East Asian Academy For New Liberal Arts
Joint research and education programby The University of Tokyo and Peking University

First published March 2021
by East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts, the University of Tokyo
Authors: Takahiro Nakajima, Tsuyoshi Ishii, Kaz Oishi, Yuichiro Watanabe, Jonathan
Woodward, Taihei Okada and Akira Inoue
Copyright © 2021 East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts, the University of Tokyo
This book was published with the generous support of Daikin Industries, Ltd.
Correspondence concerning this book should be addressed to:
EAA, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan
Publishing Editors: Yusuke Wakazawa, Seitaro Maeno, Yoojin Koo and Takashi Mori
Editorial Cooperation: University of Tokyo Press
Book Design: designfolio Co., Ltd.／Yumi SASAKI
Printed and bound: Shinkosha Printing Co.
ii

Contents

Forward
New Scholarship from the Forest of Komabavi

Tsuyoshi Ishi
Acknowledgmentix

Tsuyoshi Ishi
World Kyōyō-Gaku and Future Liberal Arts
Opening Remarks (Takahiro Nakajima)

3

Presentation 1 (Tsuyoshi Ishii)
A Place for Promoting Hope: Redefining Komaba)s Kyōyō5

Presentation 2 (Kaz Oishi)
Educing and Liberal Arts

15

Presentation 3 (Yuichiro Watanabe)Life Science and/in Future Liberal Arts

27

Presentation 4 (Jonathan Woodward)
Technology and Interdisciplinarity

37

Presentation 5 (Taihei Okada)
Looking at the Past in Future Liberal Arts 55
Presentation 6 (Akira Inoue)
Liberal Arts for Collaboration
Wrap-up Discussion
Contributors

65

77

87

iii

Forward to the Seriesof EAA Forums

New Scholarship from the Forest of Komaba
Tsuyoshi Ishii（EAA Deputy Director）

This series of forums from the East Asian Academy commenced withthe forum entitled“ World Human Studies,”which was hosted on
December 9th 2019. The initial forum laid out the agenda of this series
as follows.
［Purpose］
Currently, globalization is entering a new phase. Conflicts resulting
from the borderless movement of humans, things, and information havecreated instability in the institutions and values that have definedmodernity. Compounding this situation is the arrival of several notablefactors: the technological society of the so-called fourth industrial revolution, the crisis of sustainability of human life and the ecologicalsystems of the earth related to climate change, and the blurring of theboundaries that define
lifeas a result of developments in medicine andbiotechnology.
We find ourselves wondering what shape the world in which we
now live, not to mention that of the future, will take. As the ways inwhich have constructed our image of the world ─ views that until
recently have rarely been questioned ─ appear to be increasingly
dysfunctional, we have to reconsider the world in which we live andopen ourselves to the power of imagination in order to create andnurture a new vision of the“world.”At the same time, our current
iv

New Scholarship from the Forest of Komaba

situation compels us to redefine what is“human.”As human beings in
the present, we have become what we are not only through ourrelationship with nature but also through our relationship with artificial
entities such as machines and networks of information. Ethnicity,
nationality, gender, class, individuality, health, life and death,environment, technology, and institutions, are all among the conditions
that constitute what it is to be human and which then must be
reexamined in the contemporary situation. This reevaluation is
inseparable from the construction of a new vision of the world.
Therefore, we term the new arts, ones that reexamine what itmeans to be human while imaging the world,“World Human Studies.”
Here“world”not only refers to the totality of existing regions claimed
by nation-states and coalitions but it also encompasses all that we as
humans can comprehend. However, we must likewise understand thatwhat underlies this“world”is that which lies beyond our imagination.
In order to create a new order for our world it is necessary to start by
thinking about what the world is from a perspective that incorporates
that which is beyond the world (nature per se, the fields of divinity andspirituality). In what we call“Human Studies”we desire to draw fromall learning and education that can imagine and foster“new humanbeings.”In this way we seek precisely a scholarship and way of supporting talents that is not limited to modern classifications of disciplines
into the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences but israther based on concept of liberal arts that we find exists in the originalpractice of scholarship.
“World Human Studies”is a new frontier in scholarship. As afrontier exists at the edges rather than the center of the existing worldorder, it cannot help but to act in transforming the existing order. In thisway, Japan as a country that has experienced both the traditions of Asianand European modernity is uniquely situated on this frontier. We aspire
to see Komaba in its role as a frontier of the University of Tokyo help tolead the world in the new arts of“World Human Studies”as a responsiv

Ishii Tsuyoshi

ble member of the global community.
The inaugural forum at Komaba was planned as the opening of this new
perspective of“World Human Studies.”
This is truly an extraordinary project, and although it may soundlike a fantastic dream, we do not see it in this way. I believe that
reexamining the“world”and“human beings”as a basis and placing
our faith in the university where this investigation is to be carried out ─thus initiating a change of the university itself ─ will be the most
realistic and most urgent issue for those of us whose lives are part of theuniversity. Following Jacques Derrida, we might say that the particularsignificance of the university lies with those whoprofessthe future of
the world and humanity ─ namely, the assembly of professors,researchers, and academics. I want to combine this idea with Confucius's
teaching that“it is man who is capable of broadening the way, not theway capable of broadening man.”The“way”becomes what it is precisely because it is our act of walking itself, extending into the future.
Furthermore, the truth lies precisely in the futuristic nature of walking
along this path. Here, rather than being limited to an individualistic act,
“walking”should be an act of humans working together.
Starting with the forum of“World Human Studies,”we, located in
the forest of Komaba, have decided to publish a series of forums discussing the vast perspectives offered by this new scholarship. These are notgrand symposiums. Instead, they are intimate yet deep conversations. In
other words, given the importance of this topic to the changes taking
place in the world around us, I hope that the process involving theseconversations is an action that“takes its time in a hurry.”
June 14, 2020

vi Forward to the Series of EAA Forums

Acknowledgment

Tsuyoshi Ishii

This round-table discussion was held on April 1, 2020, the first day of
the new academic year. I have spent more than ten April 1sts welcoming
new students there at Komaba. I saytherebecause I was not on campus this April 1st for the first time in my career as a faculty member.
This year, I was at home connecting to the internet to participate in this
discussion, a new situation due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, as allof you know. For me, it was the first academic meeting in which I haveparticipated online, and it has now been followed by so many subsequent
online academic events and classes, in which there were many students I
talked to without being able to see their faces or expressions.
Following the first round-table, which discussed how to develop
our scholarship to rethink our concepts of theworldand what it is tobehuman,our theme this time was entitledWorld Kyōyō-Gaku
and Future Liberal Arts.Compared the previous round-table entitledWorld Human Studiesin December 2019, this year we replaced thetermhuman studieswithkyōyō-gakuin order to return to our own
tradition of examining the richness of a Japanese context, so that we
could seek another possible interpretation of liberal arts, which weviiAcknowledgment

usually see as the proper translation of the Japanese word kyōyō.
Revisiting the history of the usage of this word, we have come torealize that kyōyō itself has experienced several transformations of
meaning. I think, however, the faculty scholars who engage in researchand education at the Komaba Campus that is, needless to say, named theCollege of Kyōyō, have demonstrated what the spirit of kyōyō represents
through their every-day efforts to manage the entire college administration to do its best under the situation created by the pandemic. Namely,
there is a flexible imagination in tackling problems we have never experienced before, along with broad cooperation among those in different
academic fields and diverse disciplines. Kyōyō, thus, is not mere individual knowledge, but rather a collective attitude to make our society better
through continuous efforts by each individual who is hoping to become
better, even in this unprecedented and difficult time.
Scholars from various departments in Komaba joined in the roundtable discussion to imagine together a future new liberal arts nurtured inkyōyō tradition: Kaz Oishi, Yuichiro Watanabe, Jonathan Woodward,
Taihei Okada, and Akira Inoue. I deeply appreciate their participation,
which made for an entirely vigorous and stimulating discussion. Pleaseallow me to particularly thank to Kaz because this day was the first day
for him to work as Vice Dean. The support by the Dean's Office is mostencouraging for us. Last but not least, thank you, Takahiro Nakajima,
Director of EAA, for moderating the whole session.
July 23, 2020

viii

World Kyōyō-Gaku and Future Liberal Arts

Opening Remarks

Takahiro Nakajima

Thank you so much for joining thismeeting through Zoom. Today wewould like to have a kind of
symposium on sekai kyōyō gaku.
This notion is difficult to translate
into English. It is a compound of
three concepts: sekai, kyōyō, andTakahiro Nakajima
gaku. In this compound, we aretrying to open a new platform for the coming liberal arts. Komaba is thebest place to think about this holistic notion of sekai kyōyō gakuworld
liberal arts.
Our discussion is organized by EAA, the East Asian Academy for
New Liberal Arts. This institute was only recently founded in March of
2019, and I have just become the new director of this institute in Aprilof 2020. My name is Takahiro Nakajima, and my area of expertise isWorld philosophy, especially Chinese philosophy. In the last four or fivemonths, we have begun to publish a series entitled History of World
Philosophy from Chikuma Shobo. Fortunately, the sales have gone very3

Opening Remarks

well, even during this time in which we have a serious pandemic. It
seems, people do want to know what is going on in academia as we face
this unstable situation.
World Philosophy, World Literature, and World History are areasof academic interest that are currently quite relevant in terms of what
the world means to us. In other words, we in Japan or East Asia are now
asked to rethink the universalizing process by re-defining how weconceive the world. In the first half of 20th century, Japan tried toestablish a Japan centered universality, which proved to be a serious
failure. We cannot make the same mistake again. However, if we do notwish to abandon a universalizing vision, our mission should consider
universality once again from the perspective of World Liberal Arts. I
hope to learn more about this topic from our six speakers today.
The first speaker is Tsuyoshi Ishii. Welcome Tsuyoshi.

4Presentation 1
A Place for Promoting Hope

Redefining Komaba's Kyōyō

Tsuyoshi Ishii

The main theme of our discussion
today concerns how we can understand the word kyōyō. This is asomewhat peculiar word, possibly
because it originated during theprocess of Japanese modernization
and referred to some concept such
Tsuyoshi Ishii
as culture in English or kultur inGerman. Although many people say that kyōyō is a translation of theGerman German kultur or English culture, the word itself wasactually developed historically under the modernization of Japan,
especially in the 20th century. For our university in particular, kyōyō is a
special word because we inherited the legacy of the former Ichiko or
Daiichi Kotogakko that was located at Komaba Campus and eventuallybecame the Kyōyō Gakubu, the College of Arts and Sciences. The college
was named after Ichiko's legacy, of which the very concept of kyōyō wasembedded at its core. Nowadays, we regard kyōyō as a translation of theterm liberal arts. However, in the beginning when the Kyōyō Gakubu
5

A Place for Promoting Hopewas established in 1947, the founders saw kyōyō as encompassing general
education, which has its own connotation, and is not the same as liberal arts. On the one hand, the word kyōyō per se has been
consistently used; on the other hand, the connotation of this word isalways subject to variation according to situations and social demands.
Since the meaning of kyōyō can potentially be subject to change, thefounders interpreted it according to how they identified themselves as
members of the Komaba community. Thus, I think that the word kyōyō
itself is always developing and transforming. It is not a stable concept,
and in this sense, we are allowed to redefine our concept ofliberal arts
to fit the new challenge which we now confront in our society and theworld.
Let me go back to the concept of culture. In the East Asian kanji
vocabulary, culture is commonly translated as bunka 文 化. As you
know, the concept 文, pronounced as bun in Japanese, or wen in
Chinese, is one of the key topics of my research. Interestingly, in
Chinese universities or institutes, colleges of liberal arts are sometimes
translated as 文 学 院, college of wen. This means that the Chinesecharacter 文, literally meaning script or letter, is actually able to bejuxtaposed with the idea of liberal arts.
From this point, I would like to go back to the Chinese tradition to
imagine what a new liberal arts might be. Please see my handout. I notedthat some Chinese characters such as 人 and 仁, have the samepronunciation, which is true in both Japanese and in Chinese - jin in
Japanese, and ren in Chinese. In Confucianism, a human being, 人, isnot seen as a static, unchangeable being, but rather seen as a selfcultivating creature who can be a person achieving ren 仁, which isusually translated as benevolence or simply the good. This selfcultivating identity is the very definition of a human being. In recent
years, some Confucian scholars have advocated replacing the term
human being with human becoming , in this sense. Akio Tanabe,
our colleague at Komaba campus specializing in Indian anthropology,
6 Presentation 1

Tsuyoshi Ishii

goes further in the interpretation of human being , discussinghumanco-becoming,which illustrates that cultivating our nature as humans is
not achieved individually, but through mutual communication andinteraction among individuals who are embedded in social relationships.
In this sense, we humans self-cultivate together with others not only todevelop each of our own selves but also to advance the society in which
we exist. An etymological study shows that the shape of the character 文
consists of crossing strokes, as if these strokes allow the character torepresent textile weaving. In ancient times, the character could be used
to stand for both literature and culture. Therefore, we could say that
portraying liberal arts as 文 means examining how people cultivatethemselves in terms of character, as well as how they act to change theirown society for the better through continuous learning and training interms of both knowledge and behavior.
In short, the concept 文 can comprise all human behavior thaturges us to be more humane, to become human together with others.
This is an attractive notion for us today as we revisit the concept of kyōyō
to reflect on the idea of liberal arts.
In the last part of my handout, I cited Jacques Derrida'sThe
University Without Condition, in which he interpreted the word
professoras meaning person whodeclares publicly.
This word of Latin origin (profiteor, professus sum, eri; pro et
fateor, which means to speak, from which also comesfable
and thus a certainas if), toprofessmeans, in French and in
English, to declare openly, to declare publicly. In English, says the
OED, before 1300 it had only a religious sense.To make one's
profession then meant to take the vows of some religious
order.The declaration of the one who professes is a performative declaration in some way. [...] I insist on this performativevalue of the declaration that professes while promising. ( Jacques Derrida, The University Without Condition, in
7

A Place for Promoting Hope

Without Alibi, trans. Peggy Kamuf, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 202, p.214)
This is another interpretation of liberal arts. As we now educate ourstudents and engage in discussion with other scholars across the world
here in Komaba, all of us are performatively acting toprofesssomething to society and in our scholarship itself. Derrida concluded thisbeautiful speech at Stanford University by sayingtake your time, but
be quick about it, because you do not know what awaits you.(ibid., p.
237) This is very impressive advice for me and for all of us.

