- 著者
-
田村 均
TAMURA Hitoshi
- 出版者
- 名古屋大学文学部
- 雑誌
- 名古屋大学文学部研究論集 (ISSN:04694716)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.56, pp.1-24, 2010-03-31 (Released:2010-05-21)
This report deals with the results of a questionnaire about four historico-philosophical concepts:
“modernity”, “tradition”, “individualism”, and “the will”. The questionnaire was designed to make it
appear what attitudes or evaluations Japanese people had toward these concepts. It was filled out by
more than five hundred Japanese college students. The results are this: the majority of them hold that
contemporary Japan is a modern society but that it more or less belongs to the Eastern tradition; they feel
that individualism is something nice; and, most important, they think that an individual can have several
Ishi (wills) simultaneously. It is a common presupposition in English that one does not have wills. Nearly
ninety percent of Japanese college students, however, take it for granted that there can be plural Ishi (the
Japanese counterpart of “the will”) at one time in one person. They may not believe that it is the one
and only Ishi (the will) that makes decision and chooses the best course of action among options. They
may have quite a different scheme of explanation of decision making from that which English speakers
naturally presumes to be valid. Hopefully, a new perspective for the explanation of human action will be
obtained through a comparative study of the Japanese concept of Ishi with its English counterpart.