生長の家とは何だったのか？

現代において哲学者という存在は求められているのか

 

Essay: What (If Anything) to Expect

from Today's Philosophers

Friday, Jan. 07, 1966 

THERE is an old saying that philosophy bakes no bread. It is perhaps equally true that no bread would ever have been baked without philosophy. For the act of baking implies a decision on the philosophical issue of whether life is worthwhile at all. Bakers may not have often asked themselves the question in so many words. But philosophy traditionally has been nothing less than the attempt to ask and answer, in a formal and disciplined way, the great questions of life that ordinary men might put to themselves in reflective moments. 

The world has both favored and feared the philosophers' answers. Thomas Aquinas became a saint, Aristotle was tutor to Alexander the Great, and Voltaire was a confidant of kings. But Socrates was put to death, and Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. Nowadays, Historian Will Durant has noted, no one would think of doing that—"not because men are more delicate about killing, but because there is no need to kill that which is already dead." 

Philosophy dead? It often seems so. In a world of war and change, of principles armed with bombs and technology searching for principles, the alarming thing is not what philosophers say but what they fail to say. When reason is overturned, blind passions are rampant, and urgent questions mount, men turn for guidance to scientists, psychiatrists, sociologists, ideologues, politicians, historians, journalists—almost anyone except their traditional guide, the philosopher. Ironically, the once remote theologians are in closer touch with humanity's immediate and intense concerns than most philosophers, who today tend to be relatively obscure academic technicians. No living U.S. philosopher has the significance to the world at large that John Dewey or George Santayana had a generation or two ago. Many feel that philosophy has played out its role in the history of human culture; the "queen of sciences" has been dethroned. 

Once all sciences were part of philosophy's domain, but gradually, from physics to psychology, they seceded and established themselves as independent disciplines. Above all, for some time now, philosophy itself has been engaged in a vast revolt against its own past and against its traditional function. This intellectual purge may well have been necessary, but as a result contemporary philosophy looks inward at its own problems rather than outward at men, and philosophizes about philosophy, not about life. A great many of his colleagues in the U.S. today would agree with Donald Kalish, chairman of the philosophy department at U.C.L.A., who says: "There is no system of philosophy to spin out. There are no ethical truths, there are just clarifications of particular ethical problems. Take advantage of these clarifications and work out your own existence. You are mistaken to think that anyone ever had the answers. There are no answers. Be brave and face up to it." 

日本は「超大国」を目指すのか

Evening Lecture | Paul Kennedy: The Three Great Naval Wars of Recent History...

 

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Japan From Superrich To Superpower

As its economic strength hardens into political muscle, Tokyo confronts the dilemma of how and when to use its might

By John Greenwald      Monday, July 04, 1988 

At a time of constant warnings that the U.S. is in decline, Japan, above all other nations, is conspicuously on the rise. "There's no reason that Japan won't continue to grow," says Yale History Professor Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. "Its economic drive is pushing it toward center stage." 

アメリカの衰退が叫ばれるなか、日本は他のどの国よりも上昇気流に乗っている。

「日本が成長し続けないという理由はない。」と、エル大学の歴史学教授で「大国の興亡」の著者ポルケネディは言う。「日本は、その経済力によって舞台の真ん中に踊り出ようとしている。」

Most experts agree. "The American century is over," says Clyde Prestowitz, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration and author of Trading Places: How We Allowed Japan to Take the Lead. "The big development in the latter part of the century is the emergence of Japan as a major superpower."

大半の専門家も同じ見方だ。「アメリカの世紀は終わった。」というのは、レガン政権で商務副次官を務め、「日米逆転、成功と衰退の軌跡」を著したクライドプレストウィッツ。「今世紀後半の大変化は、日本の超大国としての台頭だ。」

 

  

But what kind of superpower will Japan be? How quickly will the country's economic strength turn, as it eventually may, into political muscle? How will the Japanese use that newfound might, and what are the consequences for its closest ally, the U.S.? Can Japan become a truly powerful nation without acquiring a military capability that would frighten and antagonize its friends and neighbors and violate its own constitution? Will the world see a Pax Japonica 25 years from now, or will Japan the banker form a partnership with America the policeman to create a sort of Pax Amerippon?

 

だが、日本はどんな超大国になるのか。

日本の経済力は、どれだけ早く政治力に変わるのか。

その新たな力を日本はどう使い、その結果、最大の同盟国アメリカはどんな影響を受けるのか。

友好国と近隣諸国を脅かして敵に回し、憲法にも違反する軍事力を持つことなしに、日本は真の強国になれるのか。

世界は今から二十五年後にパックスジャポニカを目にすることになるのか。

それとも、銀行ニッポンが警察アメリカと手を組んで、「パックスアメリポン」を生み出すことになるのか。