8 Presentation 1

Tsuyoshi Ishii

Discussion Session

Takahiro Nakajima Thank you so much, Tsuyoshi. It is a beautiful
opening. I'd like to ask you two questions. I am trying to think ofsomething new under the concept ofhuman co-becoming.Theco
refers to a kind of a mentor. I think we cannot start this process ofhuman becoming without a mentor. When you mentionself-cultivation,it reminds me of the very strong tradition ofenlightenmentinEurope as well as in China.Enlightenmentalways asks us to take sucha framework of self-enlightenment, which often lacks the dimension ofothers around us. I would like to break free from such a traditional typeof enlightenment framework. Do you imagine an alternative frameworkthat has a different self-cultivation or self-enlightenment process? This is
my first question to you.
My second question is relevant to the notion of professing. The
notion of professing is somehow different from the notion of confessing.
I think confession is related to the notion of self-cultivation and an
important part of confessional nation-state as a very powerful frameworkof modern thinking. If this is the case, we must understand professing ina context different from confessing. In this respect, the notion of wen 文
in Chinese could be useful to us, because wen is sometimes replaced byjiao 交 in combination with other characters. In my understanding, wen
is neither a self-cultivating process nor confessional process. How would
you consider it?
Tsuyoshi Ishii Thank you very much for your truly insightfulquestions. Actually, these two questions are interconnected. I have justfinished the paper that you asked me to write, in which I discuss the9Discussion Session

Chinese philosophy of kanjō, sentiment or emotion. It will be publishedby Chikuma Shobo in June as a part of the Sekai tetsugaku shi, theHistory of World Philosophy, edited by Professor Takahiro and other
scholars. What I tackled in this paper was basically the notion of themodern enlightenment. Since the modern era, we have regarded
rationality and emotion as dichotomous categories. However, in the
Chinese tradition rationality and emotion were integrated as 心 ─kokoro in Japanese, or xin in Chinese ─ which is usually translated asheart-mindin Anglophone Chinese philosophy research. Then, thiskokoro may contain both rationality and emotion, which are to be
cultivated through everyday life experience. Emotion is not the opposite
of rationality, yet both of these impulses must be trained. In the end, you
could do some good without rational decision making if you by chancefound yourself in an emergency situation such as in the well-known
trolley problem. There is a famous anecdote in Mencius: if you saw asmall child who was about to fall into a well by accident, your heartmind would suddenly be filled with strong feelings of anxiety andconcern about the child. Mencius said that this was a xin of compassion,
which is a clue for all humans to be good people. The reason why we areable to cultivate ourselves to be better people is because all of us sharethe clue, the heart-mind, which allows us to empathize with each other.
It is not any kind of inner self, but rather is an interactive feeling urged
by the outer impulse. We are always connected with others, from thevery beginning of our lives. This is what Mencius and other ancient
Chinese philosophers teach us. So, when I refer to self-cultivation, it is
not something conducted within some inner, authentic self; rather it isinteractive behavior with others. Looking back again to the word kanjō,
which consists of two characters of 感 情, we notice that the lattercharacter jō 情 also stands for the outer situation ─ the circumstancesor environment. This indicates that the second character stands for what
is not complete within inner self. This is my answer to you.

10 Presentation 1

Tsuyoshi Ishii

Qin Wang A very simple question for Professor Ishii. You mentioned
the complexity of the Chinese character Jō qingin(Chinese). I'mwondering if there is any possible relationship or space for communication between this kind of idiosyncratic Confucian concept of Jō
on one hand and, in the present-day, the very popular theoreticalconcept of affect, which is translated in Japanese asjōdō.
Tsuyoshi Ishii I think they are interrelated. Jōdō 情 動 is alsotranslated as emotion and sentiment, the same as kanjō 感 情. As amatter of course, there are differences as well as overlapping meanings
among concepts such as emotion, sentiment, and affection in European
languages. How should we consider this? Is it clear how we articulatethese differences?
Qin Wang I don't think it is simply a problem concerning thecorrespondence between two different language systems, which never
ever works. The problem always is that, when we try to say something
about the complexity of these Confucian terms or words, we may easily
oversimplify the western or European concept that we use, as if, say,
 emotion is starkly distinguished from reason or rationality, which for me is a problematic gesture, especially when the concept ofemotionis related to the Heideggerian concept of mood, which isneither subjective nor objective, but rather is both situational and related
to personality. The use of the concept of emotion itself in German,
British, and American literature is, to say the least, always complicated, if
not disseminated. Thus, what is precisely ideological in this regard is to
reduce the concept of emotion to a kind of oppositional framework
between emotion and reason. That is the underlying concern of myproblem.
Tsuyoshi Ishii I see, so in the field of kokoro no tetsugaku, aJapanese concept that is often translated as the philosophy of the mind,
11

Discussion Session

some scholars now advocate a new trend in their research examining theemotional turn of philosophy. For example, Yukihiro Nobuhara, ourcolleague here at Komaba campus, wrote a monograph entitled Jōdō notetsugaku nyumon, literally translated as an introduction for thephilosophy of emotion. In this book, he used the word jōdō as atranslation of emotion. But it also naturally contains some overlap with
the images of affection or sentiment. I think it is not possible to haveclear-cut definitions that differentiate these concepts from each other,even in the European linguistic tradition. From the viewpoint ofChinese philosophy, jōdō, in a sense, also presents intriguing interpretations because Neo-Confucian scholars in the Song dynasty regarded
qing ─ the way jō is pronounced in Chinese ─ as human nature inmotion, which itself is another matter that could be the subject offurther exploration.
Qin Wang Thank you very much.
Taihei Okada I have a question for Prof. Nakajima. In your response
to Professor Ishii's presentation you said, " confession" is opposed to"profession." I would like to know more about what you meant by this.
Takahiro Nakajima I have a very simple answer for you. Confession is
the philosophical basement of the nation state. Professor Prasenjit Duara
tried to analyze the basement of nation state by using this notion ofconfessional state in The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions
and a Sustainable Future (Cambridge University Press, 2014). According to him, it is strongly related to a very powerful modern political
ideology. It means that by using confession in modern sense, we canproduce a good nation-state embedded in modern individuals.
Profession would be different from this type of confession. If this is
our case, how can we understand profession in the way Tsuyoshi talks
about to declare openly or publicly? In other words, how can we
12 Presentation 1

Tsuyoshi Ishii

understand this openness or publicness? Can we rethink of theuniversity as a place for the forthcoming liberal arts?
Taihei Okada Yes, but I guess Professor Ishii is talking about humanbeings. In contrast, you are talking about the nation state. So, we aretalking at different levels. Wouldn't it be more fruitful to think of thesetwo different levels as being different to start with, and then try toconnect them later? Additionally, it seems that one of the purposes ofthis roundtable discussion is to express new ideas about teaching. In thislight, it would be worthwhile to connect these three concepts: humanbeings, teaching, and the nation state. This would tie everything
together.
Takahiro Nakajima I don't want to connect the nation state once
again to this new education. In modernity, the political and theologicaldimension formed a very strong basis for human beings. I would like toshake this type concept of human being that we have held in modernity.
That would be one of our missions to think of world liberal arts today.

13

Presentation 2
Educing and Liberal Arts

Kaz Oishi

I would like to begin my talk in
response to Tsuyoshi's talk andthen move on to develop my own
ideas, which are in essence the basic
ideas that form my concept ofkyōyō. Tsuyoshi has just talked
Kaz Oishi
about human co-becoming and amore or less human oriented idea of kyōyō, but I think the term kyōyō inJapanese contains complicated layers of meaning, and furthermore, italso has compound layers of history. So first of all, we have to rememberthat the term kyōyō was coined around 1900 when the new Meiji
government was established, and at this time the new higher education
system, especially the university education system, was modeled after
European institutions. So kyōyō in Japanese is rooted in modern
enlightenment, which also carries in it the meaning of cultivating.
So the idea of cultivating intellectually as well as culturally is thefundamental basis of the concept of kyōyō. The Japanese people and thegovernment at that time modeled higher education on German
15

Educing and Liberal Arts

institutions. So Bildung is the term that more or less served as a model
for kyōyō, while culture would be the cultivation of the mind or
cultivation of human thinking. Thus, there is a long tradition ofWestern ideas, similar to Japanese kyōyō. If we just review what has been
discussed here, kyōyō or I would say Bildung is more or less based on the
traditional concept of cultura animi, or cultivation of the soul according
to Cicero, which was later developed in the medieval period to become
cultura mentis, or cultivation of the mind. Therefore, this concept wasmore or less expanded and disseminated in the Romantic period as
Bildung. Hegel is one prominent philosopher who disseminated thisidea, and Kant is another facilitator of the Bildung concept. These ideasof cultivation of the mind and the cultivation of the soul became moreor less secularized, starting in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, andespecially in the 20th century. When the concept was imported andinstilled in Japanese institutions around 1900 it became what is known
as kyōyō. This represented the first stage of establishing kyōyō in Japaneseinstitutions. This concept of kyōyō, however, is different from the kyōyōthat we have previously pursued at Komaba.
The new concept of kyōyō was more or less an idea imported from
American institutions, especially American universities, after the Second
World War. Accordingly, we have been translating kyōyō into English as liberal arts and sciences, The idea of liberal arts and sciences isdifferent from the traditional, old fashioned idea of kyōyō. How weshould define kyōyō now is probably our main topic today. Yes, for the
past 50 or 70 years we have been teaching or otherwise involved in theliberal arts and sciences. Now it is the time, I think, that we have toredefine what kyōyō is ─ in Japanese as well as in English. I'm still
wondering what would be the best translation into English of what theJapanese word kyōyō means. Most likely, this is an issue that does nothave a clear answer. It is true we have to continue thinking about thisquestion, and this is a great opportunity for all of us to consider how
kyōyō can be redefined and how we should set out to pursue a new mode,
16 Presentation 2

Kaz Oishi

or a new stage of kyōyō. Before I move on, however, let me justsummarize what Bildung or kyōyō represents to me. Tsuyoshi introduced
the concept of Bun 文, the Chinese character. I very much like the idea
and even included the concept and his argument in the book I recently
edited on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's philosophy. I was very impressed by
Tsuyoshi's idea of Bun as constituting a human network or a network ofintellectual beings. It is a communal state of ideas and critical thinking
which serves as the fundamental basis of human culture and humansociety. This is a new definition of Bun for me.
Culture is not exactly identical to Bildung, but still there is a kindof similarity between the two ideas. For me, culture or Bildungcomprises different stages of knowledge. While in Japanese, Chi or 知 isa term or character we usually use to discuss ideas or knowledge, but here
there are four or five different related concepts of knowledge. So
information is very much a primary or basic concept or stage of Chi or
知. It refers simply to the fragmented information we usually collect byusing Google or by reading magazines or newspapers. However, thisinformation cannot be defined as knowledge, as it is unsorted,
unstructured, and disorganized. It is when we organize these fragmentary
data or bits of information that it can be unified as knowledge.
Perhaps some of the classes or courses we have been teaching at
Komaba provide something very much like this type of knowledge. Thatis, it is one type of collected information, and this information isorganized in a certain special field. Students do not need to read many
books and engage in discussion in the classes they attend. What matters
is how much they know about a certain subject. Yet, this cannot be
defined as wisdom. To develop knowledge into wisdom, we have toapply the knowledge we have acquired to different aspects of human life
and to the different conditions that exist in human society. We can thendefine the organized knowledge as wisdom. Thereafter we come to thenext stage: culture. So culture is different from wisdom in the sense that
it is not only the wisdom of individuals; rather, it is more or less17

Educing and Liberal Arts

communal wisdom. Of course, there is a personal aspect to it, which wecall kyōyō in Japanese, when someone has intellectually cultivated his or
her own mind. In this case we often call this individuala cultured
person.However, culture also has another meaning: communal culture. As
we bring people together who have critical thinking as well as goodknowledge and can apply wisdom to different situations in society,culture becomes communal. So, if we try to apply this hierarchy ofculture in a college of arts and sciences or liberal arts and sciences, what
we have to pursue, what we have to aim at ultimately, is clearlyculture,the top of this hierarchy. Then we must address how we cando this in our teaching. How we can introduce this idea in today's
globalized society is a big question.
Before I move on, let me briefly discuss the term liberal education.
When I recently tracked down when or how the term and concept ofliberal education has been used in English, I came upon an idea fromJohn Henry Newman, a 19th century theologian who converted from
Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in the mid-1800s.
In his book on university education, Newman defined liberal
education as a process of cultivating a philosophical habit of mind and avery traditional concept of Bildung. He also saw it as developing
intellectual culture and training good members of society. So here, we
can see the term culture is defined in two ways. First, in a personal sense,
it means culture, representing the cultivated habits of the mind, andsecondly, culture comprises the qualities of human mind that allow us toconstitute the welfare of human society. Therefore, not only Newman,
but other philosophers and intellectuals including Coleridge, who I will
briefly turn to later, also used the term wellbeing or welfare in terms ofeducation. So education, especially higher education for 19th century
people at least in Britain ─ I have not looked at other European
societies ─ for British intellectuals in the 19th century and the early
20th century, education, especially at higher institutions, was a process
18 Presentation 2

