Nishi Amane - Meiji Philosopher

Meiji Philosopher

Nishi returned to Japan in 1865, and was an active participant in the Meiji Restoration. He promoted contact with the West and Western intellectualism because he feared that in the long run, a domestic resistance to modernization and change in relation to contact with the West would be more destructive to Japan than any plausible repercussions of contact with the West. While abroad, Nishi became enthralled with Western Philosophy and discerned that this intellectual pursuit subsisted at the foundation of Western civilization, and thus upon his return, he aimed to spread the Western Philosophy he came into contact with in order to help bridge the intellectual gap between the East and the West. Nishi brought back to Japan the philosophies of positivism, utilitarianism and empiricism, which he transmitted through his writing, lectures and participation in Mori Arinori's Meirokusha, and contributed numerous articles to its journal. Through Nishi’s transmissions, positivism was able to thrive in Meiji Japan because it gave the Japanese people a chance for stabilization and understanding in a society and culture that was undergoing rapid revolutionary change. To Nishi, positivism was the Western counterpart to Eastern practical studies (jitsugaku), with an emphasis on a hierarchy of knowledge similar to that of Confucianism. Nishi’s translations of utilitarianism were also taken to well during the restoration period because utilitarianism promotes the social over the individual, which is a concept that is easily reconcilable with a Confucian-trained mind in Meiji Japan. Utilitarianism also assisted Japanese modernization because Nishi and others have applied it to the justification of an industrial and commercial economy. As for empiricism, Nishi and the rest of the Yogakusha intellectuals became leading figures in the Meiji Enlightenment (bummei kaika, i.e. "civilization and enlightenment" ), in which they promoted empiricism and practical studies instead of abstract reasoning in order for each person to attain an understanding of truth.

In 1868, Nishi translated and published "International Law". He also published an encyclopedia, The Hyakugaku Renkan, patterned after the French encyclopedia of Auguste Comte, while promoting the teachings of John Stuart Mill. Nishi’s encyclopedia essentially classified and categorized the intellectual realm of Western civilization, including topics such as literature, natural sciences, mathematics, theology, and politics. One of Nishi’s most significant topics in his encyclopedia was the importance of the study of history, as he believed history was an objective, scholarly discipline that was necessary for the understanding of all human relations and interactions. In this way, learning should not just be for learning’s sake, as it does not serve a greater purpose if it is just to learn. This argument stood in direct contradiction to the Confucian denial of the study of history as a progress of human events. Subsequently, the most distinguished topic of Nishi’s encyclopedia is his elaboration on philosophy. Nishi split the study philosophy into numerous subtopics, citing logic as the most important. He rejected the deductive method traditionally used by Confucian scholars in favor of inductive logic as a more scientific way of learning. In 1873, Nishi helped to found Japan’s first scholarly society for solely academics (and not politics) known as the Meiji Six Society. The goals of this society were to educate and enlighten the people because they believed Japan needed an enlightened populace in order to understand and live up to its political and moral responsibilities of modernization and restoration. Nishi felt that if the new state were to become enlightened as it should be, there would be no more conflict between political and scholarly obligations within the Meiji Six Society, and within Japanese society in general. Nishi was unique in this society in that he maintained a view of Japanese modernization in which he reconciled traditional Confucianism with Western Philosophy and pragmatism together in order to ascertain the correct path for Japan to take.

In his Hyakuichi-Shinron, published in 1874, he went so far as to reject Confucian ethics altogether as no longer appropriate for Japan, but was careful not to reject Japanese heritage. This publication was an original piece of Nishi scholarship that dealt with two main topics: the separation of politics and morals, and the distinction between human and physical principles. In regards to the first topic, Nishi felt that the later Confucians who presumed that self-cultivation was all that was necessary for ruling society were wrong, but that the original Confucians who proclaimed that the morality taught had practical application in society were right. What is more is that Nishi portrayed Confucius as a teacher of politics with a sideline of morality. Nishi attempted to sever the philosophical connection between morality and politcs because he thought that although they obtained the same objective – to better people’s lives – they used different methods to obtain this objective, stemming from his belief that rightness was at the base of law, whereas goodness was at the base of morality. To Nishi, morality is an omnipresent thing existing within every human activity, but law is strictly limited to its defined aspects of human relations. Though morality must rely on the law within politics to keep order, it is morality, rather than the law, that will eventually penetrate and shape the people’s minds and values. Nishi concludes this first topic with the idea that when it comes to civilization, politics is the machinery and morality is the lubricant that is responsible for keeping the machinery running and in tact. In the second topic, Nishi determines, for the first time in the East, the relationship and differences between human principles and physical principles. He discerns that physical principles and laws are a priori prerequisites for the existence of society, whereas human principles and laws are a posteriori devices derived from these physical principles and laws. Because human principles are a posteriori, they have infinite possibilities of distinctions and greater flexibility in premonitions. Nishi considers morality and law to be human principles; however, that does not mean that he deems morality man-made; rather, there are feelings (not unlike the Mencian Sprouts) that exist in all humans, and it is up to human will to act upon those feelings of morality that are constant in human nature. What Nishi’s discernment led to was the first expression in the East that human society was not, in fact, a product of the invariable structure of the universe. In this way, Nishi opened up room for humans to divert the inevitability of the social hierarchy.

In Jinsei Sampo Setsu (1875) he urged all Japanese to seek the goals of health, knowledge and wealth, or what he called the “three treasures,"in place of Confucian subservience and frugality. In order for society to maintain a balance of these three treasures, Nishi felt that individuals should not disrespect others’ treasures, and that individuals should assist others in acquiring their treasures, thus, if the three treasures were honored and preserved, all of society would be independent and free. Moreover, Nishi thought that the Japanese government should be responsible for promoting the pursuit of these three treasures in society as well, and in turn, the political and national strengthening within the Meiji Enlightenment would not require Western rule or governmental tactics. Nishi promoted that if policy were structured based on enhancing general happiness through an equal balance of domestic enforcement of law, diplomacy and military defense of society, encouragement of industry and finance, and obtainment of the state’s own three treasures, this would be the key to good government.