DOI: 10.5176/2382-5677_PYTT16.17
Authors: Kei Sasaki
Abstract:
Abstract—Both medically and legally, the definition of human “death” still remains vague in Japan today. Consequently, it is also difficult to say that the counterpart of that, human “life,” has been clearly defined. Even in cutting edge science such as molecular biology, the definition of “life” has not been settled at all. In these circumstances, “life” in science (medical science, biology, and others), and additionally in other contexts of medical treatment, law, ethics, religion, has been discussed in various meanings respectively. In this presentation, another context, Japanese literature, in which the Japanese words expressing life, “ 命”(Chinese character) and “ いのち= inochi” (indigenous Japanese syllabary) are used, will be the focus. What we will see from this investigation is the complex contexts surrounding the word “命= いのち (life),” not only in medicine and other academic fields included in the larger scientific context but also in the very complicated contexts of literature and language itself (as networks of concepts). At the same time, however, there may be the human possibility to go "beyond" suggested by the activities arising from the metabolism of the single-celled organism to the conscious activity of we humans, which is a kind of transcendence coupled with self-reflexivity. In all of the “contexts” listed above, going "beyond" the “individual” is a special feature of “命=いのち (life).” But within it lies the danger of making simplistic general explanations of totalitarianisms such as mystic ones that reject scientific criticism or, in the political world, nationalistic ones that reject democracy. In order not to fall into this trap, it is necessary to go "beyond" the modern theory of “self” from Western philosophy and search for a new way(s) of being human as life.
Keywords: life; philosophy; religion; beyond; context(s); transcendence; self-reflexivity
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