Kaz Oishi

of training individuals to be good members of society.
In the university system, therefore, liberal education emphasizes
social function. This is why I think university education in the 19th
century became a target of social criticism because it turned back againstsocial needs and realities. Oxford and Cambridge, in particular, andother old fashioned universities were criticized by the quite new middleclass members of society. Then, one figure who I think of as aninteresting figure in re-defining liberal education in the 19th century is
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I was very much struck by his use of the wordeducation. He tried to distinguish the term education from the idea of
instruction, which is defined simply as conveying information andknowledge to students. Education is a different thing for Coleridge. It iseducingor eliciting the faculties of the human mind, which again, issame as cultivating the mind. At the same time subordinating thesefacilities to reason is his definition of education. In this sense, reason has
a very Kantian implication. Coleridge was heavily influenced by
Immanuel Kant. So reason here is very much an absolute thing itself
existing above the human sphere. We can just ignore that kind of
Kantian transcendental concept of reason in today's education, however.
So, now let's move on to how we are going to redefine thistraditional concept of education or liberal education. I had a chat with
Tsuyoshi some time ago regarding how we are going to define kyōyō inJapan. One difference between Tsuyoshi and myself is, I think, Tsuyoshi
has introduced the terms human becoming and human co-becoming,
which I think represent an extremely important idea. And yet, for me, it
is still human oriented. This concept has a very anthropocentric
viewpoint in this regard. But in today's society there are different forcesand different factors surrounding human society and human beings. One
critical problem for all of us concerns the environment, and theenvironment itself is not centered on humans. Of course, we humans
create huge environmental problems, but still the environment itself isconstructed in the way it is regardless of what we humans do.
19

Educing and Liberal Arts

Additionally, society is very much human oriented: it is a type offabric of humanity or the fabric which human beings have created,
produced, and facilitated. Yet society has a force that operates
independently of individual human beings. So social sciences orhumanities can focus on humanity itself, in the human mind or spirit or
the soul. We can still pursue education whilst cultivating the humanmind. But today, we also have to pay attention to human society, whichcontains the field of social sciences as well, and also to environmental
science. So if we apply the term kyōyō to science and social science, we
can say it is a cultivation of the human mind. And yet we now have todefine it very differently. So how we can apply the term and the conceptkyōyō to today's science? This is a significant question, especially in termsof today's globalized society, and as a reaction against globalization, we
need to think about how to address this de-humanized process ofglobalization. If we look at the sciences, technology has always seencontinual progress. Recently, digital technologies have been rapidly
developing and humans have created other new technologies, but still
this movement and development occurs regardless of what we are doing.
Therefore, we need to define or incorporate or encompass this new
field, the science of today, as part of kyōyō. That is, not just to teachfragmented knowledge or fragmented information, but to provide very
organized and crucial elements of human sciences. So basically, what I
want to say is that we need to think about how to address the diversityof these academic fields as part of kyōyō. How are we going to include allthese diverse views of culture as part of an education that educes human
intellectual faculties? I have not come to any conclusions yet, but I feel
this is what we have to do to move on to a new stage of kyōyō. Thankyou.

20 Presentation 2

Kaz Oishi

Discussion Session

Takahiro Nakajima Thank you so much for your very well consideredtalk. I think 19th century romanticism created a very strong notion ofhumanism as a human centered doctrine.
Kaz Oishi

Yes.

Takahiro Nakajima You have been studying Coleridge and 19th
century Romanticism. Against this background, you are now trying torethink this human centered humanism in the 21st century. How can
we think of kyōyō as being different from a simple system of information
or a simple introduction of information to students? I would like to ask
one question: In modern Japan, especially in the Taisho era, the Japanese
pursued kyōyō based onpersonality,which was closely related to 19thcentury romanticism. However, it seems to me that the personal self is amuch more complicated notion in comparison to the private and the
public self. It does not belong to the dichotomy between the private andthe public. How can we situate this notion of the personal self in a newsekai kyōyō gaku? How can we redefine this notion of what is personal ina context in which we try to combine social sciences and naturalsciences? This is my question. Do you have any concrete ideas about
this?
Kaz Oishi Thank you very much. Yes, I haven't paid attention to theconcept of personal self. However, another term we may be able to use
to describe human beings as being a part of society is the individual. In
our daily lives we can often use the words individual and personal
21

Discussion Sessioninterchangeably, but fundamentally, they are very different. The personalhas a connotation that implies an ownership of identity, psychologicallyas well intellectually. This is the concept of person or personal. But if werefer to individual, it means someone whom we can't divide to any
degree, it means an individual, a person as an isolated being in society.
So, if we think about a dichotomy of private and public, I would
think individual is a term which we have to use, especially in society andin the social context. So, if you go back to the romantic period, yes
Coleridge used the term person more often than individual. When heused the term individual, which always tends to isolate human beings inwhat can be seen as a very atomic society, it was as Thomas Hobbes
conceived human society, where individuals fight against each other in asociety. This social vision is shared by Bentham's utilitarianism. So,
Coleridge took issue with this utilitarian concept of society. J. S. Mill is
an interesting figure who tried to accommodate Coleridge's communal
idea into utilitarian individualism. Yes, individuals are important, yet atthe same time, individualism tends to isolate each human being into afragmented being, which results in the society reaching a critical state,thus calling for a redefinition of human society.
So, this is perhaps how we should conceive personal or person incontrast to individuals. However, today I think the individual is a morecrucial idea, especially when we consider our current globalized context.
Individuals, not just an individual in one unit, one community or one
society, or in a particular country or particular region, are connectedwith the globalized community, either via internet access or via
commercial network. So this suggests how we have to think about
individuals in the new context, especially in the academic context.
Takahiro Nakajima It is very relevant to our discussion. I love yourlast phraseeducing human intellectual faculty.It is quite fascinating
to me. Nonetheless, I would like to propose another image by referring
tobloominginstead of or in place ofeducing,becauseeducingis
22 Presentation 2

Kaz Oishi

derived from educere in Latin. There is an anecdote in the Mencius inwhich a man tries to pull some seedling rice from the ground, concernedthat it is not growing well, only to find that he has killed the rice by
doing so. So educing is in some way a very dangerous intervention, butblooming is an engagement that enhances students to change. Is there
any notion similar to blooming?
Kaz Oishi Yes, there should be, yes. I can't think of a good example
yet, but this is his word and blooming is the ultimate ideal of humaneducation or human intellect in this sense.
Takahiro Nakajima Alright, thank you so much. Is there anyone who
would like to comment or ask a question of Kaz?
Jonathan Woodward I just wanted to comment on the very last point,
because suddenly whenever I think of education, I think that's a very
interesting distinction there ─ the educing versus the blooming. But
when I think about the role of a teacher and the role of education, thenit's all the words that are associated with blooming. So it's about
nurturing, right? That's what we do for our students ─ we nurturethem, we feed them and water them like plants to allow them to bloom.
But also the other term that probably isn't used enough in education in
Japan, but which is very important, is scaffolding. We provide
support, we provide something for our plant to grow up so that it canbloom. So for me that's just a very interesting idea because it reallychimes with what I would like to see as the role of real education. It isjust a simple observation.
Kaz Oishi Thank you very much. Yes, so scaffolding is an interesting
part of education. We try to systemize our educational process for eachdiscipline or course, etc. So what we really need to do is put a scaffold inany course we are organizing.
23

Discussion Session

Jonathan Woodward Yes, it's never organizing for organization'ssake. It's for building the structures that allow the growth and they canbe individual as well as they can be generic.
Kaz Oishi So yes, true. Thank you very much. I kind of kept thinking
about scaffolding. I can't think of any good term for this in Japanese.
Yusuke Wakazawa It is quite interesting to find that both Ishii sensei
and Oishi sensei have mentioned the idea of culture as part of envisaging
a future form of liberal arts, becausecultureas a critical concept may
sound old-fashioned in terms of the history of western philosophy. NeoKantian philosophers, Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) in particular, once
developed culture as an analytical framework for examining thevarious forms of human activity that underlie the cultivation of humanmind. However, Martin Heidegger ( 1889-1976 ) was skeptical about
their attempt to do this and undermined the foundation ofculturalphilosophy. Intellectual historians of twentieth-century philosophy
often view the Cassirer-Heidegger debate in Davos (1929) as the fall of
this neo-Kantian pursuit. Heidegger basically put an end to Cassirer's
ideal of human cultivation. Nowadays, there is little discussion ofcultural philosophy while there is a massive amount of ongoing researchand discussion on political, economic, or even natural philosophy.
So, I would ask you about the significance of (re-)introducing theidea of culture into our intellectual inquiry. How can we revitalize
culture as a philosophical concept? What does this cultural philosophy
promise to us, compared to what political, economic and social philosophies have achieved? I am very sympathetic toward its future
possibilities, as the termculturecould cover something more than, ordifferent from, whatsocialmeans.
Kaz Oishi Yes, good question. I agree, we tend to use culture more orless as synonymous with human enlightenment in relation to human
24 Presentation 2

Yusuke Wakazawa

Kaz Oishi

society, but culture should be seen as implying something more thanthat. I think that's your suggestion. Is that correct?
Yes!

Kaz Oishi On my part, I'm wary of a sort of Heideggerian influencebehind the term culture. And many philosophers tend to use the term
culture in an old fashioned or human oriented manner. Yet if you goback to the etymological origin of culture, it means cultivating the
ground. Thus, the word originated more or less in the agriculturalcontext. So if we apply the concept of cultivating the ground tocultivation of the human mind, then it becomes the old fashioned
philosophical concept of culture, but if we go back to the fundamental
or etymological origin, yes, culture must be cultivation of the ground.
That ground is very much society or the natural world. So it can be easily
applied to natural sciences as well.
C. P. Snow says two cultures divide humanities and social sciencesfrom natural sciences, but I don't think that is correct today. We need tohave one more or less uniformalized concept of culture, both in the fieldof humanities and social sciences as well as in natural sciences. So culture
is not a kind of cultivation of the human mind or intellect but rather acultivation of the world with our society and also a cultivation of thenatural world. Having said that, the universe is too vast for us tocultivate, I am afraid. Yet we still have to pursue how the universe wascreated and how it is organized. In a way this is another important partof human society. Therefore, actually we have many fields we need tocultivate, which then can altogether be defined as culture.
Yusuke Wakazawa When we talk about culture, we often speak insome way about thegroundwe need to cultivate. In this respect,culture represents our constant interaction with theworld.I thinkthat the link between these two terms, world and culture, would be
25

Discussion Session

crucial for us. The reconceptualization of culture would entail
reconceptualizing the world, and vice versa.
Kaz Oishi

26 Presentation 2

Yes, I agree. Absolutely agree. Thank you.

Presentation 3
Life Science and/in Future Liberal Arts

Yuichiro Watanabe

I am a plant scientist and I try tounderstand how human beingsinteract with the many otherorganisms and land around them,
the world. So, based on this type of
research, we are trying to understand what human beings can do to
Yuichiro Watanabe
the world through life sciences. So,
today's topic is about what kyōyō is or what kyōyō education is, I suppose.
So, I'm still wondering what I can talk about, but first I will try to briefly
introduce what we have learned, through history, about basic principles
in life sciences. About 150 years ago, Gregor Mendel established a theoryof genetic principle, the law of inheritance. And he predicted theexistence of a type of particle containing genetic information, a so-called
gene. At that time, he didn't understand this gene as a molecule. Almosta century later, we understand that genes are material composed ofDNA.
The principle of most biological phenomena is transmitted27

Life Science and/in Future Liberal Arts

through information stored in the DNA molecules. So, this represents
the starting point of the strong link between some substances/molecules
and the identity of an organism, or life if you will. Therefore, we arestruggling to understand how we are organized or composed from suchmolecules. We now understand that our genetic information is acomplex system of a certain number of genes. We have a mass of about
20,000 genes, roughly speaking, as human genetic information. I can saythat a human being is substantiated by genetic material at or about thelevel of information from 20,000 genes. So, we are now trying tounderstand how many genes or how much genetic information can beorganized in a system or how these things make up our identity. But I'ma human being as well.
Still, even though we understand that our genetic material iscomposed of this amount of genetic materials, 20,000 so-called genes,
there is still a large gap between our real understanding of life scienceand the question what we are as human beings or what our existence inthis world represents. So, we are trying to gain a greater understanding of
how to handle this type of knowledge. We feel there is a large gap
between the great amount of information that comes from genetic
materials or a combination of intermolecular interaction and a real
understanding of our identity. The human action of thinking is quite
unique, by unique I mean humans can think by ourselves and try tounderstand what life is, what an organism is. Even so, we ourselves arealso organisms.
We are struggling to understand what life is, what organisms in theworld are, by using the human brain. The brain is also composed ofcertain kinds of molecules. This is quite complicated, but I'll try tosimplify events and narrow down it to one or a few specific issues. Try tounderstand, this is our daily life, but still, such knowledge is quite
fragmentary. So, we would like to sum up or assemble all this knowledge
in order to understand what it means to be a human, and furthermore,
what our world or society is. In this way we are trying to understand28 Presentation 3

Yuichiro Watanabe

what represents a peaceful coexistence between or among otherorganisms and our earth. Still, yet, a combination or simple summationof each component involved would not explain something such as thewhole world.
Now we would like to understand, or we should have someknowledge from, the social sciences or humanities in order to find somesimilarities in the way humans gain understanding of the world. I would
like to incorporate such approaches/procedures in real thinking tounderstand all the issues we face in the world. In that respect, I'd like to
see how people here try to understand how you are thinking about thissociety or human beings and what you make of this. Following thismethod we would like to introduce your procedures/measures into ourpresent life science studies.

