Re-examining Contemporary Ethics from its Origins

2017/02/01

Not many universities in Japan have a Major in Ethics. The existence of the Major in Ethics in the Faculty of Letters at Keio University is a legacy of when the Department of Philosophy was established according to the traditional academic divisions of philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. While philosophy primarily deals with theoretical themes such as cognition and existence, ethics addresses questions of how people should live and how society should be. While the question of how one should live is often thought to be a matter of individual values, ethics is, in fact, a highly theorized and objective academic discipline.

As an undergraduate student, I was interested in the field of applied ethics. This is a field that considers how to apply ethical theories to contemporary society, seeking to elucidate social issues such as bioethics, poverty, and inequality from an ethical perspective. In my case, however, before tackling such issues, the words of my academic advisor—who told me to first acquire the theories that would serve as a standard for my thinking—prompted me to begin studying the philosophy of law and political philosophy of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Law is not concerned with how individuals should live, but with the legitimacy of social decision-making and institutions. Understanding this distinction is also extremely important when examining contemporary issues.

Kant expressed the tasks of philosophy with three questions:

“What can I know?”

“What should I do?”

“What may I hope?”

By considering these three questions, Kant ultimately sought to answer the question, “What is a human being?” Indeed, through his own ethics, Kant attempts to show what kind of being a human is. Due to various social factors such as the emergence of regenerative medicine and AI, and globalization, our views on humanity and society are being shaken. As a result, it has become difficult to foresee how we should live as human beings. In this sense, I believe that Kant's philosophy and ethics, which provide clues for thinking about “What is a human being?,” hold great significance.

Furthermore, in the contemporary era, many thinkers such as John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas proclaim themselves successors to Kantian philosophy, while on the other hand, other active philosophers seek to establish new theories by thoroughly criticizing and overcoming Kant. In this way, Kant's thought has become one of the wellsprings of contemporary philosophy and ethics, and it can be said that it is indispensable when asking “What should I do?” today.

In the Major in Ethics, we place special importance on dialogue with thinkers through their classic works. This means not simply memorizing or revering the words of thinkers as historical facts, but bringing to light from within their words the “processes” and “methodologies” for how to perceive and think about the human way of life. Many of these processes and methodologies are not relics of the past but are still widely used today. I believe the great advantage of the Major in Ethics is the ability to systematically learn and think deeply about diverse ways of thinking and values concerning life and society.