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Treating the Body Politic: The Medical Metaphor of Political Rule in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2008

Takashi Shogimen
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Abstract

The essay examines medical metaphors in the discourse on government from a cross-cultural perspective. Drawing on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of metaphor, a comparison of medical metaphors in the political writings in late medieval Europe (c. 1250–c. 1450) and Tokugawa Japan (1602–1867) demonstrates that the European notion of medical treatment as the eradication of the causes of diseases magnified the coercive and punitive aspects of government, while the Japanese notion of medical treatment as the art of daily healthcare served to accentuate the government's role of preventing conflicts and maintaining stability. These differing images of medical treatment metaphorically structured contrasting conceptions of government in the two historical worlds.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 70 , Issue 1: Special Issue on Comparative Political Theory , Winter 2008 , pp. 77 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2008

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References

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7 A good example of such comparison is Masao Maruyama's classic Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, trans. Mikiso Hane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974). A precis of it can be found in Shogimen, Takashi, “Marsilius of Padua and Ogyu Sorai: Community and Language in the Political Discourse in Late Medieval Europe and Tokugawa Japan,” Review of Politics 64 (2002): 497–523Google Scholar. A note on the descriptions of Japanese names: for the names of modern scholars, I followed the Western convention (forename first, surname last), whereas, for the historic personalities, I followed the Japanese convention (surname precedes first name).

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20 What I discuss under the category of “metaphor” in relation to medieval European political writings is, however, labeled by medieval philosophers as analogy (analogia). In medieval philosophy, metaphor is a comparison of concepts or terms, holding that something about one term has a similar property, or exactly the same property, as something about another term, while analogy, particularly as understood by medieval thinkers after Aquinas, is a metaphysical assertion about the referents of the terms, asserting a proportionality in the being holding between the two things the terms describe. The medieval conception of metaphor lacks ontological matching between the two relata when the relation is expressed; hence, metaphor is often associated with fallacious locutions. In the light of the training in Aristotelian logic at medieval universities, therefore, the medieval political thinkers I examine here were actually employing analogies rather than metaphors. However, exploring individual thinker's logical understanding of analogy and its relationship to the use of analogies in political writings is not within the scope of the present study: it pertains to the question of intentionality that does not fall within my methodological scope. Likewise, I shall not comment on Tokugawa Japanese political thinkers' views of analogies or metaphors. As far as I am aware, there is no modern literature on the Tokugawa Japanese understanding of metaphor or analogy.

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67 The medical experience of medieval political thinkers, of course, cannot be limited to medical knowledge taught and researched within the universities. Physicians, master surgeons, barber surgeons, and even a number of illicit practitioners were in practice. Marie-Christine Pouchelle notes that the public images of surgeons were associated with “blood and fire.” The surgeon was compared with the blacksmith; just as a smith wielded his white-hot pincers, so a surgeon used his cauterizing tools to keep away evil humors. Surgeons were also analogized with butchers and executioners. See Pouchelle, The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages, 69–74.

68 See Nederman, “Body Politics.”

69 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed. Nederman, V, ii, 67. The modern critical edition of the original Latin text is John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ed. C. C. J. Webb (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909). On John's organic metaphor, see especially Struve, Tilman, “The Importance of the Organism in the Political Theory of John of Salisbury,” The World of John of Salisbury, ed. Wilks, Michael (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 303–17Google Scholar and Nederman, Cary J., “The Physiological Significance of the Organic Metaphor in John of Salisbury's Policraticus,” History of Political Thought 8 (1987): 211–23Google Scholar, reprinted in Nederman, , Medieval Aristotelianism and its Limits (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997)Google Scholar.

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71 Ibid., V, ix, 81.

72 Ibid., V, ii, 67. cf. ibid., VI, xx, 125–26. This graphic representation of the political community as the human body proved highly influential; for example, the thirteenth-century republican Ptolemy of Lucca and the late fourteenth-century female political philosopher Christine de Pisan drew on John's organic metaphors in their political works: Ptolemy of Lucca, On the Government of Rulers: De Regimine Principum; de Pizan, Christine, The Book of the Body Politic, ed. Forhan, Kate Langdon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar. For Christine's use of bodily metaphors, see Forhan, Kate Langdon, The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), especially, chap. 3Google Scholar.

73 Cusa, De concordantia catholica, III, xli, 468–69.

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78 Ilza Veith ascribes the dearth of surgical practice in China before the arrival of Western medicine to “the Confucian tents of the sacredness of the body, which counteracted any tendency toward the development of anatomical studies and the practice of surgery.” Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wên: The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, 3. This may be the case with Tokugawa Japanese medicine.

79 Yoro, Takeshi, Nihonjin no Shintaikan no Rekishi (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1996), 208Google Scholar.

80 For the general survey of the history of Japanese medicine, see, for instance, Kajita, Akira, Igaku no Rekishi (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2003)Google Scholar; and Kira, Shiro, Nihon no Seiyo-Igaku no Oitachi (Tokyo: Tsukiji Shokan, 2000Google Scholar).

81 Okamoto, Kaibo Kotohajime, 9–10.

82 Ibid., 32–40.

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88 Hagakure, 129.

89 Ekiken, Yôjô-Kun, in Kaibara Ekiken, 85.

90 Baien, Zeigo, 607.

91 Ibid. Cf. Huan Ti Nei Ching Su Wên, 105.

92 Some scholarly works on Sorai's political thought are available in European languages, including 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: Droz, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Translations of Sorai's political works are Najita, Tetsuo (ed), Tokugawa Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lidin, Olaf 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, Master Sorai's Responsals: An Annotated Translation of Sorai Sensei Tomonsho (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994)Google Scholar. None of these works, however, discusses the relationship between Sorai's political thought and his medical learning. Sorai's medical learning, too, has largely been unexplored.

93 Sorai, Sorai Sensei Somon Hyo, 2.

94 Yamashita, Master Sorai's Responsals, 48.

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid., 70.

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid.

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