29Discussion Session

Discussion Session

Takahiro Nakajima Thank you so much for your great talk. Thomas
Kasulis in his research on Japanese philosophy tries to distinguishdetached knowledge from engaged knowledge. We are inclined to thinkthat natural science, including bio-science, is a discourse based upondetached knowledge in which we usually use induction, deduction, orsome kind of reduction as you referred to. However, it is also true thatnatural scientists, especially bio-scientists, try to consider very complex
systems. For this purpose, only using a simple way of thinking such as
induction or deduction does not work. Charles Sanders Peirce proposes
the notion of abduction instead of induction or deduction. In theunderstanding of complex systems, probably a way of thinking such as
abduction would be effective. That is my very naive thought. If this is
the case, a Kasulisean idea such asengaged knowledgewould be very
useful even in natural sciences. In other words, in the framework ofengaged knowledge, some kind of agency, be it personal or individual, isalready embedded in the knowledge system. What do you think about
this other type of knowledge which is different from reductionism? Do
you find any point in which natural sciences, social sciences, orhumanities would be merged together?
Yuichiro Watanabe It's a very interesting question, and it is very
worthwhile to think about this possibility. Actually, normally we naturalscientists try to understand a basic principle based on some equations,and we set some assumptions/conditions as a starting point. Based onsuch conditions we believe we can make predictions about what will
happen. I think that is a kind of reductionism or determinism. However,30 Presentation 3

Yuichiro Watanabe

once we look at our life, or organisms, or evolution, in my personal
opinion often such approaches cannot explain what we have seen in thepast, especially during the evolution of organisms.
For instance if we look at our body plan, or the composition or
structure of our body from a scientific point of view, our humanstructure is not ideal. Or we could say it is not so well designed, not socomplete sometimes. We cannot explain why our bodies have such an
incomplete structure. Yes, it is the result of something. So yes, we should
think about such events or facts based on different points of view like
Nakajima sensei just brought up. Personally, I'm sorry to say that I am
not so familiar with such engaged knowledge, which is something I
should know more about. I understand we should be ready to cooperate
with/exchange such points of view.
Takahiro Nakajima John Dewey, a pragmatist, once noted the possibility of weak causality in referring to genetic method. Genetic method isa term, which at the time it was invented was highly influenced bygenetics. When we face issues in genetics, it is hard to understand thesematters using a simple causality system. We are asked to consider weakcausality. What do you think about this weak causality in the discourseof bioscience?
Yuichiro Watanabe I am not so confident that I can answer correctlyor properly, when we look the evolutionary path of life and organisms,
some creatures entered some kind of narrow path during evolution.
Maybe there should be a better way for them to easily survive, but they
exist the way they are due to just some kind of coincidence or chance.
Some organisms take different forms, but this may not the best solution
in the end. Yet these organisms still have this structural design in theirbody plan. So, there is a kind of interaction between other creatures orenvironmental issues, or at times some other process may be involved.
We cannot predict where we are going during the evolutionary
31

Discussion Session

path when we neglect what factors such creatures face, such asenvironmental conditions, climate changes, or the existence of hostileenemies or something similar. I'd like to say that if we address thequestion of why we have such structures or body plans, we have to think
about what kind of climate or environmental conditions and, forinstance, what the availability of food may have been at a particular timeand so on. So we cannot predict what will happen in the future, or what
happened in the past if we do not determine and explain suchsurrounding conditions.
Takahiro Nakajima
participants?

Thank you. Any comments or questions from the

Tsuyoshi Ishii Thank you very much for your very interestingpresentation. My question is about the way we usually place nature as
being opposite to humanity. However, I am wondering how we could
distinguish nature from artifice. We discovered the molecule, the gene,and today, we know viruses exist in the world and influence our bodies
and our health even though they are invisible, even it would be
impossible to discover them in our daily experience. Before the discoveryof viruses, our ancestors would give another interpretation of infectious
disease. My question raised here is: Are the molecules, genes, viruses andso forth natural or artificial? Or in short, what is nature?
Yuichiro Watanabe This is a quite tough question I suppose. But I
think that we cannot make such a strict distinction between nature andartifice. For instance, our body, we think, is completely isolated fromnature or other external aspects of our existence, but when we lookclosely at our body, for instance, we have a kind of tube from our mouth
to anus, our intestine or bowels, that could be considered outside ourbody. Actually, this is continuously connected from the top to thebottom of our body. And we have to eat something that comes from the32 Presentation 3

Yuichiro Watanabe

world or our environment, that is food. Food comes into the mouth and
we digest it in the intestine. The digested food still is located outside thebody. and moreover, we maintain/cultivate a kind of mass of bacteria
inside our body, in the intestine. Bacteria give off some metabolic byproducts that are either good or bad for our health. It is really a coexistence between our body and our environment.
To some degree I have now ventured away from your question, butwhat I would like to say that the distinction or border between our bodyand the environment is not so strict. But possibly we are inclined to seeit this way. In the past life science, we tried to understand our existence
as totally isolated from the environment, totally composed of somebiomolecules. But what is different ( in nature ) was that our biomolecules co-exist with other molecules in these environments, and theysometimes co-exist with organisms or microbes as well. So we would liketo incorporate this type of knowledge and try to understand and share atrue image of the identity of life. In this way, it reminds me of thesituation between human beings and social events. One humanindividual is not so independent when we consider society or our world.
Then how can we think, in the same way or a different way, of life
sciences? I am sorry I cannot explain this well, but what I've given arequite rough answers.
Ishii Tsuyoshi Thank you.
Jonathan Woodward Can I just also comment on this question? It's a
big question. I mean I think there are many, many aspects in which you
can discuss this, but you have to be very clear about how you define yourterms of artifice and natural for example. Okay, so let's say you walk into
a Softbank shop and meet their latest robot. Is that artificial or is it
natural, I mean, all the materials the robot is made of are all natural
materials that come from the same substances we are made from. There
are so many levels on which you have to address that and maybe you
33

Discussion Session

mean man-made, I don't know, something that came from humandesign. That's one way of framing this question.
And really, that's a fundamentally important question addressed byartificial intelligence researchers. I will talk a little bit about that in mytalk, but that's a truly interesting question of the difference between for
example, man and machine and that's driven many things. But I thinkthat question, yes, is enormous one and we could have this whole
meeting just discussing that question.
Yuichiro Watanabe

Yes, quite a big issue.

Tsuyoshi Ishii Just quick response: bun 文, which I referred earlier,also means a function giving language to the outer world.
Akira Inoue Thank you very much for your fascinating talk,
Watanabe sensei. Actually, your discussion bears upon how to go beyond
the limitations of Western science. As Nakajima sensei implied, yourresearch project is truly holistic, going beyond intellectual demarcations
given by the narrow confines of Western science, and maybe I shouldn't
say that, because I belong to a kind of Western scientific researchparadigm, but it is challenging. And it is indeed interesting to see how to
go beyond these limitations in science from the viewpoint of biology.
Yet, I want to know more about what kind of science, or, more
precisely, what kind of approaches you can employ? You must have inmind some different concrete approaches. I would like to know a bit
more about some of them.
Yuichiro Watanabe Thank you. We are gaining greater knowledge,
but we are still in need of some new concepts to help us understand a
population or mass of organisms in order to predict what will happen in
the next stage, in the future. So, yes, I have no strict, confident answer atpresent. Most life scientists try to introduce new technology, but I don't
34 Presentation 3

Yuichiro Watanabe

think this is so new, but rather it is called bio-informatics. Handlinghuge amounts of data coming from 20,000 genes, their interaction or
expressions up and down and the ways in which they are combined.
Yet I don't think this kind of approach itself can explain everythingin order to understand the entirety of things or the whole world in theenvironment around us or across the globe. So I am quite welcoming of
new ideas and would like to learn what we can do or what type of new
approach can be invented to understand these larger issues. Now, that is
my actual question or thought at this time. I'm sorry, I don't have adefinite answer at present, but rather quite large questions or issues.

35

Presentation 4
Technology and Interdisciplinarity

Jonathan Woodward

First of all, thank you for thisopportunity to join this discussion.
It's the first time, I have to say, that
I've ever joined this kind of
discussion, especially one with a
topic so broad and encompassing as
this, and it was about a week-and-aJonathan Woodward
half ago, I guess that Professor Ishii
asked me if I would join and say something and probably, like Professor
Watanabe, I was a little perplexed at first, and I thought, what on earth
should I talk about? What should I think about? But the idea has beenrunning around in my head since then, and I have lots of crazy ideas andI've been trying to condense some of them into something rational andcoherent to say. So I will probably talk for certainly more than 10
minutes because there's a lot of things I would like to include. I sent a
handout, which I hope you've seen. When I sent that to Yoojin, I
described it as a kind of brain splat. It really was my first attempt attrying to get some of my mixed-up thoughts down on paper, and I've
37

Technology and Interdisciplinarity

still got a long way to go but I hope to share a few things with you thatcan maybe promote some interesting discussion.
So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to talk about three
things. I'm going to present a few bits of context, mostly this is personal
context. We've been talking about the personal and the individual
earlier, but this is very personal. And this, I think, is important because
obviously I'm not from Japan originally, and I have experienced a very
different education system and, therefore, reflecting on kyōyō is aninteresting experience for me, because it's so different from what I'mused to. So I'll say a little bit about that. And also provide some context
from my research, and then I'll move on with some things that I think
are important to take into account by considering, particularly, thefuture. We have not talked a lot about the future yet. And finally I willend with some very early attempts to try and distill out some ideas or
pragmatic suggestions about what we might do from some of thesethings. So, first of all I'm going to tell you about my school history, okay?
So, I was actually in the last year of UK students who, when they
were 16, took O-levels. They're now called GCSEs and they changed alittle bit. They were called O levels then and what I want you to see isthat during the age of 14-16, these are the subjects I studied at school.
My school said,You can study only eight subjects.So, from the age of
14, I studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, English language,
English literature, French and German ─ only sciences and languages. I
didn't study history, or geography or any other similar subjects. My
history, my geography, my social science, my humanities, my art
education all stopped at the age of 14.
When I was between the ages of 16 to 18, I took my A levels and at
my school at the time, I was allowed to study three subjects only,
mathematics, physics and chemistry were the ones I chose and all
students took General Studies. What did I do next? I went to university,
I studied for my undergraduate degree for four years, it's in Oxford ifyou graduate over four years, you automatically get a Master's degree.
38 Presentation 4

Jonathan Woodward

And I only studied chemistry; chemistry, chemistry, and nothing but
chemistry. And then I did my D.Phil (my PhD) for the next four years,
and I did even more chemistry. Okay, so it's not very awe inspiring, is itfrom a kyōyō perspective? So I wanted to just set that out, because kyōyō
was something very new and different for me. I'm sure you've all heardof, early specialization and that the UK education system works like
that, but I think when you actually look at an individual's history, it'squite stark, the difference. So I think that's an important context.
I also thought that probably you don't know what my research isabout and it informs what I'm going to talk about. So I wanted to justtalk about it in a very broad sense ─ a couple of aspects. The first is thatparticularly since I've come to Komaba and I've been exposed to kyōyō,
and I've taught in this environment and I've worked with colleagues
from very different fields. I think I've expanded my ability to do some of
the things I'm going to talk about.
So although I'm very much a chemist, what my research really tries
to do at the moment is address some interesting bigger problems. For
example, one of the big ones that we look at is trying to answer thequestion of how animals detect and exploit the Earth's (extremely weak)magnetic field. This is a remarkable discovery of recent years thatanimals have a magnetic compass. They can use it for navigation, they
can detect the earth's field, and this ability is built-in - it's innate. There's
a very, very interesting question of whether we humans also possess such
an ability. Nobody knows the answer to this question. There's beensome progress in the last few years but we still don't know. Maybe wehave another sense and because it's not visceral, we don't know that we're receiving that information but maybe we are. Anyway, this is a very
big question and we try to address it, and this question ─ solving thisquestion is hugely interdisciplinary. It requires aspects from manydifferent fields. Alright, so here are some examples: behavioral biology,
photochemistry, biochemistry, neuroscience, quantum physics. Just to
name a few, there are others too.
39

