1. Birth of the Western Ethics and Libertarianism
How can human-beings become good? How can the life of human-beings become good? These two essential questions have arisen since Socrates invented his philosophy as the fundamental basis of the Western ethics. Plato, Socrates’s student, developed his teacher’s philosophy to offer a more structured ethical theory which explains about an ideal nation human-beings can live in an ideally good way. He claimed to design and construct a complete structure of politics and economics which command all human-beings to do what they have to do (Duty) and gain (Reward). Their duty varies across their ability, and their reward varies across their merit contributing the whole political and economic system. In order to enable human-beings to live in an ideal life style, they are supposed to have their own loyal reason for something productive they wish if they could achieve in their long term. This was the birth of the Western political philosophy.
Aristotle, Plato’s student, focuses more on understanding human-beings themselves and their inevitable human nature. Unlike his teacher, he was sceptical about instructing all human-beings to do what the system supposes each of them to do. So, he rather claimed to let them do think, decide, and act freely owing to their natural desire, talent, and life situation. Plato’s command politics and economy are fragile against the unpredictable spontaneously occurring changes of natural environments, technological advancement, and norms and values. Instead of suggesting all human-beings to share the common reason to pursue collectively, he argued that all different human-beings, i.e. individuals, must proactively look for and find out their own reasoning to live themselves.
Human-beings always suffer from an inevitable barrier of ignorance so that there is no human beings who can be in charge of controlling their living environment in a perfectly productive way. Furthermore, the human-beings themselves are also unpredictable and not precisely known. So, they need to study and know more about their own natural characteristics and quality rather than assuming they have already known. Then, they had better let the natural flow determine the natural optimum condition, and then let human-beings compete and cooperate, rather than command and obey, to determine their life path. Thus, he suggested to just let human-beings do freely by adapting their constantly changing natural environments and follow their basic rules they have to compete fairly and cooperate familiarly. Then, eventually, the natural equilibrium will provide them with their suitable duty owing to their ability and rewards owing to their merit. Then, they become competent to become active, self-determined, sincere, intellectual, and productive.
Aristotle argued that, even though human-beings are ignorant and unstable, they have their innate essential ability to know how to live well. Virtue is their good way to live, and virtuous ones are those who live in this way. The definition and conditions of virtue change across different times, places, and occasions, but the existence and its fundamental essence will still always stay with virtuous humans. What they only need is the helpful tip to advise them how to pursue in their virtue. Thomas Aquinas, a devote follower of Aristotle, affirmed that Christianity ought to modify itself to be this tip. Islamic philosophy of teaching how to live virtuously in its own unique way was inspired by Aristotle’s virtue ethics. These religious teachings influenced by Aristotle regard that human-beings should voluntarily do good instead of being commanded by the other.
The voluntary will should be the main engine for human-beings to live virtuously, and ethics and religions should only be the basic but essential principle for them to always remember to refer back to. These thoughts have been invented and developed in the occidental world (The Western and the Middle Eastern areas). Since Aristotle and his followers inspired human-beings to start thinking highly of the voluntary will, humans in the occidental world have been enlightened to realise that each different human-being ought to have her/his own voluntary will and thoughts. This was considered as the main cause of the event that the concept of “individual” emerged in the occidental world.
Since this idea of virtue i.e. good living was spread out, people living in various savage tribunal communities have been emancipated from the irrational mysticism and the brutal traditions. The light of virtue ethics has awaken all humans’ spirit from the darkness of their ignorance about the virtue and the freedom. Since savages living in these tribes started knowing their life is not just to live to die, they have realised that they should have something noble to pursue and aspire in their life. Since the concept of virtue and voluntary will was known by them, they have become “individuals” who have their own spirit detached from the dark mystic illusion, and then become able to have a free voluntary will to choose their own virtuous life style.
