武士道の代表的書とされる『葉隠』が世に広まったのは太平洋戦争直前、「忠臣蔵」はサラリーマン化した武士への庶民の面当て、卑怯な考えとして『孫子』を忌避した新井白石、殉死は江戸時代初期の異常現象―。太平記 、甲陽軍艦といった古典から橋川文三、三島由紀夫まで、武士道がいかに歪曲・誤解されてきたのかを様々なエピソードを交えて解説する、思いもよらぬ事実が満載の本。.

この国の人々は選択的に外の思想を受け入れつつ、あるべき人間とは何かという問いを立ててきた。ではその根底にあるものは何だろうか。思想史を俯瞰してそれを探るには、日本の内と外の両側から眺める視点が必要であ る。そしてそのような内と外の意識こそ、古代からこの国で綿々と受け継がれてきたものだ。神話時代から現在までの各時代の思想に、外部的視点からの解釈を押し通すのではなく、内在的視点をもって丹念に光を当てる。 一人の思想史家による、初めての本格通史。.

This book addresses the philosophical question of "What is landscape?" From the birth of the genre of "landscape painting" in the 16th century, Western culture has valued landscapes in terms of their "picturesque" or "painterly" qualities. The creation of the "English landscape garden" was influenced by landscape painting, and "picturesque travel," which became popular in England in the 18th century, sought to recreate the experience of viewing landscape paintings in nature. 1. The book labels this view of landscape that seeks (...) the epitome of landscape in "picturesque" images reminiscent of landscape painting as "the aesthetics of spectacular scenery," traces its genealogy from the late 16th century to the early 19th century, and reveals its "anti-modern" character. 2. It asserts that the "aesthetics of spectacular scenery" is a dystopia of "hortus conclusus," drawing upon John Ruskin's criticism of the "picturesque." 3. The book then clarifies that landscape must be defined not as an "image," but as the "horizon." The "horizon" is the periphery of our consciousness, always present yet somehow perceived. However, certain stimuli draw our attention to this non-thematic object of consciousness. When the non-thematic becomes unexpectedly thematic, the landscape appears to us as the very "thing that was the horizon." The landscape is not an image or a physical structure. To experience a landscape is to receive "what was the horizon" exactly as it is given and to experience it in the context of the world as a whole. (shrink)

In the present paper I try to show that ethical principles of medical activities in general can be adequately applied to medical activities for the patient in his terminal stage. For this objective, I shall argue first what are the principles and rules of medical activities in general, and then show how these can be applied to palliative medicine.

A comparative analysis was made of the public's attitudes toward the use of animals in scientific research in 15 different nations. The intensity of opposition to animal research was found to vary from relatively low levels in Japan and the United States to much higher levels in France, Belgium, and Great Britain. More women than men were opposed to animal research in all 15 nations. Scientific knowledge, or the lack of knowledge, was not found to have a consistent relationship with (...) attitudes toward animal research. Concern about the environment was found to be related to opposition to animal research in some western European nations, in particular West Germany. Cluster analysis was used to group the nations into four patterns based on intensity of opposition, level of opposition, gender differences in opposition, and the relationship between attitudes toward animal research and both environmental concern and scientific knowledge. (shrink)

A comparative analysis was made of the public's attitudes toward the use of animals in scientific research in 15 different nations. The intensity of opposition to animal research was found to vary from relatively low levels in Japan and the United States to much higher levels in France, Belgium, and Great Britain. More women than men were opposed to animal research in all 15 nations. Scientific knowledge, or the lack of knowledge, was not found to have a consistent relationship with (...) attitudes toward animal research. Concern about the environment was found to be related to opposition to animal research in some western European nations, in particular West Germany. Cluster analysis was used to group the nations into four patterns based on intensity of opposition, level of opposition, gender differences in opposition, and the relationship between attitudes toward animal research and both environmental concern and scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This paper presents what the authors call the ‘divergence problem’ regarding choosing between different future possibilities. As is discussed in the first half, the central issue of the problem is the difficulty of temporally locating the ‘active cause’ on the modal divergent diagram. In the second half of this paper, we discuss the ‘second-person freedom’ which is, strictly, neither compatibilist negative freedom nor incompatibilist positive freedom. The divergence problem leads us to two hypothetical views (i.e. the view of single-line determination (...) and that of one-off chance), and these views bring humans closer to the afree side – i.e. outside of the contrast between being free and being unfree. The afree side is greatly different from the ordinary human side. This paper tries to secure the second-person freedom as a substitute for the ordinary human freedom while preventing the divergence problem from arising. (shrink)