Technology and Interdisciplinarity

But the idea here is, Is this is truly interdisciplinarity?This issolving a messy mixed-up problem that requires the jigsaw puzzle to be
put together with pieces of thinking of different kinds. I think this isquite different from most disciplinary approaches. Okay, so I think thatthe distinction between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary is a very
important one. And in my laboratory day to day, the way we operate isvery much multidisciplinary. Alright, so we do different things. We
build microscopes by ourselves, for example, we need to use engineering,for example we have workbenches, we do mechanical engineering, webuild our own electronics. We use our own optics, we do chemistry, we
do cell biology, we grow cells in my lab, we manipulate them, we dogenetics, we do laser spectroscopy, computer simulations, and quantum
mechanics. These are the different disciplines and we apply them prettymuch wholesale to solve different problems but it's not interdisciplinary.
We're not using cell biology and laser spectroscopy at exactly thesame time. So, this gives me a very kind of particular view ofinterdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. Okay, so then I also want tostart thinking and moving because when it comes to kyōyō, maybe I'm
mistaken, but primarily we're talking about education I believe, we're
thinking about the future of education and how we structure it and how
we imagine the goals and aims of our educational system. So I wanted tosay something about my own experience in working in education for along time and in particularly where interdisciplinarity comes in. When I
worked in the UK, I was a lecturer in the UK for many years before I
moved to Japan, and I was involved in developing a brand-new degree
program in the UK called I-Science. So it was actually Integrated
Science. This was kind of unique ─ it was it was unlike any other degreein the UK. Not only was it interdisciplinary, but the entire degree wastaught by problem-based learning.
So, let me give you an example. Here's something about how thestructure worked. What it was, was that we didn't think along the lines
of conventional disciplines of physics, chemistry, biology, archeology, etc.
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Jonathan Woodward

but rather different aspects of those were fed into different themes ofthings like fundamentals, materials, structures, environments, systems,
communications. And then the modules, the subjects that the students
studied or the courses that they took, were combined again from parts of
those themes, to solve renal problems. So, for example, the very firstcourse that students took when they arrived was called Prophets andPowers. And the aim of that sort of five- or six-week course was for themto design a new Stonehenge. So they were opening a Stonehenge Visitor
Center. And as part of that, they were going to build an exact replica of
Stonehenge, but not with modern tools, they were going to have toresearch exactly how Stonehenge was built originally and try and do it asauthentically as possible. Okay, so this is the idea of interdisciplinary andproblem-based learning. Problems and interdisciplinarity go together ina big way.
I wanted to just think of another example that I've been interested
in since I've been here at Komaba. In Komaba a few years ago, I was very
lucky, with PEAK, we established a relationship with universities in
Sweden through what's called STINT. And we had a visiting professor
from Uppsala University and he and I ─ although we have extremely
unrelated research interests, we got on very well, and we decided it
would be fantastic to think about, could we build a course that wetaught between Komaba and Uppsala, and that was truly interdisciplinary and was based on solving real world messy problems and had
different kinds of students working together and applying different skills
to solve problems. So we built this course, it's called Managing
Sustainability in Global Industrial companies. There's some information
about it there (in the slides) but really this was quite remarkable.
If you look at the bottom, what we really do is address various
aspects of sustainability in companies, from any perspective. So even ourown disciplines where three of us were teaching this, experts in ethics
and sustainability and innovation and myself in sciences and then mycolleague who's a lawyer, she's a legal scholar. And we try to solve these41

Technology and Interdisciplinarity

messy problems from multiple perspectives. And this was a defining
moment for me at Komaba. Teaching this course was unlike anything I've ever done before and was completely fascinating. And I think thestudents get, what the students get from this course was great, so there's
some context there. So I think the key point from my background is I've
become from various perspectives, very enamored with the concept ofinterdisciplinarity and its differences from multidisciplinarity.
I'm going to change direction for a moment.
I wanted to just talk a little bit about technology. I'm going to try
something. So, if you look on your screens, you should see that there's abutton that you can press to react, that you can send a wave. I think
there's like a reactions button at the bottom. Let me see that. So I
wanted to just... I don't know if I'm going to be able to see you well but
the question I had was,How many of you know what the singularity
is?The technological singularity. I'm not going to ask any of you to
explain it but if I were to ask you, could you explain what thetechnological singularity is?
Okay, I was really curious to see how well understood a concept
this is, and I'm not going to talk in detail about the singularity, and I'm
not going to try and explain it in detail, but it just gives me a sense of
how well known this is. Actually, in the PEAK first year seminar, thefirst course that all the PEAK students take, we had a debate about thetechnological singularity, I think in about 2014. The point I want tomake, however, is about technology. Here are some kind of extreme
quotes. This is from 2017, SoftBank CEO promises super artificial
intelligences with IQ of 10,000 in 30 years.
There is this idea of a technological singularity, which is basicallythe point where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence.
That's it in a nutshell. Whether or not this is likely to happen is a topic
of debate. And I don't ─ I'm not going to offer any opinions on that,but what is doubtlessly true is that it's based primarily on the idea of
exponential growth in all kinds of technology, particularly digital
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Jonathan Woodward

technology, but actually all of the technology across time has been
expanding in its rates exponentially. So if you go back to my handout,
the point that I made there is that regardless of whether artificial
intelligence will overtake humans or not, which is certainly a debate,
there is no doubt that technology is throwing, very challenging situations
to us as a society, as human beings all the time. The thing we talked
about here was global; sorry, world kyōyō, this kind of sekai, thisworldterm is important. The reason that we're talking about that is
because the world became smaller because of air travel and the internet
and all these technologies. It's a direct result of technology that we'rereconsidering these concepts. I guess the point I'm really trying to makeis that technology has not stopped. It's still accelerating. These, as I callthem, disruptive technologies are going to be more and more significant
all the time, and some of them are so profound. The question is,are we
ready for them?and addressing this then relies on people from ─experts from across all disciplines. We need to look to history, we needto look to literature, the arts, we need to look to everything to address
not what we CAN do perhaps, but what we SHOULD do, or what
would be best for human beings. That discussion seems to me to be
woefully lacking in the grand scheme of human endeavor. Scientists areleft to get on with science with very little input from people who havethought about the implications a bit more broadly and deeply. So it's ageneral example of what I'm talking about.
So, I will bring things slightly more back down to earth for a
moment. There's an interesting quote here (on the slide) that AI has by
now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires thinking, but
has failed to do most of what people and animals do without thinking.
So there's a long way to go in terms of artificial intelligence and we still
don't know whether it would be able to surpass human beings or not,but what we do know is that computers are getting extremely good atcertain kinds of tasks. For example, two years ago, we didn't have words
likedeepfake.AI has just suddenly been able to take video and put
43Technology and Interdisciplinarity

someone's face on someone else's almost seamlessly. That wasn't evensomething we thought about a couple of years ago. It's happening soquickly and, of course, one of the huge impacts of developments like thisis what will be the roles in society, the careers, the work for humanbeings, when robots can do many of those jobs more efficiently withoutcomplaining, etcetera.
So where am I going with this? Well, I mean, one of the things that
I think is that it's very clear from looking at greatness and looking at
where true innovation and truly great things come from that we work ina very different way to computers. I thought of two nice examples. The
first is of Steve Jobs. I don't know if you know, but he credited his kindof industrial design, and particularly the Macintosh and the many things
that came out of that, from a calligraphy class that he took in college. He
learned all about the beauty of writing. And he made sure when hedesigned the Mac, for example, that it had these beautiful proportionallyspaced fonts. And the writing on a Mac looked nothing like the writing
on a PC at that time, and Macs became the de facto route for publishingand things like that.
Another good example is Claude Shannon, the father of
information theory. It was a philosophy class that triggered him to takethe idea of Booleans representing decisions as zeros and ones andactually start using those to transmit information. So I like thisquotation in a book I read recently,Nationally recognized scientists aremuch more likely than other scientists to be musicians, sculptors,
painters, print makers, woodworkers, mechanics, electronics, tinkerers,
glassblowers, poets or writers of both fiction and nonfiction and Nobel
Laureates are far more likely still. This comes from a book about Range. This is a book that talks about how being able to haveknowledge and wisdom and experience from many, many different fields
is actually the genre changing thing.
So we live in a world where we're not even used to the world as it is
now ─ we're struggling. I mean, there's no better example than the
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Jonathan Woodwardvirus situation right now. But there are so many things that we've
already got on the horizon, and there will be so many others. I mean
climate change, artificial intelligence, COVID, CRISPR, big data,
human computer interfaces. We were talking about the personal and theindividual earlier. I mean if computer-human interfaces become a thing─ we could all have our brains directly connected electronically throughthe cloud, you'd essentially be able to share our ideas and thoughts at
speed so much greater than we do now. I mean, the effects of those
things could be phenomenal. Of course, we don't know whether it will
be possible or not but it certainly looks like it might. So in other words,
recent and impending technologies fundamentally affect the humanexperience and so our education must take this as an appropriate
context.
Okay, let me try and draw some of these threads together. I thinkthat the first thing I want to say is, if we're reimagining what kyōyō is,then certainly from my perspective as a scientist, I think we have to do itwith an awareness of where the world is right now and where the worldis going. And my idea is not about emphasizing these things, but it's
about acknowledging and sharing these things and making sure thatthese things are known to the world. We go back to the idea of
preparing citizens and educating the people that we want in society, andwe need to know about these things. So, one of my thoughts was about
─ I was struggling to find ways to express this properly ─ but selectiveemphasis of the contemporary. And this encapsulates a few jumbled
ideas in my mind that I've still not quite separated out, but I think oneof the things that I've been thinking about is,How do you teach it?This was a big question for me when I moved to Komaba. I was asked todesign basically all of the chemistry curriculum within PEAK. And myquestion was ─ given that I come from teaching on a chemistry
program but I'm now not teaching chemistry to chemists, I'm teachingchemistry to others, Should what I teach be the same as if I wastraining chemists or should it be somehow different?And I'm always
45

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fascinated to know how people think about this across their disciplines.
I mean, there's always a thorny issue in mathematics; the way
mathematicians do mathematics and the way the rest of the world uses
mathematics are quite different. So in an undergraduate kyōyō scenario,
what mathematics should you teach? Should you teach the mathematics
that people will use or should you teach the really philosophical,
fundamental things of pure mathematics? This is a fundamental
question. But I think what I wanted to get at was that usually if you'reteaching a course within a discipline, to new students, you start at the
beginning, and you start with the basics and that tends to be the reallyold stuff ─ the really fundamental stuff that everyone agreed on a longtime ago and which is the bread and butter. Of course this is importantfor disciplinarians, but maybe it doesn't really capture the essence of why
this stuff is important as a modern human being. So, my idea is that weshould, particularly in hot-topic areas, particularly where this technology
is changing the nature ofbeingto some extent, in our early classes in
our undergraduate courses, we should be talking about these things, andwe should be debating them in the context of the deep knowledge andorganized knowledge we talked about earlier. So I know that this was a
bit jumbled, but I hope I managed to get something across from it.
The other really important thing that I was thinking about, is that
I personally love the kyōyō experience. I think I've loved teaching within
the liberal arts curriculum and working with colleagues and particularly I
like the idea of co-teaching as well. And I see kyōyō as basicallymultidisciplinary; you take a course and it's strictly within its welldefined area and you learn some fundamentals and basics about that wayof thinking and that way of doing things, but there's no sense, I don't
think, within kyōyō as it stands, of the interdisciplinary rather than themulti-disciplinary. So I have this view of starting from the beginning ofkyōyō and ending at the end of senior division in which you start tomove from thinking about multidisciplinarity into thinking about
interdisciplinarity.
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Jonathan Woodward

Problem Solving is the thing that humans do best. I put a note in
the handout about chess, right? So the idea is that the greatest chessplayer in the world was defeated by a chess computer many years ago,
and that's because chess is a very particular kind of problem. But if you
gave a few really good chess players access to a computer that can analyze
the next few moves very rapidly but leave them in charge of the deeper
thinking and strategy rather than tactics, then they will thrash any
computer that currently exists. So being able to effectively test yourmuscles on working on interdisciplinary problem solving; solving messy
problems, is something I think we should think about in the future ofkyōyō.
I'll put the last slide up, and this one's a little less well formed, andI'm not sure about the implications of it yet, but it harks back partly towhat I just said about tools: give a chess player a computer and the two
together, the person and the computer becomes a phenomenally greater
chess player than any computer by itself. And, I remember as a student
going into the libraries and going through those horrible huge cardindexes trying to find the first research papers I was looking at, and it
was slow and inefficient. Now in two seconds on a computer, I canidentify any interesting paper in any area.
Our tools for thinking and for being academics and for learning arechanging over time. And when we think about the future of kyōyō, weneed to be thinking about the context of people and how they learn andwhat tools they use, within our pedagogy. I said here in the pink part,how we do things changes between generations. Our current students
don't work or communicate use the same tools as we do etcetera. And
these are important things to think about. Okay, so with that I will stop
rambling on and I will give you a chance to ask questions.