This idea of promoting the free voluntary will under the virtuous ethical principle has been retained by the modern Western ethics. John Locke invented the new form of ethics which would be suitable for the new age of the modernity with a fast technological progress. The virtue required in the norm and the value in this modern age significantly different from the ancient and the medieval. Therefore, he realised that the different progressive forms of ethics needed to emerge. In addition, Scottish enlightenment has emancipated humans from the dogmatism which used to be dominant in the human world, and created the new study of economy called economics based on humans’ voluntary will and virtue.
Afterward, there was a big surprise in this world which was the birth of the nation called America. This nation was built upon the ideal objective of promoting humans’ free voluntary will to develop and maintain their own nation without either any autocratic monarchy or oligarchy commanding them. As Rousseau explained, Athenian democracy was oligarchic was tyrannically oligarchic. So, up to the contemporary time period, American democracy could be the first liberal democratic nation which had ever been established.
America was not bound by the old traditionalism and rigid norm and value imposed by a hereditary monarchy, the oppressive centralised oligarchy, and the mysticism believed by irrational tribunal savages. Therefore, America and her people could establish their ideal nation based on their aspiring virtuous free voluntary will from scratch. This American ideal is called liberty, and America was born as a nation of liberty. Liberty is the combination of the wisdom retained from the ancient Western philosophy and the enlightenment in the modern Western political philosophy and economics. American people’s aspiration of living not only to simply live and die but also to live as virtuous beings seeking something good and productive as well as establishing and maintaining their ideal free nation. This loyal reason has been named Libertarianism since American people started calling their ideology of reincarnating this American original ideal objective.
2. No individuality, No ideal of liberty in Asian politics and culture
Asia of this world is materially thriving, and overwhelming the West for their strength in the high material productivity. There have already been many remarkable forms of sophisticated civilisation in Asia, and their cultural influence is equivalently strong and attractive enough to compete with the occidental counterpart. The unique long history of their mature culture and their strong family tie with each other has also sustained the stability of their civilisation which is essential for the growth in the material prosperity.
Nonetheless, by means of their level of happiness and freedom, they do not seem to be well off. Even though they have become materially well off, majority of people there do not seem to enjoy their satisfactory life. Even though they have adapted and become familiar with economics invented in the West, their community and mentality seem to still be governed by the feudalist kind of static norm and value and lack their devotion to their ideal objective.
Someone would claim that Buddhism is the Asian original enlightening philosophy inspiring human-beings to live virtuously and their enlightenment to perceive their individuality. However, Buddhism opposes individuals protesting against the oppression, and then suggests them to tolerate the oppression against them in the terrestrial (substantial) world. In Buddhism, they can obtain individual liberty but only in their spiritual level so that its pursuit of happiness is extremely limited to the spiritual level and not extended to their material and substantial life. Therefore, it has hardly motivated individual human-beings to provoke a revolution to reform their politics and personal life to liberate their living environment.
Confucianism is limited to maintaining the stable institutional structures such as family and smooth political and business administrations, and so neglects about individuality of human-beings. The similarity of Confucianism to the occidental philosophy is that it encourages human-beings to believe in the ideal political objective providing majority human-beings with a stable peace environment and a material prosperity. By contrast, Confucian objective does not take account of each individual human’s happiness and the virtue of their political establishment. Confucianism suggests individual human-beings to be always ready to sacrifice themselves for sustaining their belonging institute. Various injustice is highly tolerated or even promoted in order to sustain the existence of these institutes and deserving for their interests in Confucian ethics. All in all, Confucianism is beneficial to preserving the stability but severely lacks the notion of individual liberty which is critically necessary for the progress of the human world.
The majority of people there seem to be just let to live i.e. there is no voluntary will to live for the reason of seeking individual liberty. These minority elites also seem to just live and die without seeking their alternative life style better than they are enjoying now. The history has shown that these elites are too servile to keep their own autonomy with their strong will. So, without nobly resisting against the invasion, they easily start obeying the powerful invaders who conquer them and their land and are willing to sacrifice their ruling majority people for the interest of their new rulers. All in all, they seem to have only their interests and primary desires, and lack their belief in their proud sovereignty and noble ideal objective.