The issue of distributive justice receives substantial amount of attention in our society. On the one hand, we are sensitive to whether and the extent to which people are responsible for being worse off. On the other hand, we are mindful of society’s worst-off members. There has been a debate over luck egalitarianism, which relates to the former concern, and relational egalitarianism, which echoes the latter. By investigating the psychological processes of these two concerns, this paper examines the reliability of (...) the argument that Elizabeth Anderson, a renowned relational egalitarian, presents against luck egalitarianism and for relational egalitarianism. It also considers whether it is possible to support luck egalitarianism and relational egalitarianism simultaneously, using an online experiment. The results of the experiment show that, first, for ordinary people, the luck consideration is as important as the basic capabilities consideration. Second, while real people consider the degree of compensation through the factors of causality and responsibility, the lack of basic capabilities directs them to determine how much victims of bad luck should be compensated. This suggests that pluralist egalitarianism is on the right track. (shrink)

In the performing arts, such as music and dance performances, people actively interact with each other and show their exciting performances. Some studies have proposed that this interaction is a social origin of the performing arts. Some have further investigated this phenomenon based on the synchronization and coordination theory. Though the majority of these studies have focused on the collaborative context, several genres of the performing arts, such as jazz sessions and breakdance battles, have a competitive context. Several studies have (...) suggested that, in this competitive context, performers actively interact with each other and construct some correspondence. Moreover, a few recent studies focusing on competitive conversations, such as debates, have shown that, compared to people's interactions in collaborative conversations, people in competitive contexts frequently coordinate their behaviors in complicated ways. However, the interaction and coordination among performers in these competitive contexts have not been sufficiently investigated. Therefore, we investigated the coordination of expert breakdancers in battle scenes and measured their rhythmic movements using a motion capture system. We calculated the relative phase of the rhythmic movements between two dancers to investigate their coordination. The results showed that the dancers' rhythmic movements tended to synchronize in an anti-phase fashion, which means that there were similarities as well as differences between the two dancers' rhythmic movements. Furthermore, this pattern of coordination changed dynamically as time elapsed, from an in-phase synchronization or leader-follower relationships to an anti-phase synchronization and then leader-follower relationships. (shrink)

The trolley problem is a classic thought experiment that evokes an ethical dilemma. Thomson’s “bystander” and “footbridge” versions of the trolley problem induce different intuitive judgments about what to choose in the ethical dilemma. However, we can question how robust these intuitive judgments are. We thus conducted an online survey experiment of Thomson’s versions of the trolley problem which showed that more respondents tended to choose not pulling the lever in the bystander version and pushing a person off the bridge (...) in the footbridge version when they believed they were not being watched. These results illustrate that people’s decisions deviate from the social norms in the absence of the public’s attention. To activate the practice of holding the manufacturers to a normative expectation based on the social norms, we suggest the law must be changed. (shrink)

The visual world of animals is highly diverse and often very different from the world that we humans take for granted. This book provides an extensive review of the latest behavioral and neurobiological research on animal vision, highlighting fascinating species similarities and differences in visual processing. It contains 26 chapters written by world-leading experts about a variety of species including: honeybees, spiders, fish, birds, and primates. The chapters are divided into six sections: Perceptual grouping and segmentation, Object perception and object (...) recognition, Motion perception, Visual attention, Different dimensions of visual perception, and Evolution of the visual system. An exhaustive work in range and depth, How Animals See the World will be a valuable resource for advanced students and researchers in areas of cognitive psychology, perception and cognitive neuroscience, as well as researchers in the visual sciences. (shrink)