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Discussion Session

Discussion Session

Takahiro Nakajima Thank you so much for your rich presentation.
I'd like to ask you one single question. What kind of intelligence do weneed to consider when teaching students? We come to think that AI
may be overtaking humans in the framework of IQ-type intelligence.
However, the intelligence we try to expand upon seems to be somehow
different from this IQ-type intelligence.
Jonathan Woodward Absolutely.
Takahiro Nakajima Technology always transforms our imagination.
Imagination is translated as 想 像 力 ( sōzōryoku ) in Japanese or(kōsōryoku)from the German termEinbildungskraft,which was amajor notion in modern German philosophy. Bildung also carries ameaning of education. If that is the case, how can we hope for the
coming technological revolution in intelligence in terms of theframework of modern philosophy, similar to Kant who tried todetermine the limitations of the possibilities of human faculties?
Technology has been enlarging the possible conditions of our humanfaculties, but right now we are asked to think of the dimension of hopeor desirability instead of possibility. That is my observation. I feel thatthe forthcoming intelligence would be relevant to this dimension ofhope instead of possibility. How does technology support thisenrichment of hope?
Jonathan Woodward That's a very interesting question. I'm not sureI'll be able to do it justice. I think that what you're suggesting is
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Jonathan Woodward

definitely part of what I was thinking about and trying to explain. Oneof the things is that this is again a question about what makes a human,and certainly at the current stage, there are aspects of life that computerswill do well, and there are those that they don't, and identifying, as you
said, where humans can shine in the future still is kind of one of thethings I was trying to get at and it's hard to define. I'm not an artificial
intelligence researcher, and I think even AI researchers don't reallyknow. There is a debate about where things will get to. But when it
comes to the hope question, I think what we're trying to do is to imagine
making ─ well, there's two things and I think one of them is thathuman beings control their own destiny right now, to a large extent,
through their decisions and actions.
There may be a point of no return whereby we no longer get tochoose how things happen because of the decisions that we've madebefore, if you think about nuclear weaponry, right? It's good; the power
to destroy all of humanity is there but at the moment, at least we seem tohave learned to not mess with that anymore, but there are so many otherthreats, so many other challenges that the new technology presents and─ Yeah, one of the things that I didn't really say clearly yet was, when it
comes to questions like, Should we build machines that can surpass
human beings?Should we? Should we do that? Should we geneticallymodify humans with CRISPR to make human beings greater than they
are now? Those are enormous questions, one of the problems has beenthat we're not thinking together. If we're not discussing this on a worldlevel, then the argument always boils down to well, if this country
doesn't do it, then this country will, so that the argument becomes kindof moot but what I'm thinking is, if we begin to truly embrace these
problems as a whole; as the whole world, similarly as we're doing now
with this virus. We're beginning to, right?
If we embrace these questions as a whole, we can start to think as
humans, not as, for example, Westerners, or we can think as humans
about whether we should do these things. And therein lies the hope for49

Discussion Session

me. That's where the hope comes from you, it is being able to think
about what we should do and how we should do it, not what we can do,
and what endless competition leads us to always do. Sorry, it's slightly
away from your topic, but I hope I at least partly addressed it.
Takahiro Nakajima I'd like to ask you a second question related toeducation. You referred to an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary
approach. And would you now combine these two into one?
Jonathan Woodward Well I mean, I don't see as a replacement. I see
it as an extension.
Takahiro Nakajima In that case, how can we think of discipline itself?
Do we still need disciplines? For example, you were trained in chemistry.
Do we still need such a disciplinary-based education for the coming
integrated, interdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary approach?
Jonathan Woodward I think it depends on timescale. I think right
now we do, and for the foreseeable future. Actually, I think, well wetalked about organization or essentially talked about organization ofknowledge before. And I think having categorization and discipline areenabling. There are historical reasons too, but it's a construct that's still
useful to do because it allows us particular ways of thinking, andcertainly in science, different scales of thinking exist within thosedifferent disciplines. So I think it's beneficial and this is why I said in myproposal, it's a move from multidisciplinary to multidisciplinary plus
interdisciplinary. It is not a move frommultitointer,as thatwould imply that you've merged the boundaries and all thinking
becomes kind of overrun. So I think certainly, right now, the disciplinary
divides are useful. Okay, and they allow us to identify. I mean, there's
this talk of tribes ─ tribalism amongst, different disciplines in science. I
think it helps us to do that. But I think it also then helps us to
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Jonathan Woodward

understand and define what interdisciplinarity is because it is usuallylooking at views of different stakeholders and the views of the different
implications from those varied perspectives. And so you can still define
the viewpoint from which you look, you can say from a chemist's
perspective or from a poet's perspective, and that's a very useful
construct for breaking down the problem into its key parts. Why would
you start with a new set? I don't think you need to, so that would be myresponse to that question.
Takahiro Nakajima Yes, we are thinking of some hypothetical point.
It is only a temporal starting point, which means that discipline is a kindof temporal platform for us.
Jonathan Woodward Yes, absolutely. So, I think you go for evolution
from here, the question would be, we are coming from multidisciplinary,
we're not really coming from a naturally interdisciplinary mindset and,
therefore, in the early stages, we can't leap instantly from one to theother, we define one in terms of the other but as interdisciplinarity
becomes more manifest, more familiar. We can take the next steps laterin the future and redefine the landscape again, but right now, at thisstage, the jump should be based on our existing divisions, I think.
Yusuke Wakazawa Can I jump into the discussion? It is very
fascinating to hear about the I-Science education, the course you
designed in the UK. And I would like to know more about the
program's teaching philosophy, or course policy, which could
explicate what ideally students are expected to achieve through attending
problem-based classes. In other words, what kind of individuals does thisprogram aim to produce through the I-Science education?
Jonathan Woodward Its goal is to teach integrated sciences in acomprehensive way. But as you said, the approach is very different. You
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Discussion Session

start from the problem. And there's a very, very structured way in which
Problem Based Learning is undertaken and it leads you through eachstep. It's essentially like doing research. So what students have to do firstof all is define the problem carefully. And then what they do is, they
identify what they already know, and what they need to know to solve
the problem. And then what they do is ─ well we provide, for example,
lectures and materials that they can access, but they demand themusually and they can ask for instruction in certain skills and knowledge.
So they'll say,We need you to tell us about this topic, we need to knowthat to understand this.  And that creates the demand for theknowledge rather than simply sitting students down and saying,This is
the way the world works. This is what you need to know.They comeand the knowledge becomes very powerful for them because they'relearning it to answer a question that they are trying to solve.
So that's a little bit about how it works. But yeah, what the idea is,is that it's based a little bit on the idea I mentioned before ─ that mostof the big, interesting science of the future is really between thedisciplines. It's problems that are much bigger. Most of physics is pretty
well understood ─ the standard model explains every single experimentthat has ever been performed at this point. So where you want to create
really, really interesting new scientific endeavors for humans is between
the gaps, okay? Where these complicated things overlap and, so, I think
the course has that in mind; it wants to create students that aren't
wedded to fixed divisions ─ that they accept and understand different
ways of thinking. But they're not wedded to one and they're prepared toopen-mindedly jump among different mindsets and different ways ofthinking to try and solve problems creatively.
Tsuyoshi Ishii Talking about technology, it reminds me of Harari'sbook. He discussed artificial intelligence, writing that, The danger isthat if we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing
human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of
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Jonathan Woodward

computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity ofhumans.So, I'm wondering how we could take human consciousness
into account when we imagine new technology. This is my question.
Jonathan Woodward I'm not sure I can give an answer to that. I
think the quotation is right, and I mean, what's interesting when it
comes to artificial intelligences, and things like the technologicalsingularity; there are very different views even among scientists. There
are people who believe that this might ─ AI might be the greatest thing
to happen to humanity. And there are other people who think it will be
the end of humanity, if it were to come to pass. But I think the point I'mtrying to emphasize here is that this is racing away all by itself. And weneed to bring humanity back into the equation and decide, truly if this issomething we want or not? And that is ─ thinking about consciousness, we still don't really understand consciousness very well, right? Imean, this is another cutting-edge area of science. Neuroscience hastaught us an awful lot about how the brain works and how weexperience being human, but only touched the surface still at this stage.
So this is a kind of profound question but it's a question that we need tothink about rather quickly. Your quote earlier about, I think,Take
your time, but do it quickly.That's exactly what we need to apply tothese kind of questions ─ that is we need to have a view on these. We
need to care, and we need to have thought about the implications before
the sciences run away completely.

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Presentation 5
Looking at the Past in Future Liberal Arts

Taihei Okada

Taihei Okada

My talk is not about the future. It is
about the past. And let me just startwith this quote by E. H. Carr. He isa famous historian, and this is froma book of his cited by many historians.

... we can view the past, and achieve our understanding of thepast, only through the eyes of the present. The historian is of his
own age, and is bound to it by the conditions of human existence. The very words which he uses ─ words like democracy,
empire, war, revolution ─ have current connotations fromwhich he cannot divorce them.
Well, now that we live in the 21st century and given the COVID-19
pandemic, our age is very globalized in many ways. Living in this age
means that, even when we look at the past, we have to look at it from a
globalized perspective. Speaking about my own interest, which is the55

Looking at the Past in Future Liberal Arts

20th century, especially the Philippines and the US, the 20th century isbasically the past that is still directly connected to the present. In thatsense, seeing my colleagues at the 5th floor of building 14 ( History
Section for the 1st and 2nd year students), who are all historians andmany of whom study much older periods, history is usually concernedwith the distant past and with cultures or peoples entirely different fromus. And my sense is that, for anybody who lived during these eras, thesewere happier times than those in which we now live. However, many
people say history is such that the present is better than the past. I hold acontrarian perspective: there is no proof that the 20th century is better
than previous centuries.
According to Eric Hobsbawm, another well-known historian, the20th century was the age of extremes; it was extremely violent andextremely consumption-oriented. Sure, in terms of material, we were
better off than we were in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, assoon as we say this, we can also pose counter arguments. The 20th
century also brought worldwide environmental destruction. In addition,
it was the age of colonialism, with war and violence in the global south.
In many ways, these facts are all very depressing, depressing in a
profound sense. Because some of the progressive concepts likedemocracy and anti-slavery ─ if you take a look at a colonial situation
─ were used as a weapon to denigrate the local population. An idea
about progress is something that requires caution. And then, when we
see the 21st century, especially now 20 years on from its beginning, somehistorians or thinkers are rather optimistic. There is obviously much
more information. Even in terms of wars and violence, they are not so
destructive anymore. The basic worldview of the 21st century is; there'resome bad guys and some of the major states would say, "We are goingafter them and hunt them down" in the name of theWar on Terror.
At the same time, we have to admit that, overall, there has been an
enormous growth of the global middle class, who now have access to theInternet and smartphones.
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Taihei Okada

At the same time, these optimists claim that humanity came to thispoint throughprogress.Then, what is left for the historian to donow? Obviously, there are some remaining problems. Aside from
artificial intelligence, as Jonathan said, maybe there is poverty. However,some people claim that there has been definite alleviation of poverty
worldwide, thanks to the market economy. Then, there are also global
environmental issues. But what can we do? We live in such a
consumption-oriented world, and we cannot really do away with it.
Fatalism prevails. So as a historian of the 20th and 21st centuries ─ acontemporary historian ─ my big question is, would this COVID-19
pandemic change this sort of optimism about the 21st century?
When I tried to prepare what to say today, I was at a loss. So I went
to the EAA's website that the organizer introduced me to, and I scrolled
through pages there and then found what Professor Nakajima wrote. It'sa good statement. If I could summarize,Based on the accumulation ofknowledge over the past 100 years, it is more important to clarify what
do we want? over what can be done?This is a very, very profoundtransformation of how we look at the world. It is certainly the questionof this current age. Because in the 20th century, echoing Lenin's
Imperialism, the problem was already there and what was important was
how to solve it. In the mid-20th century, globalists founded the United
Nations Development Program and, in the 21st century, they set theMillennial Development Goals and SDGs. These people say that these
are the problems and you academicians should strive to solve them.
However, according to Professor Nakajima, this age of problem solving
is already over. Instead, we have the questionwhat should we hopefor?Continuing on, Professor Nakajima gave us a brief history of the20th century in terms of philosophical ideas, and he talked about theuniversal. This is where I started to feel unease. Every time we talk about
the universal, there is a strange sense that we always have to talk about
the West. That is how the discursive formation was set and how it still
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remains. As a person who is interested in the receiving end of theuniversal, a question like where does the universal originate? isnonsensical. Obviously, I don't have the answer for it. Speaking aboutovercoming modernity, I think the West-East dichotomy behind thistrain of thought was a bad idea. It became a philosophical source ofJapan's invasive war against Asian countries. Beyond that, I am not sosure about where the West is and where it ends. At the same time, weshould open ourselves to the universal instead of shrugging it off as
unattainable.
We historians usually do not aim for the universal but try to
explain the concrete and temporary, something that was there,
something may no longer be there, or something which continues to be
there but has changed. What can I do to contribute to the ongoingproject, this whole new teaching? I tell myself that I should focus on
differences, different languages, different cultures, different historicalperiods, different thinking, different struggles, different hopes, becauseeven when we look at global problems, depending on which society weare looking at, people think of these issues very differently. Furthermore,
the very concept of the problem is sometimes different.
For me, it is a sham to say that there are universal problems, andthat these should be solved by all humans cooperating together, shoulder
to shoulder. Under the sky, no two things or no two people are exactly
the same. So we have to look at each situation as fundamentallydifferent. Historically speaking, here and now, we don't really know themeaning of our own thoughts. Only with a lapse of time and from ahistorical perspective, can we see the whole life course of a human being.
Only then can we evaluate whether her thinking at one stage was goodfor her later life or for the age in which she lived. For instance, somepeople express such strong racism, but with good intentions, a mixture
that we can no longer accept. These good intentions are still there,
continuing to this day. For instance, women's rights are a good thing,
but when they were used for blaming the colonial society, can we still
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Taihei Okada

call them a good thing? Maybe not.
I should emphasize the importance of seeing things from below.
This means we have to see the people who are actually living in aparticular condition. Then, my contribution to future liberal arts stems
from my training as an area specialist, such as learning the languages andtraditions of others. Given the program I'm managing now, I should also
try to incorporate some aspects of global studies, because many students
are concerned about universal ideas of what problems are. Concepts inglobal studies come in pretty handy, but if you look at each condition,
the very ideas of these problems fall apart. From that stage, learning
starts. In this sense, I'm teaching diversity and humbleness before urging
students to move forward towards the universal. This is what I prepared
for today. Thank you so much.

