Abstract

This paper re-envisions the personhood of severely disabled children, who are often excluded from the category of human beings in the academic literature due to their perceived lack of mental faculties, based on Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro’s concept of human beings (ningen). It begins with Carl Elliott’s claim that personhood should be used as a thick ethical concept. This concept has two features. First, it represents a fusion of fact (describing someone as a person) and value (taking an ethical attitude toward a person). Second, it is embedded in our rich and culturally specific forms of life. This paper suggests that Watsuji’s concept of ningen also has these features. Watsuji criticizes how Western ethicists take individual consciousness or will as their starting point for determining personhood. Instead, he argues that neither a subject nor a community exists as an entity in itself, but that the relationality between them (aidagara) is essential to their identity and that our communication is embedded within rich and social contexts. Through his etymological study of Japanese word ari, Watsuji points out that in making statements, one both discloses the world and becomes aware of the attitude one should take toward other beings. Some commentators, such as Sakabe Megumi, have suggested that such self-awareness entails the transformation of our sense of relationality. This paper leverages Watsuji’s concept of ningen to re-envision the relationship between caregivers and severely disabled children as relationality-based and therefore open to complex and rich communication.

摘要

本文基于日本哲学家 Watsuji Tetsuro 的人类概念（ ningen），重新设想了严重残疾儿童的人格，这些儿童由于缺乏智力而在学术文献中经常被排除在人类范畴之外。它始于卡尔·埃利奥特（Carl Elliott）声称人格应该被用作一个厚重的伦理概念。这个概念有两个特点。首先，它代表了事实（将某人描述为一个人）和价值（对一个人采取道德态度）的融合。其次，它植根于我们丰富且具有文化特色的生活形式中。本文提出了 Watsuji 的人间概念也有这些特点。Watsuji 批评西方伦理学家如何将个人意识或意志作为确定人格的起点。相反，他认为主体和社区本身都不是作为一个实体存在的，而是它们之间的关系（aidagara）对于他们的身份至关重要，并且我们的交流嵌入在丰富的社会背景中。通过他对日语单词ari的词源学研究，Watsuji 指出，在做出陈述时，一个人既可以揭示世界，也可以意识到自己应该对其他生物采取的态度。一些评论家，例如坂部惠，认为这种自我意识需要改变我们的关系感。本文利用了 Watsuji 的概念ningen将照顾者和严重残疾儿童之间的关系重新设想为基于关系的关系，因此可以进行复杂而丰富的交流。