The power balance between the majority people and the minority elites in Asia is also important to know. Although, predominantly, the minority elites have been the ruling class taking an advantage of politics ruling the majority people, the interest of the majority people has certainly been influential to the whole politics. There are two different ways affecting their politics and culture: The one seen in the old feudalism and many current modern Asian nations.
In the feudalism and still in many modern Asian nations, whenever some political havoc threatened the ruling minority elites for the loss of their ruling power, the favour of the majority people suddenly became important to determine which side, the status quo or the new ruling elites would win over the conflict. All in all, whenever the elites of the ruling class are replaced by the newly emerging elites, their political structure and its cultural influence are completely switched from the old one to the new one. The important aspect is that the essential quality of both the old and the new characteristic is identical even though their characteristic is different from each other.
In the current modern Japan, the interest of Japanese mobs, the Japanese majority, is the dominant factor determining political and cultural trends there. Japan is one of very few nation controlled by the tyranny by mobs. Because there is neither tradition nor political ideology attached to both politics and elites’ characteristics, the interest of the mobs’ own primary desire and family interest are the main motive of politics and their personal life.
One of this causes of Japan’s tyranny by mobs is that Japan has historically been the remarkably diversified civilisation. So, there is no aristocrats whose family has been dominated over centuries. In addition, the charisma of Japanese monarchy is weak, despite its fame for having survived since the establishment of Japanese civilisation, due to the two historical reasons. Firstly, the time that Japanese monarchy held the actual political power was long. During the Shogunate feudalism, from 12th century to 19th century, although Japanese monarchy was known to be the official head of Japan, various Samurai clans held the real political power. Secondly, the responsibility of Japanese monarchy before the end of the World War 2 was heavy enough to dramatically lose its charisma which used to be strong during 19th and 20th century. All in all, the mobs’ interests are not attached to any monarchy or aristocrats in Japan. These aspects are ones of the causes inducing the tyranny by mobs in Japan.
Having mentioned about these cultural, historical, and political characteristics of these civilisation forms in Asia, politics, culture, and personal life styles tend to be determined by the mere interest of groups in Asia. The interest is based on the mere primary desire; it does not seem to be based on their belief in an ideal objective or a strong will of individuals. No reason of pursuing in individual liberty has emerged from Asia. Asians have partially adapted the concept of individualism and liberty from the West, and some nations have succeeded in the overwhelming material growth. Nevertheless, their material growth does not seem to grow furthermore without copying the technology and the management knowledge from the West. Asia still seems to lack the reason of believing in their ideal objective and the attitude of respecting individual liberty. Both the reason and individual liberty are critically important for encouraging the further inventions, innovations, and the invincible will to overcome the challenging limit of the growth, and more importantly for providing human-beings with their own happiness.
3. The rise and fall of Japanese Westernisation
Japan has been seen as one of the successful Westernised Asian nations and has been the only one developed independent Asian nation. There was a certain time period that Japan adapted the strong political objective and some enlightened Japanese (Not many), who aspired to pursue in their virtuous life, existed. Unfortunately, it was not a liberal politics encouraging individual liberty even though there was a strong principle of seeking an ideal political objective and a virtuous life. But, it has enabled Japanese to form their modernised politics and promoted individual citizens’ property right and the civil liberty to the certain extend. Then, from the Meiji establishment period to the end of 20th century, the reformers of Japan have temporarily succeeded in the rapid growth and the quasi-Westernisation.
Japanese political advocates of modernising Japan were eager to learn all the advanced technology and the mentality of the contemporary Western strongholds. At that time period, the Western colonisers threatened Japan for their conquest under the name of opening Japan for the international trade. Then, these enlightened Japanese attempted to reform Japan to transform it to be able to compete with the Western strongholds militarily and commercially. Therefore, they adapted the technology and the knowledge about the Western philosophies for encouraging their economic and cultural development and the contemporary Confucianism of the Continental Asia for keep their political stability.