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Discussion Session

Discussion Session

Takahiro Nakajima Thank you so much for your very nuanced
discussion. I never imagined you would refer to my statement, which I
just finished writing last night. In this statement, I do want todistinguish the universality from the universalizing process. As you
mentioned, democracy or women rights as universal values are
sometimes used to make some distinctions from local movements. Yes,
it's true. Universality in this sense seems to fall into a very volatile
situation. I do not agree with such use of universality. We have been
suffering from this type of universality, a powerful notion to suppress
some local moments. That is why I do want to think of universality
differently by deconstructing the notion of universality. Right now in
China, there is a huge philosophical movement to re-appropriate theright of discourse. Chinese intellectuals are trying to advocate a new
China-centered form of universality.
I think this kind of a repetition of the Japanese movement in thefirst half of the 20th century to advocate a Japan-centered universality.
We should never repeat this type of universality movement. What I am
now thinking of in terms of universality is completely different. For
example, Veena Das, an anthropologist, emphasizes the importance ofthe notion of indigenous theory. I completely agree with thisapproach. So, what should we do next as we pay attention to thedifference embedded inindigenous theory?
If we think of capitalism today, it always appropriates difference
into its own way of managing the world. It is hard to follow up thisdirection without thinking of the meaning of difference. In other words,
difference per se is completely different from the difference that is
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Taihei Okada

employed by global capitalism.
We need a new type of notion of difference, and based on thisnotion, I think we can invent a forthcoming universalizing process,which is different from the universalizability as a problem of possibility.
That is my thinking. Probably the COVID-19 pandemic ─ pandemicmeans all of the demos, all of the people ─ reminds us that there is noexit from our world. In this respect, probably we can elaborate on theway we imagine our world once again. We can imagine a better world by
re-defining the difference and the universality. To this point, how does ahistorian contribute to elaborate this imagination? That's my question
to you.
Taihei Okada I guess every time we talk about the solution to a
problem, we always talk about the content of the solution. However, to
get to that point always involves many complexities. As a historian, I
sense that the universal is rather dangerous, because the universal
imposes in many ways, but as you also said, differences are dangerous
too, because capitalism always takes advantage of differences. Well, thatis true. And I cannot say that we can mobilize the masses to abandon
capitalism; that was a dream of the 20th century, but it never succeeded.
In this light, I return the idea of the concrete: concrete examples,
concrete people, concrete situations. I try to present the concrete toothers, so that other people can learn from the examples that I show
them.
I am a skeptic. I do not provide any kind of solution, but I say,thisis wrong,  that is wrong, and this is wrong again. Thus, I am
backward looking, maybe because I don't like the idea of moving
forward.
Takahiro Nakajima Can we talk about the exemplary universality, if
you focus on the concreteness?

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Discussion Session

Taihei Okada What do you meanexemplaryin ordinary sense of
the word? Are you saying that something could be a model?
Takahiro Nakajima Right. The concreteness tells us something
relevant to an exemplified conduct or behavior.
Taihei Okada Right. We live in a certain historical condition fromwhich we cannot escape. Just like the people who I am interested in,those who lived in the early 20th century. There was a great amount ofracism; it was the status quo and a prevailing value. However, there werepeople who opposed this status quo even in colonial settings, even in the
United States, even in Japan, although the prevailing values were thatJapanese were better than Koreans, Americans were better thanFilipinos, and whites were better than blacks. If you want to call antiracism universalizing, we can do so. However, this gets reversed. The
oppressed now turn back and claim that we are morally better than the
oppressor. The argument that one kind of people are better than theother kind thus re-enters the discourse and it often coalesces into
nationalism.
Tsuyoshi Ishii I want to raise a very strange idea; after this so-called
singularity, can we still imagine writing historiography, and who could
write the history then?
Taihei Okada Well, Jonathan said there are both optimists andpessimists regarding the idea of singularity. But I think the pessimist's
argument is stronger. Furthermore, if I take the pessimist's argument,
this point of view is that singularity will be the end of humanity. So
there is no point of talking about what humans can do, because there
will be no more humans. In history, there is no universal perspective or
bird's eye point of view, which goes beyond the temporal framework. On
the contrary, the idea of singularity always presupposes that there is this62 Presentation 5

Taihei Okada

singular, objective, neutral perspective. In other words, singularity inactuality goes against the idea of history.

63

Presentation 6
Liberal Arts for Collaboration

Akira Inoue

My talk somewhat overlaps withother presentations, especially
Jonathan's. My suggestion for new
liberal arts or new liberal arts
education is pretty simple. It has
three key ideas. The first idea isthat liberal arts for individual elites
Akira Inoue
should be changed to liberal arts forteams. I think this is almost the same as what Jonathan proposed in thisroundtable discussion. As you know, since the time of the ancient
Greeks, the traditional forms of liberal arts have purported to train elites.
These forms of liberal arts state: To become a free and independent
person, certain knowledge and skills are required. I think this kind of
old-fashioned idea still encroaches on the contemporary idea of liberalarts. In particular, many universities tend to consider liberal arts
education in terms of each individual, such that educated elites should
know all humanities and sciences.
But I would say this type of liberal arts education is impossible in65Liberal Arts for Collaboration

contemporary intellectual systems of humanities and sciences, for threereasons. The first reason is that there is an enormous range of subdisciplines within the humanities and sciences. Let me take up an
example from my discipline, political philosophy. I mainly work on thetheories of distributive justice, which require various methodologies,
such as conceptual analysis, philosophical reasoning, and some methodsof testing certain principles. Work in this field also requires certain
mathematical knowledge, not at a deep level but at a basic level.
Additionally, people who want to work on issues such as democracy andpolitical legitimacy need to acquire relevant skills in a slightly different
manner from that required when inquiring into distributive justice. Thisshows there is an enormous range of various subjects within each area inthe humanities and sciences.
The second reason is that the knowledge and skills required to gaina great deal of expertise are deep and complex. For example, as a
researcher in the earliest stages of my studies in political philosophy, I
needed to acquire mathematical skills. That is why, honestly speaking, I
stopped studying economics after going to graduate school. When I wasan undergraduate, I studied economics but I quit, because of my poor
skills in mathematics.
The third reason is this ─ the acquisition of knowledge and skills
requires special training over an extended period. That is, I think, what I
don't need to explain to all of you, because you are perfectly familiar
with this.
With these, I want to suggest that the new liberal arts education
applies not in an individual elite-based manner but in a more teamoriented manner; that is, educated people or educated researchers use
their own expertise for collaboration, or collaborative research.
Now a question arises: What is the new liberal arts education? To
be sure, providing many subjects and research viewpoints, like providing
various dishes on a menu, is very important and necessary in the systemof liberal arts education. But existing liberal arts education places too
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Akira Inouemuch emphasis on the importance of acquiring extensive knowledge andskills in humanities and sciences. However, the acquisition of thisknowledge and these skills is impossible for the reasons I have alreadyexplained. I want to suggest that we should not focus only on the kind of
knowledge-what-based approach to the liberal arts education system.
Instead, for new liberal arts, we should assign more importance todeveloping the skills, or perhapssense,of how to collaborate withpeople who have different specialties.
Now, what comprises aknowledge-how-based approach? There
are three components. The first component is the knowledge-how toorganize a novel research project beyond one's area of specialty. For
example, I am now doing research based upon what actually Jonathan
suggested, that is, a multidisciplinary kind of research, which is calledexperimental political philosophy.Let me explain this briefly. As you
may know, political philosophers attach importance to philosophicalreasoning, from which they try to derive certain normative principles.
From more than two premises, they attempt to derive very impressive,
normative principles, such as John Rawls's two principles of justice. Yet,at the same time, they emphasize the importance of testing theseprinciples in light of people's intuitions, their moral or ethical intuitions.
However, political philosophers have so far tested the normative
principles in light of their own intuitions. Of course, they believe theirintuitions are shared by the public, but utilitarian philosophers attack
the political philosophers for doing this, pointing out that in effect it isnothing more than philosophers' intuition: justification can't promisingly be provided by an appeal to philosophers'own intuitions.
However, if we employ experiments involving ordinary people, thatis to say, thought experiments conducted with ordinary people asparticipants in the lab or in an online survey, then we can gather theirintuitions as fruitful and valuable data for testing the principles of justiceor principles of other normative concepts. But, to do this, I, as a politicalphilosopher, need to collaborate with people from specific disciplines67Liberal Arts for Collaboration

who can effectively use statistics, and also with people who know how tocreate a good design for experiments that can stimulate the intuitions oflay persons. These skills and types of knowledge are very important ingathering reliable data through experiments.
It is thus important for me to collaborate with political scientists
and experimental economists. And, thanks to the collaboration, I have
had some valuable achievements with these co-investigators. But in orderto do so, it is important for me to demonstrate that there exist very
interesting platforms for collaboration. This requires some kind of sense
for collaborative research. I think building up such a sense or something
between sense or knowledge is crucial for new liberal arts.
The second knowledge-how is pretty simple: knowledge-how toreasonably deliberate on certain projects with people in various
specialties. I think this is not a big deal, but it is still important. For
example, when I discussed certain philosophical topics related to
distributive justice with economists, some economists simply responded
critically to my argument, saying for example that,Oh, you violate animportant scientific assumption! We can't compare people's utilities
interpersonally in the way you discuss!But as political philosophers
normally assume, we do have some relevant kind of comparable scale ofutilities or whatever-perhaps, well-being, is a better expression in pursuitof the principles of justice or some other essential values in politicalphilosophy. Therefore, we can't continue to deliberate with theeconomists, due to their adherence to the assumption put in economics
as they would normally.
So, in order to have reasonable deliberations, we need to be sincere
and have goodnoriin Japanese. I can't fully explain this in English,
but maybe we could call it willingness to do something together. As amatter of fact, my co-investigators are very gregarious in that sense. For
one, they like to informally discuss research while having drinks after
formal research meetings. While drinking and chatting, we often comeup with some ideas and then we decide to conduct an experiment on the
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Akira Inoueidea, even on the following day! This is the type of thing that happens
to us quite often and is very important in conducting interesting
experimental research. So,noriis very important.
The third one is knowledge-how to tolerate, and even findinteresting, the differences among people of different specialties. Let me
give an example of the consideration of fairness. Fairness is useddifferently in various disciplines. In political philosophy, fairness is amore procedure-based concept, whereas economists regard fairness as
kind of equity. Psychologists view fairness in a loose manner, which isalmost the same as our feelings about fairness. This is completely
different from the original use of fairness in political philosophy, butthese differences are very interesting and may provide a starting point for
new arguments about fairness. Hence, we should enjoy the different usesof the concepts or methods, even methods of statistics, which also differ
from discipline to discipline.
Finally, the third suggestion is that multi-authorism should be
more widely welcomed in humanities and social sciences. Although thisidea may be more relevant to researchers, this bears strongly upon thedevelopment of new liberal arts education. As I see it, researchers inhumanities and social sciences, especially in humanities, should change
their attitude of clinging to single-authorism. In the global context, ourresearch situation is extremely competitive and demands highly original
studies in order to attract the attention of researchers across the world. I
think we should engage in collaborative research with other people whohave a great deal of expertise. However, there are not so many
researchers in humanities who are committed to collaborative research.
In part, this may be due to an obsession with single-authorism. Hence, it
might be provocative, but I want to say it here in this roundtable: It istime to change our attitude and have more positivity towards multiauthorism in humanities and social sciences. This, I strongly believe,
paves the way for new liberal arts education. That's it. Thank you verymuch for listening.
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Discussion Session

Discussion Session

Takahiro Nakajima Thank you so much for your well-organizedpresentation. Yes, I completely agree with you when you focus on theliberal arts in a team-oriented manner. Andhowknowledge or ahowquestion is much more crucial thatwhatknowledge. How can
we ─ this is a how question ─ realize your suggestions in the very
concrete situation here at Komaba? Do you have any concrete ideas
regarding this?
Akira Inoue Thank you for asking this important question. I would
rather ask other people about how to change the current situation,
which I do indeed want to alter in the humanities and social sciences. I
want to mention, first of all, professors at the University of Tokyo like
Nakajima sensei have truly extensive knowledge. When I entered thegraduate school, I was overwhelmed by professors' knowledge. They
know philosophy, mathematics, various languages, and statistics. Theirknowledge was overwhelming indeed. But in this contemporary period,
we cannot cover all of the knowledge or skills in humanities and social
sciences. And this is true for many students, even though they are very
good learners, very able, smart. Again, they cannot acquire all of the skills
or knowledge in humanities and social sciences.
Thus, I strongly believe we should change our way of teaching
students in such a way as to give students a sense of multidisciplinary
research projects in humanities and social sciences. And if students havea sense of multidisciplinary projects, they can easily collaborate withother people. So teaching tips for collaboration may be sufficient foryounger researchers or young students at Komaba, because they are very
70 Presentation 6

