Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Climate, Sustainability And The Space Of Ethics

2010; Routledge; Volume: 15; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13264826.2010.497181

1755-0475

Jin Baek,

Chinese history and philosophy

Abstract In sustainability, climate is mostly understood as a collection of scientific data of natural phenomena. Confronting this tendency, this article has two aims. First, it explores a distinctive notion of climate by Tetsuro Watsuji in order to illuminate climate as a concrete form of bond in which "who we are"—the subjective human experience—is indivisibly intertwined with the natural phenomena. Second, following Watsuji, this article elucidates the inter-personal nature of climatic experiences to establish communal sharing as an ethical basis for sustainability. Concretizing the argument, this paper investigates the space of ethics as embodied in Japanese vernacular and contemporary houses. Notes 1. Tetsuro Watsuji, A Climate: A Philosophical Study, trans. Geoffrey Bownas, Ministry of Education Printing Bureau, 1961, p. v. 2. Watsuji, A Climate, p. v. 3. The full title of the 1935 book was Fūdo: ningengakuteki kōsatsu, which today might be translated "Climate: an anthropological study". 4. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 171. 5. This criticism was most famously articulated in Edward Said, Orientalism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. 6. Watsuji, A Climate, p. v. 7. For the significance of "Ort" in Heidegger's philosophy, see, for instance, Gjermund Wollan, "Heidegger's Philosophy of Space and Place", Norwegian Journal of Geography 57, 1 (2003): 31–39. 8. Bruno Taut, Fundamentals of Japanese Architecture, Tokyo: Kokusai bunka shinkokai, 1936, p. 15. 9. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 1. 10. Watsuji, A Climate, pp. 39–40. 11. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 14. 12. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 4. 13. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 135. 14. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 200. 15. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 200. 16. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 198. 17. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 198. 18. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 199. 19. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 200. 20. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 200. 21. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 135. 22. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 134. 23. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 201. 24. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 203. 25. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 203. 26. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 203. 27. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 135. 28. Watsuji, A Climate, pp. 137–138. 29. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 202. 30. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 137. 31. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 8. 32. Tetsuro Watsuji, Watsuji Tetsuro's Rinrigaku, Ethics in Japan, trans. Yamamoto Seisaku and Robert E. Carter, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996, p. 9. 33. According to William LaFleur, who situated Watsuji's ethical thinking within the Mahayanan Buddhist tradition of emptiness, this rejection of the priority of the individual to create a dialectic between the individualistic and the societal and relational aspect of the human being bases its ground upon Nagarjuna's idea of "co-dependent origination". William LaFleur, "Buddhist Emptiness in the Ethics and Aesthetics of Watsuji Tetsuro", Religious Studies 14, 2 (June 1978): 245, 247; Tetsuro Watsuji, Rinrigaku, vol. 1, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963, p. 107. 34. Nihon no Toshi Kūkan, Tokyo: Shokokusha, 1999, pp. 42–43. 35. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 135. 36. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 141. 37. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 144. 38. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 144. 39. Ritsuko Ozaki and John Rees Lewis, "Boundaries and the Meaning of Social Space: Study of Japanese House Plans", Environmental and Planning D: Society and Space 24 (2006): 93; Joy Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society, London, New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 47–48; Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 21–31. 40. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 145. 41. Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1966, p. 140. 42. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 202. 43. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 161. 44. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 144. 45. Ozaki and Lewis, "Boundaries and the Meaning of Social Space: A Study of Japanese House Plans", p. 95. 46. Tadao Ando, "New Relations between the Space and the Person", The Japan Architect (November– December 1977): 44. 47. Tadao Ando, "From the Sumiyoshi House to the Townhouse at Kujo (Sumiyoshi no nagaya kara kujo no machiya e)", Shinkenchiku 58 (July 1983): 173. 48. Tadao Ando, "New Relations between the Space and the Person", p. 44. 49. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 200. 50. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 199. 51. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 199. 52. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 135. 53. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 134. 54. Watsuji, A Climate, p. 135.