Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:34:57.740Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Marsilius of Padua and Ogyu Sorai: Community and Language in the Political Discourse in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Takashi Shogimen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The article explores a cross-cultural approach to the history of political thought. With reference to Maruyama Masao's classic equation of fourteenth-century European scholasticism with eighteenth-century Japanese Confucianism, a comparison between Marsilius of Padua and Ogyu Sorai reveals, behind their ostensibly similar “communal functionalist” outlook, their contrasting views on the role of language as a medium for political communication. Marsilius believed in human's associative power by means of such linguistic communication as oratory and discussion, whereas Sorai underrated speech to favor government by ritual. This contrast has repercussions for the two traditions of political thought in Western Europe and Japan. The exalted status of speech in political communication constituted a mainstream of late medieval and early modern political discourse in Western Europe, whereas the Japanese Confucian idea of government by ritual survived until the mid-nineteenth century when it clashed with European thought then being imported into Japan.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , Summer 2002 , pp. 497 - 524
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I wish to thank Mr. Stephen M. Conway for his help during the preparation of this essay. I have benefited immensely from conversations and electronic communications with Professor Koichiro Matsuda. I am also heavily indebted to Professor Cary Nederman for his valuable advice and constant encouragement. Finally, I am grateful to anonymous reviewers for The Review of Politics for their useful comments.

1. Dallmayr, Fred, “Introduction: Toward a Comparative Political Theory,” in Border Crossings: Toward a Comparative Political Theory, ed. Dallmayr, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999), pp. 1–2Google Scholar.

2. For the description of the names of Japanese individuals, I follow the Japanese convention: family name precedes first name.

3. Masao, Maruyama, Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Hane, Mikiso (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar. This work was first published in Japanese under the title of Nihon Seiji Shisoshi Kenkyu by the University of Tokyo Press in 1952Google Scholar.

4. This is the title of Gordon Leff's classic introduction to late medieval European intellectual history. Leff, Gordon, The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook: An Essay on Intellectual and Spiritual Change in the Fourteenth Century (New York and London: Harper and Row, 1976)Google Scholar.

5. Maruyama, , Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, chaps. 1 and 2Google Scholar.

6. For example, Janet Nelson, a leading historian of early medieval European politics, maintains that ‘[Fritz] Kern's ritualistic and unchanging medieval law, the famous ‘good old law’ that could only be found, not made, is a myth’ (Nelson, Janet, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Politics [London: Hambledon Press, 1986], p. 62Google Scholar).

7. See, for example, Tsuguo, Tahara, Tokugawa Shisoshi Kenkyu [Studies in the Intellctual History in Tokugawa Japan] (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1967)Google Scholar; Ryoen, Minamoto, Tokugawa Gorishiso no Keifu [A Genealogy of Rationalism in Tokugawa Japan] (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1972)Google Scholar; and Hiroshi, Watanabe, Kinsei-Nihon-Shakai to Sogaku [Early Modern Japanese Society and the Sung Learning] (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

8. Maruyama Masao, “Nihon Shisoshi ni okeru ‘Koso’ no Mondai [The Problem of “the Ancient Layer” in the History of Japanese Thought],” in Maruyama, , Maruyama Masao Shu [The Collected Works of Maruyama Masao], vol.11 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996), pp. 179–81Google Scholar.

9. A useful discussion on the problem surrounding Japanese historiography can be found in Sebastian Conrad, “What Time Is Japan? Problems of Comparative (Intercultural) Historiography,” History and Theory 38 (1999): 67–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Conrad discussed Maruyama at pp. 79–81.

10. Dallmayr, , “Introduction,” p.1Google Scholar.

11. This is not to deny, to be sure, that Maruyama's outlook made the history of Japanese political thought accessible to those who did not have any knowledge of it, thus opening the way for a dialogue between historians of Western and Japanese political thought. Also, his insight into the paradox that the disintegration of Chu Hsi Confucian rationalism and the consequent rise of antirationalism was a necessary historical condition for the Japanese reception of Western rationalism would have been impossible without his reference to the intellectual history of later medieval Europe.

