For the Politics of “Demand”, Not for the Ethics of “Conversion”

The ethos and the emotion found in the heart of Hanazaki's (1932～) thought and philosophy seem not only to be supported by Buddhistic perspective of the world and life, handed down within the spiritual tradition of Japanese culture, but also have something to do with animistic view of nature. This article was aroused by my “dissent and suspicion” about Hanazaki's basic stance of his thinking which came out clearly in his Identity and the philosophy of Coexistence (Hanazaki, 1993). It was the stance he took in his intellectual strife with the discrimination and coexistence since 1970s. Hanazaki has been tackling from a critical point of view with the issues of anything modern, anything Japonistic and also the sectionalism and dogmatism of Marxism, He thus tried to open up a new sphere of thought, ideal and value. Whether the ethics of coexistence of people and the people-ness could be the end of his lifelong critical thinking about the concept of the modern? I am going to discuss as follows. The first issue is about his idea of the world of coexistence within which the “people” are idealized, universalized and even naturalized, However, whether the idea of “people” which means the collective subject of the oppressed could imply the reality of the people who suffer from the discrimination in the actual world? Although he advocates “to become people” and “the ethics of conversion” would not he weaken the very foundation for anti-discrimination rather than he could change this complex reality, entangled with competitive various values? Secondly, I am trying to consider Hanazaki's ethics from a different perspective rather than the modern concept of human rights. What underlies his ethics seems to be the idea of equality from the Buddhistic view of the world which forms the origin of Japanese spirit. It is the world where everyone stands equal before the divine “Bosatsu”: that is the idea of “the thought of conviction (Hongaku-shiso).” In the third place comes the discussion on “the world of Person” and “I as the third Person.” I wonder if the idea of the first Person of “I as the third Person,” which Hanazaki proposes as the foundation of the identity of the coexistence and the sympathy among human beings, could allow the existence of “others”. Consequently this idea might simply mean the world of self-identity of the subject. Therefore my question here turn out to be: whether his world could open its way to the second person relationship between I and others, or may it lead us to the relationship between I and God as in Christianity in Hanazaki's sense