings in mind and never forget them, then they will never exhaust their loyalty to the state, their filiality toward their parents, their affection toward society, and their respect for the three treasures. To keep these blessings in mind, is not this the essential point for the implementation of morality?” 23 In the end, the “essential point” in Murakami’s new Buddhist
morality, except for his fourth blessing concerning the three treasures, has little about it that is distinctly Buddhist.
Buddhist apologists also drew upon the authority of “scientific principles” to oppose those, like Nishimura Shigeki and Motoda Eifu, who would establish a morality for Japan based on the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius. Inoue Enryō argued that Confucianism had certain faults or shortcomings making it inappropriate as a foundation for ethics. “There are many shallow features of the morality of Confucius and Mencius that are not sufficiently considered in terms of reason (dōri).” 24 Enryō criticized Confucian ethics on a number of
originary good and evil in human nature (seizenakuron) it presented no fixed standard for good and evil, it inappropriately mixed politics and morality, and finally, it called for the imitation of an ancient morality and was thus not “for- ward looking.” These aspects of Confucian morality did not conform to the “rules of logic,” and consequently its theories could not serve as a foundation for the ethics of contemporary Japan.25 Murakami Senshō leveled similar criti-
cisms against Confucianism: “The theories of Confucius and Mencius explain the principles and foundation of morality on the basis of conscience as a gift from heaven. Such gift-from-heaven theories (tempuron) are contrary to the principles of philosophy and oppose the rules of the theory of evolution.” 26 Such
being the case, Murakami argued, “Confucianism cannot be a basis for estab- lishing a moral foundation through an appeal to the principles of philosophy, or for devising an ethics that conforms to social evolution.” He argued further that because the teachings of Confucius and Mencius prioritize an idealized past over the present, they are “inconsistent with today’s evolutionary society” and therefore cannot be a standard for morality.27 Nishimura Shigeki, whose own
moral views relied heavily on Confucian discourse, offered a similar critique of Confucianism to those listed above. Arguing against following the “Way of Con- fucianism” exclusively (as noted above), he stated, “Confucianism regards antiq- uity as good and the present as wrong, and demands on every occasion that we imitate the peaceful reigns of Yao and Shun and the Three Dynasties. . . . Under the present conditions of Japan, of course, it is not possible to imitate Yao, Shun, and the Three Dynasties, and moreover, we should not try.” 28
Enryō’s, Murakami’s, and Nishimura’s critiques of Confucianism, specif- ically their claims that it was inconsistent with reason, logic, and the needs of the progressive “evolutionary society” of the present, reflect an unmistak- able internalization of the same epistemology, terms, and concepts upheld by
rinrigaku scholars. Their statements show that, for them, only a moral founda-
tion consistent with reason and natural laws would be appropriate for a social ethic with which to order Japanese society.
Buddhist thinkers therefore contested the argument that all religions lacked any rational foundation. Inoue Enryō, for example, sought to demon- strate the “intellectual” character of Buddhism to the “people of the world” who, as he put it, “believe that religion does not go beyond supposition, and that the only thing based on reason (dōri) is philosophy.” 29 In A New Theory
of Religion (Shūkyō shinron, 1888), Enryō observed that people generally view
religion as something emotional, but, he claimed, “there is among religions a type that is intellectual.” He argued, “[O]f all the religions currently in the world today, only one—Buddhism—is an intellectual religion.” 30 For Enryō, the legiti-
the emotional. His attempts to refute the idea of Buddhism as irrational only further attest to the authority attached to the “rational.”
Dōri was also central to the moral theory of Nishimura Shigeki, a propo-