12. Fred Dallmayr pointed out that “‘border crossings,’ or interactions between Western and ‘non-Western’ societies and cultures, revolved today around the normative status and acceptability of Western ‘modernity’” (Dallmayr, , “Introduction,” p.3Google Scholar). In his journalistic works, Maruyama, a leading modernist in postwar Japan, indeed defended “the normative status and acceptability of Western ‘modernity.’” Maruyama's academic endeavor, however, was, as I have discussed, rather an historical investigation into the intellectual preconditions of “modern” Japan. His research interest gradually shifted to identifying the distinctly Japanese pattern of transforming imported ideas, Buddhist, Confucian, or Western, which he called “the archetype,” “the ancient layer” or “basso ostinato” of Japanese intellectual history. Euben, Roxanne L. discussed the problem of Western “modernity” in the context of Islamic political thought: see her “Mapping Modernities, ‘Islamic’ and ‘Western’,” in Border Crossings, pp. 11–37Google Scholar, and Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

13. Marsilius of Padua, Defensor pacts, ed. Previté-Orton, C.W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928)Google Scholar. It has been translated into modern English: Marsilius of Padua, The Defensor Paris, trans. Gewirth, Alan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

14. For further biographical details, see Pincin, Carlo, Marsilio (Turin: Edizioni Giappichelli, 1967)Google Scholar.

15. For Bendo and Benmei, I referred to the texts in Kojiro, Yoshikawa et al. , eds., Ogyu Sorai (Nihon Shiso Taikei, vol. 36) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1973)Google Scholar. The select translations in modern Japanese in Masahide, Bito, ed. Ogyu Sorai (Nihon no Meicho, vol. 16) (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1983)Google Scholar are also useful. The recent English translation of Bendo and Benmei, had it not been so inaccurate, would have been a hugely important contribution to the study of comparative intellectual history. See Najita, Tetsuo, ed. and trans., Tokugawa Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar. W. J. Boot highlighted a few passages that were erroneously translated (“Approaches to Ogyu Sorai: Translation and Transculturalization,” Monumenta Nipponica 54 (1999): 247–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar), but the list of such passages should be substantially longer than Boot suggested. Professor Koichiro Matsuda kindly drew my attention to this review article.

16. On Sorai's life, see Bito, , ed., Ogyu Sorai;Google ScholarTakehiko, Noguchi, Ogyu Sorai (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1993)Google Scholar, and above all, Naoaki, Hiraishi, Ogyu Sorai Nenpuko [A Biographical Study of Ogyu Sorai] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1984)Google Scholar.

17. Kokugaku (the National Learning) is an intellectual movement of studying Japanese ancient texts such as Kojiki (Record of Ancient Events) and Nihon Shoki (Chronicle of Japan) with a distinctively historical approach, which shaped a unique language of Japanese identity. This movement was led by such thinkers as Keichu (1640–1701), Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769), Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) and Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843). Perhaps the best introduction to Kokugaku in English is Nosco, Peter, Remembering Paradise: Nativism and Nostalgia in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Marsilius of Padua looms large in the textbooks of the history of medieval political thought. See Burns, J. H., ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c.350–c.1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Black, Antony, Political Thought in Europe, 1250–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Canning, Joseph, A History of Medieval Political Thought, 300–1450 (London: Routledge, 1996)Google Scholar and Coleman, Janet, A History of Political Thought from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)Google Scholar.

19. See Quillet, Jeannine, La philosophie politique de Marsile de Padoue (Paris: J. Vrin, 1970)Google Scholar and Wilks, Michael, “Corporation and Representation in the Defensor pacis” Studia Gratiana 15 (1972): 251–92Google Scholar.

20. See Rubinstein, Nicolai, “Marsilius of Padua and Italian Political Thought of His Time,” in Europe in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Hale, J. R., Highfield, J. R. L., and Smalley, B. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), pp. 44–75Google Scholar; Gewirth, Alan, Marsilius of Padua and Medieval Political Philosophy, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951)Google Scholar; and Skinner, Quentin, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

21. See especially Nederman, Cary, Community and Consent: The Secular Political Theory of Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995)Google Scholar.

