The Source of Ethicality On the Role of "Enlightment"in Watsuji's Ethics

In this essay, I consider the relationship between ethicality (compassion) and the enlightenment of Buddha as described in Watsuji Tetsuro's Buddhist research. My aim is to demonstrate that this idea can be found in his major ethical writings. It has been freqeuntly noted that within Watsuji's ethical writing he makes use of his Buddhist research at various points. However, there is little detailed research which touches on their relationship from the perspective of ethicality. In this essay, I consider what it means that Watsuji's ethics is completed by taking Buddhist compassion as a model of good and evil, and conscience as its base. First, to clarify the point at issue, I provide an exegesis of the basic arrangement of good and evil in Watsuii's ethics, as well as of their presupposition, namely, Watsuji's "human being" as subject. By 'human being, ' Watsji understands diverse modes of existentially cooperative being. Next, I consider what kinds of problems regarding ethics and good/evil may arise within Watsuji's proposed subject as 'human being'. In Watsuji's ethics, the good and evil of actions, as well as our conscience, are taken as things determined by their relation to emptiness as the origin of human being. But why is emptiness the origin of ethics? I consider this while introducing Buddhist compassion, which is thought to be the origin of Watsuji's conception of ethics. At last, I show that Watsuji interprets the origin of Buddhist ethicality to be compassion, a comprehending of emptiness which eliminates the distinction between the suffering of the self and other and directs one to extinguishing the suffering of the other. What Watsuji concerned himself with in his own Buddhist research was finding Madhyamaka's (Nagarjuna) teaching of emptiness and the Gautama Buddha's teaching to be logically consistent, and, from there, making sense of Buddhism as an ethics. Finding Buddhist essence as ethical by explaining the contents of Buddha's enlightenment through the emptiness of Nagatjuna is indicative of Watsuji's extremely Mahayana Buddhist stance