This is why the Western philosophy and Confucianism are the fundamental backbone of Japan from Meiji to Showa periods (19th century to 20th century). So, even majority of the self-proclaimed Japanese conservative nationalists misunderstand this aspect. They tend to assume that their believing political philosophy is the Japanese original. However, the contemporary Meiji restorers were the advocates of the modernisation who thought that replacing the traditional Japanese feudalism and mass culture with the Western ideas and the Chinese Confucian disciplines.
In particular, when they form the government and legal structures, they frequently referred to Prussian politics and its basis the Neo-Roman law which follows the Legal Positivist ethics. This means that, even though the contemporary Japanese intellectuals and government officials simply copied the forms of the contemporary European politics, they could learn about the contemporary European legal positivist politics and ethics. The Legal Positivism contains intensively important essences for individual liberty such as the property right, the fair justice based on the equity law, the free trade contracts between individual citizens, and rational reasoning processes to follow ideal objectives.
The efforts of these Japanese advocates of the Westernisation have encouraged the rapid growth of modern Japan. The Western ethics combined with the wisdom of the Confucianism have stabilised and accelerated Japanese industrialisation and rationalisation of Japanese political administration. Because Japan had never been colonised, Japan could use their full national resources for their own development without being exploited by any foreign colonisers. Then, the contemporary Japanese intellectuals could enjoy their plenty time and resources to invest for their national developing plans. The contemporary Japanese entrepreneurs and politicians were so eager to learn the advanced Western national policies and ethics that Japan could become the first world nation at once.
Nevertheless, the critical and inevitable difference between the Western nations and Japan is that the Western ethics is only understood by the minority members of Japanese. The majority mass are ignorant about the virtue of the Western ethics. These mass have only been happy to enjoy the development of their material prosperity grown by the economic and political development lead by the minority elites in Japan since the beginning of the Westernisation. So, for the political decision makings, these Japanese mass have always been reliant on what the elite members of their living country. Therefore, individual sovereignty has never born among the majority mass in Japan. Japanese mass tend to think that their mindless hard labour without creative innovation can still sustain a stable fast economic growth, and the foreign diplomatic deals are not their business to consider about. They seems to be little interested in their own voluntary innovation and the rational decision making processes in their own foreign affairs.
When Japanese economic and military power became strong enough to compete with some of the Western nations, Japanese mass became recklessly arrogant enough to be under the illusion that Japan could defeat the Western nations. This illusion has taken place in Japan twice: The first time was the military aggression and the second time was the economic over-expansion. These fanatic phenomena were provoked by the pressure of Japanese mass.
Since the end of Japanese feudalism, there has been neither a charismatic sovereign nor a convincing ethical principle instructing these majority mass, their primary desire and the irrational whim based on their mysticism and superstition has been dominating over their mind. So, as soon as their material living standard is improved, they start looking for an event they can vent their irrational frustration on.
These Japanese mass should be called the mobs forming their tyranny. When they become well off enough to feed themselves, they start claiming for furthermore wealth without taking consideration of exchange of their wealth with their cost and responsibility. Then, they demand their government officials to fulfil their irresponsible desire with their overwhelming pressure of the tyranny by mobs. This has induced various political and economic overheats, and then eventually the severe downfalls.
The individual responsibility, which is required for the development of individual liberty, has yet never been developed in a nationwide scale in Japan. The majority of mass only irrationally mourn about their stagnating economy and their political corruption. They do not seem to feel responsible about their choice reflecting their own national economics and politics. This proves that Japanese economy and foreign diplomatic power were not endogenously grown. Majority of Japanese are still not competent enough to develop their economy and politics with their voluntary will. Under this condition, Japan will keep being stagnated. The other emerging Asian nations will also follow the same severe downfall and the long stagnation unless they learn from Japan’s failure.
* Ref:
The Objective Standard: Aristotle Versus Religion
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2014-spring/aristotle-versus-religion/