22. Black, Antony, Guilds and Civil Society in European Political Thought from the Twelfth Century to the Present (London: Methuen, 1984), p. 86Google Scholar.

23. Defensor pacis, I, iii, pp. 9–11Google Scholar.

24. Ibid., I, iii–iv, pp. 11–14

25. Mulgan, R. G., Aristotle's Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 20–22Google Scholar.

26. Nederman, , Community and Consent, pp. 53–55Google Scholar. It has been debated whether Marsilius severed the idea of the realization of the virtuous life in the political community from the Aristotelian idea of a sufficient life. Against Jeannine Quillet's classic interpretation of Marsilius as a loyal heir of Aristotelian political philosophy (see for example, Quillet, , La philosophie politique and “L'Aristotélisme de Marsile de Padoue et ses rapports avec l'averoïsme,” Medioevo 5 (1979): 124–42Google Scholar), Cary Nederman argued that the Aristotelian “higher ideals of friendship and the moral and intellectual virtues are almost entirely filtered out of the Defensor pacis” (Nederman, , Community and Consent, p.53Google Scholar). Recently Janet Coleman criticized this understanding of Marsilius as a preacher of “minimalist” politics for being “extremely misleading” (Coleman, , A History of Political Thought, p.144Google Scholar).

27. As translated in English by Alan Gewirth (Defensor Pacis, p.12Google Scholar).

28. Defensor pacis, I, iv, p.13Google Scholar.

29. Nederman, , Community and Consent, pp. 32–38Google Scholar.

30. Ibid., p.38.

31. Coleman, , A History of Political Thought, p. 143Google Scholar.

32. As in Gewirth's translation, p. 5.

33. Coleman, , A History of Political Thought, p. 143Google Scholar. Cf. Nederman, , Community and Consent, p. 57Google Scholar.

34. Scholarly works on Sorai's political thought in Japanese are abundant. Secondary literature in non-Japanese languages include McEwan, J. R., The Political Writings of Ogyu Sorai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962)Google Scholar and Ansart, Olivier, L'empire du rite: La pensée politique d'Ogyû Sorai, Japon, 1666–1728 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Translations of Sorai's political works include Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings;Google Scholarlidin, Olof G., Ogyu Sorai, Distinguishing the Way (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1970)Google Scholar; Minear, Richard, “Ogyu Sorai's Instructions for Students: A Translation and Commentary,” Harvard journal of Asiatic Studies 7 (1977): 5–81Google Scholar; and Yamashita, Samuel Hideo, Mister Sorai's Responsab (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

35. Bendo, pp. 16–17Google Scholar. The quotation is from Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 10Google Scholar. References to Najita's translation in the footnotes do not necessarily suggest that I have cited it; where appropriate, I have modified his translation.

36. Bendo, p. 17Google Scholar. Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 10Google Scholar.

37. Mulgan, , Aristotle's Political Theory, p. 14Google Scholar. Although recent scholarship largely shares this view, some experts hold that Sorai's view of human nature was antisocial, and indeed Hobbesian. See Tetsujiro, Inoue, Nihon Kogakuha no Tetsugaku [The Philosophy of the Japanese Study of Ancient Confucian Classics] (Tokyo: Fuzanbo, 1918), pp.633–37Google Scholar; Junsei, Iwahashi, Sorai Kenkyu [A Study of Sorai] (Tokyo: Seki Shoin, 1934), pp.274–78Google Scholar, and most recently Yasushi, Ogata, “Sorai to Shakai Keiyaku” [Sorai and Social Contract], Nihon Bungaku 40 (1991): 78–81Google Scholar. I am grateful to Professor Koichiro Matsuda for these references.

38. Sorai, Ogyu, TomonshoGoogle Scholar [Answers to Questions], in Bito, , Ogyu Sorai, p. 328Google Scholar.

39. Ibid.

40. Maruyama, , Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, p. 87Google Scholar.

41. Bendo, pp. 24–25.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

42. Benmei, p. 44.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 40Google Scholar.

43. Gakusoku [Rules of Learning], in Yoshikawa, et al. , Ogyu Sorai, p. 197Google Scholar.

44. Bendo, p. 24.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugazva Political Writings, p. 18Google Scholar.

45. To be sure, however, the ways in which Marsilius and Sorai arrived at this conclusion are obviously different. The Marsilian justification for diverse functional parts in the community was grounded in the diversity of ways in which human desire could be satisfied, not the diversity of human nature as Sorai maintained.

46. Bendo, p. 10.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 1Google Scholar.

47. Bendo, p. 12.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 4Google Scholar.

48. Maruyama, , Studies in the Intellectual History, especially pp. 92–102;Google ScholarMinamoto, , Tokugawa Gori Shiso, p. 82Google Scholar.

49. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, introduction, p. lxxi–lxxiiGoogle Scholar.

50. Bendo, p. 17Google Scholar.

51. Ibid., p. 18. Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 10Google Scholar.

52. Benmei, p. 48.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 43Google Scholar.

53. It has been debated among scholars whether Sorai's notion of the “Way” entails ethical connotations. Some historians maintain that Sorai severed the moral meaning from the concept of the “Way” and its derivative “Virtue.” For a brief review of the historiography of this debate, see Tsuguo, Tahara, Soraigaku no Sekai [The World of Sorai's Learning] (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1991), pp. 192–93, n.15.Google Scholar This historiographical issue forms an interesting parallel to the debate over Marsilius's treatment of the Aristotelian ideals of virtuous life. See above n.26.

54. Defensor pacis, I, xiii, pp. 59–61.Google Scholar Cf. Nederman, , Community and Consent, p. 78Google Scholar.

55. Bendo, p. 18.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 10Google Scholar.

56. Defensor pacis, II, xxii, (cited from Gewirth's translation, p. 308)Google Scholar

57. Nederman, , Community and Consent, pp. 88–91Google Scholar.

58. Defensor pacis, II, xix, p. 313Google Scholar.

59. Defensor minor, in Marsiglio of Padua, Writings on the Empire: Defensor minor and De translatione imperii, ed. Nederman, Cary J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 42.Google Scholar See also Padoue, Marsile de, Oeuvres mineures, ed. Quillet, J. and Jeudy, C. (Paris: CNRS, 1979), p. 260Google Scholar.

60. III Dialogus I, iii, 8–9Google Scholar, in Monarchia Sancti Romani Imperii, ed. Goldast, Melchior (Frankfurt, 1614; Graz, 1960), vol. 2, pp. 824–26Google Scholar.

61. At the heart of Ciceronian political and social philosophy is the idea that humans join together because of their natural powers of reason and speech. Cary Nederman argued that Marsilius's discussions of human association and conciliar infallibility were anchored in this Ciceronian emphasis on speech. See his “Nature, Sin and Origins of Society: The Ciceronian Tradition in Medieval Political Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1992): 3–26,Google Scholar reproduced in Nederman, , Medieval Aristotelianism and Its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, 12th–15th Centuries (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1997)Google Scholar.

62. Tomonsho, p. 327Google Scholar.

63. Bendo, p. 25.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 19.Google Scholar For Sorai, Mencius was no more than “chatty.” For Sorai's critique of Mecius, see Takehiko, Noguchi, Odo to Kakumei no Aida [Between the Princely Way and the Revolution] (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1986), chap. 3Google Scholar.

64. Bendo, p.25Google Scholar.

65. Ibid., pp. 26–6. Cf. Najita, , Tokugaiva Political Writings, pp. 19–20Google Scholar.

66. Bendo, p. 25.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 19Google Scholar.

67. Tahara, , Soraigaku no Sekai, pp. 58–65Google Scholar.

68. Bendo, p. 16.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 20Google Scholar.

69. Bendo, p. 26.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, p. 21Google Scholar.

70. Bendo, p. 32.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, pp. 27–8Google Scholar.

71. Benmei, pp. 70–71.Google Scholar Cf. Najita, , Tokugawa Political Writings, pp. 66–67.Google Scholar Sorai's distrust of speech has been noted but never been seriously studied in connection with his novel philology or his philosophy of language. See, for example, Kanshi, Imanaka, Soraigaku no Kisoteki Kenkyu [An Introduction to Sorai's Learning] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1966), p. 282;Google ScholarTahara, , Tokugawa Shisoshi Kenkyu (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1967), pp. 259–61;Google ScholarTahara, , Soraigaku no Sekai, pp. 54–55;Google ScholarKojiro, Yoshikawa, Jinsai, Sorai, Norinaga (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1975), pp. 79–80,129–31,182Google Scholar.

72. Confucius, , The Analects, trans. Lau, D. C. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 63Google Scholar.

73. Schwartz, Benjamin I., The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1985), p. 68Google Scholar.

74. Ibid.

75. Seiichi, Uno, Jukyo Shiso [Confucian Thought] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1984), p. 118Google Scholar.

76. Pocock, J. G. A., “Ritual, Language, Power: an Essay on the Apparent Political Meanings of Ancient Chinese Philosophy,” in Pocock, , Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (London: Methuen, 1972), pp. 42–79Google Scholar.

77. Watanabe, , Higashi Ajia no Oken to Shiso, pp. 28–35Google Scholar.

78. Ibid., pp. 22–27.

79. Ibid., p. 39.

80. Ibid., p. 41.

81. Seidan [On Politics], in Yoshikawa, et al. , Ogyu Sorai, pp. 339–43Google Scholar.

82. Tomonsho, pp. 333–35Google Scholar.

83. Naoaki, Hiraishi, “Soraigaku no Saikosei [A Reconstruction of Sorai's Learning],” Shiso 766(1988): 82–101Google Scholar.

84. Nederman, Cary J., “The Union of Wisdom and Eloquence Before the Renaissance: The Ciceronian Orator in Medieval Thought,” Journal of Medieval History 18 (1992): 75–95,CrossRefGoogle Scholar reproduced in Nederman, , Medieval Aristotelianism and Its Limits.Google Scholar

85. Viroli, Maurizio, Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86. Ibid., pp. 73–113.

87. Shogimen, Takashi, “William of Ockham and Guido Terreni,” History of Political Thought 19 (1998): pp. 524–9Google Scholar.

88. Thompson, W. D. J. Cargill, The Political Thought of Martin Luther (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984), p. 30Google Scholar.

89. Gary Remer has highlighted the role of speech in the context of the early modern discourse on toleration. See his Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

90. Soko, Yamaga, Yamaga Gorui [Collected Words of Yamaga] (Nihon Shiso Taikei, vol.32), ed. Tsuguo, Tahara and Junichiro, Morimoto (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1970), pp. 64–73Google Scholar.

91. Shundai, Dazai, Seigaku Mondo [Answers to the Questions on Sacred Learning] (Nihon Shiso Taikei vol. 37), ed. Tsutomu, Rai (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1972)Google Scholar.

92. Yasunori, Kojima, Soraigaku to Han Sorai [Sorai's Learning and his Critics] (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1987), pp. 135–53Google Scholar.

93. The relationship between language and politics in the political discourse in Tokugawa Japan is underresearched in modern scholarship, and so it has yet to be determined whether critics of Sorai and his disciples have totally failed to raise the problem of language and politics.

94. Yukichi, Fukuzawa, Autobiography, trans. Eiichi, Kiyooka (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 134Google Scholar.

95. For example, Yukichi's, FukuzawaBunmeiron no GairyakuGoogle Scholar (Outline of Civilization)—arguably his most scholarly work—begins with determining the rules for debates.

96. Claus Mueller, for example, wrote: “if the linguistic and cognitive capacities of an individual are sufficiently developed, he is able to engage in effective political communication” (Mueller, , The Politics of Communication: A Study in the Political Sociology of Language, Socialization, and Legitimation [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973], p.19)Google Scholar.