Akira Inouesmart and some of them have great potential. Note that these kinds oftips, it seems to me, can be easily taught. So just providing certain tips is,
I think, enough. However, an attempt to teach these tips does not exist
in liberal arts education.
Takahiro Nakajima Dōgen in Shōbō Genzō 『正法眼蔵』() tries toelaborate on a new type of education in which a mentor and a student
jump together into a very entangled situation. The mentor never teaches
the student anything that would allow him or her break out of thisentanglement. Simply, the mentor and the student, two of them, areasked to jump into this situation together. That is Dōgen's way ofeducation. It is extremely interesting to me. From my personal
experience in education, it is very fortunate for me that my students havenever followed my specialty. They never studied Chinese philosophy atall. I strongly believe that it is a very good situation for me and mystudents. I do not know what's going on in their own research field, but
I just listen to their discussions and presentations. That's it! It is one
possible way of education.
Yusuke Wakazawa Thank you for the fascinating suggestions aboutcollaborative research, and I generally sympathize with your agenda. I'mwondering if you could present some historical examples of a prototypeof team oriented liberal arts. Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) is a wellknown outcome of collaborative research between Theodor Adorno(1903-69) and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), but there could be someother kinds of examples. I actually came across one in the history ofphilosophy.
Akira Inoue Yes, I don't have enough knowledge about the historicalexamples, but as I told you, I do experimental political philosophy. To
conduct research in this area, I need to collaborate with politicalscientists and economists who can handle statistics well because we need71Discussion Session

to analyze experimental data for a particular project. Of course, I, tosome degree, have a basic understanding of statistics, partly because I wasan economics student as an undergraduate. However, very recently,
statistical analysis has developed in a quite radical and rapid manner. So I
can't follow all of these developments. I need to collaborate with people
who have the aforementioned expertise.
We can then publish articles in well-regarded journals. It isinteresting to note that experimental philosophy is quite popular now,
while experimental political philosophy is not, because politicalphilosophers are very skeptical of the use of experiments. I want tochange their evaluation; that is, the negative evaluation of experiments.
Anyway, we can easily engage in collaboration, so maybe similar
historical examples can easily be found. The point is that you canactually do this type of collaborative, experimental research, starting evennow. This is not a tall order at all.
Yusuke Wakazawa While you were giving this talk, Scottish Enlightenment philosophers were on my mind. They were pioneering social
scientists and they worked together to explore human nature in theeighteenth century. Although they did not co-author books, theygathered and exchanged opinions in Edinburgh societies and clubs. I
think that their form of producing and sharing knowledge is surely
collaborative.
Akira Inoue Like Hume, right?
Yusuke Wakazawa Indeed. David Hume (1711-76) was a conversational philosopher whose intellectual pursuits were characterized byprofound but cheerful exchange with other philosophers. In the Scottish
Enlightenment, people from different social, cultural, and intellectual
backgrounds gathered and conversed in various social spaces such as
coffeehouses, universities, pubs, libraries, and theatres. The generic scope
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Akira Inoueof this intellectual exchange covered ethics, politics and economics,
human psychology, literary criticism, jurisprudence, engineering, agriculture, and so on.
Akira Inoue I really like Hume. So I think my doing research on
experimental political philosophy is almost like pursuing David Hume's
project in my own way. This is my basic tenet.
Jonathan Woodward First of all, thank you. I very much enjoyed thepresentation, and I very much share your views. I kind of wanted toreflect on it in this context, because what we're doing now is exactly
what you're talking about in a way, right? One thing you have to do forcollaboration is create opportunities for collaborating, and I have been at
Todai for nine years and this is the first time I ever talked to otheracademics about this kind of thing! About what they do, about how they
think, partly, of course, it's because many of these are conducted inJapanese, so probably I don't join to the same extent but still there's animportance in creating opportunities for communication that allows you
to do this kind of collaboration as you talked about, while drinking abeer.
Actually, I do this global faculty development ( GFD ) thing at
Komaba. One of the things we've tried to do is get everybody to chip insome money. So after we have events, we can have wine andrefreshments, so that the discussions can go properly. I'm also interested
in having this discussion now, because why are we having this
discussion? It's because somebody posed the question, right? Thequestion is about what should this mean? It's a problem to solve andhow do you do so? ─ this problem has an infinity of perspectives andeverybody can contribute and we all have today in very different ways.
But this seems to me also to be a wonderful way in which collaborations
begin, you start with a question that needs asking and you see what
people can bring to the table as well. So, I just wanted to highlight the73Discussion Session

significance of what you were saying relative to the physical nature of the
discussion we were having. There seemed to me to be some resonancethere.
Akira Inoue I completely agree. And in fact, when I was a PhD
student at the Australian National University where I studied analytic
philosophy, philosophers actually jointly wrote papers, and they do soeven now, quite often. That is, I think, quite unusual in philosophy.
Noticeably, what they have done for joint authorship of a paper is simply
having coffee and conversation after lunch time or during tea time.
Jonathan Woodward That's actually the aspect of academic life I
missed most from the UK.
Akira Inoue Yeah, that's right.
Jonathan Woodward You sit down, drink tea and talk. So that's
where all the great ideas come from.
Akira Inoue That's exactly the point, and I'd say we need more timeto have these kinds of things. Actually when I started as a research
associate of the department I currently belong to, the researchers
frequently gathered in a small research office room in the fifth-floor of
Building Two. They just talked about the ideas, very complicatedconcepts, such as ideas from philosophy, medieval philosophy to modern
sciences. But researchers nowadays are very busy, especially at Komaba;
we need more time, indeed.
Jonathan Woodward But we also need to create the environment for
it to happen. I think the other thing that I missed so much is forexample in my previous university in the UK. We had a faculty dining
floor of the building. And there it becomes a culture of faculty from74 Presentation 6

Akira Inoue

different departments eating lunch together, and just sharing ideas andthoughts. I was a student in Oxford where you have colleges with aformal dinner in hall every night. Everyone sits around and talks about
philosophy or art or poetry or science. Every night, the top thinkers sit
next to people from different disciplines and shoot the breeze overdinner. And I miss that. I think that is a way in which we can really build
the connections between these different things.
Akira Inoue I fully agree.

75

Wrap-up Discussion

Takahiro Nakajima I'd like to jump to the wrap-up session. Firstly,
can I ask EAA people to give a brief comment on today's presentations?
Yoojin, can you take the lead?
Yoojin Koo Thank you, Nakajima-sensei. It's actually the first time
for us to try having this conference online. And as Nakajima-sensei
mentioned, it was kind of difficult to pay attention for a long period oftime, but it was indeed a nice try and probably everybody here feels
somewhere in their mind that it's going to be a new era in which wehave this kind of conversation, networking like this online. Well, as I
was listening to your discussion, I thought that kyōyō maybe hassomething to do with a society in a historical context as well; some of the
speakers have discussed the definition or roots of kyōyō and some otherterms, but what I thought is that the meaning of kyōyō has changed in
the context of society; it is more dynamic than static. Well we are in the
midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has definitely changed theways we live our lives; this kind of context might affect changes in themeaning of kyōyō. How people are conscious of or embrace kyōyō in oursociety also matters, I suppose.
In line with this, I came up with the term citizen, because it is a key
concept for deliberate democracy. So how can we also think about thisconcept of citizen in our society as we discuss kyōyō? So that's it. Thankyou.
Mark Roberts I would also like to thank all of you for very interestingpresentations, lots to think about. I was particularly struck by the angles
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Wrap-up Discussion

from which Professors Woodward and Inoue both discussed thisquestion of disciplinarity and how we might rethink disciplinarity for a
new liberal arts whether it's a question of how we bring together the
study of fundamentals with contemporary issues or how we might try tobring the idea of collaboration into this as well which, I think, is very
striking. I have also noticed this over a long period of time that thesciences, especially now seem to be very collaborative. You see papers
published with like 10 authors and this kind of thing. It just never
happens in the humanities. I think there are, of course, good examples ofvery productive collaboration that have occurred, not just the Frankfurt
School but, of course, Deleuze and Guattari. Guattari was a psychiatrist
basically, Hardt and Negri, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri together
produced interesting work.
So, I think it's not hard to find examples of that. I guess thequestion would be, how is that introduced through the pedagogy of newliberal arts? So, I guess that would be the question there. And I think the
AI example also is kind of interesting but maybe in an unexpected way
through the COVID crisis. Now we're familiar with this idea that, there
are the number of cases of infection that are published which may betotally different than the number of true cases that are actually out there,
which we don't know what they are exactly. So there's a whole question
about that.
I would say, actually, to be a bit contrarian, and I think to agreewith what Okada-sensei was saying about AI, I think that if we actually
really dig into the history of AI, we will find that it was circling aroundproblems that could not be solved for decades. At the beginning, there
was a question of, I have to confess some prior encounter with computerscience, but for decades the question was symbol processing. And for
decades, people were trying to invent artificial intelligence, and they
didn't even know about epistemology basically, they didn't care at allabout thousands of years of inquiry into epistemology, and then they
rediscovered,Oh, well, knowledge has to be embodied,okay.
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So now that's what they're thinking about. I'll just quote briefly
Rodney Brooks who is a former director of the MIT Artificial
Intelligence Lab who said,The bug in this line of thinking is thatthousands of AI researchers have been working on this problem for 62
years. We are not at any sudden inflection point, right.So, if there had
been an interdisciplinary context for AI research, maybe we'd have muchgreater clarity about how we should even be thinking about that. That is
my observation. Thank you all.
Qin Wang I'll very briefly return to the concept raised by Nakajimasensei, namely the so-calledexemplary universal.I think it is a very
interesting phrase, and it sheds a lot of light on the whole conference. I
want to briefly bring into the discussion Giorgio Agamben's explanationof what an example is in his work Signature of All Things. So, basically,following Aristotle, Agamben says that the logic of an example is neither
deduction nor induction. Rather, it is a logic of analogy, which means
that, in order to explain a rule or a law, you must appeal to a certain
example, but that example is not in this sense singular, for you also haveother examples, you must have other examples if the example to which
you appeal is to function. If the example is singular, it can no longer
function as an example. Two plus two equal four: in order to explain thisrule, the example oftwo apples plus two apples equal four applesmust
be equivalent, in its exemplary value, to that oftwo books plus two
books equal four books,and so forth. This renders a very particular
relationship between an example and the rule of which it functions as an
example, for the example is at the same time excluded from and included
into the generality of the rule: in order to explain the rule, it has to begeneralizable; but in order to be analogical to other examples, it has tokeep its particularity. For example, the logic of example is in reverse to
the logic of exception as both are concerned with the structure ofinclusive exclusion or exclusive inclusion.
So an example shows a kind of very horizontal logic between
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Wrap-up Discussion

exemplary cases. If you take that into a case for understanding theuniversal, then the universal is no longer something vertical. It's not akind of totalizing category under which you have examples; rather, you
only have a horizontal relationship, which ceaselessly leads you from one
example to another example. Why is this important? I think this is very
illuminating in understanding what's happening today, here and now,
over the whole world, namely the Coronavirus. We have to reconsider
how the logic of examples and the logic exception, respectively, arefunctioning in all those media representations and information about
the virus in different countries in order to give a universal value to what
can only be calledglobal.If all nation states are taking exceptional
measures to deal with the problem of the spread of virus, politicalmeasures, cultural measures, economic measures, which are almost thesame everywhere, which place individual rights under the emergence ofsurvival everywhere, do we have to call these measuresuniversal,or, if
not, how to imagine a possible resistance based on the exemplary
universal?
If you kind of contrast example with exception, there might be ─
this is, again, Agamben's critique of modern politics ─ there might be a
lot of ways to critically examine the way in which we organize our daily
life, the way in which we understand our human relationships as well associal relationships. And I think that might be one kind of entry point,
and that's what I learned from today's conference. Thank you so muchfor such a fruitful discussion.
Mizuki Uno Thank you very much for the fascinating presentations.
I'm glad to be able to attend the meeting today. I attended an online
meeting for the first time, and it was a very valuable experience for me. I
felt that we probably needed to redefine the word "kyōyō" or liberal artsand consider how effective it is for the social system that the virus
Covid-19 might bring. Therefore, I thought it was necessary to findeffective ways for science and humanities to join hands together. So, I'm
80impressed with the idea of joint research by Professor Inoue. And, as
Professor Ishii mentioned about the legacy of Komaba, EAA is also
promoting a project to exhibit the history of First Higher School, thepredecessor of the University of Tokyo, so I will consider the concept ofkyōyō from such a historical perspective. Thank you very much.
Sana Sakihama Thank you for a very rich discussion today. I enjoyedit very much. And I think such discussion among scholars from different
fields is very important. My research field is Okinawan intellectual
history. As you know, there is the so calledproblem of Okinawa,
which is deeply related the presence of U.S. military bases in Okinawa.
The problem of Okinawa is such a complicated problem. I think itshould be termed a complex system, because to consider this problem,
we have to understand its historical, political, and economic background.
I always think I need to learn economics, political science, literature, or
philosophy, but as Inoue-sensei said it's impossible for us to learn deeply
in every academic field. So I think academic collaboration is becoming
more and more important. Of course, we still have some difficulties. For
example, when we talk to a person from different field, it might bedifficult for us to understand what he or she is saying, because we don't
share an academic framework, or some technical terms. So, to realize thistype of academic collaboration, we have to know we are standing atdifferent points. Only after recognizing how we are different from eachother, can we share one common question that we have to face toconsider our complex problem.
Hanako Takayama Thank you very much. Today, after hearing yourpresentations I am wondering if kyōyō or liberal arts are limited to only
the university. I'm thinking about that question in terms of theeducational system. For example, when we were high school students or
junior high school students, we were learning not only Mathematics or
Science but also Japanese. So I do like to continue thinking about this81

Wrap-up Discussion

question of kyōyō with our real educational system, especially in Japan.
That's my comment. Thank you very much.
Yusuke Wakazawa It was very nice to share research themes withscholars from natural and social sciences today. As some speakers havealready mentioned, the University of Tokyo's Komaba Campus ispotentially full of such interdisciplinary communications, but we also
miss so many opportunities for this. Without physical space like a dining
hall or college common room, mediating those conversations are
difficult. So I really appreciate Nakajima-sensei and Ishii-sensei'stremendous effort to realize this roundtable discussion. Today is the firstday for me to work as an EAA project research fellow. Thanks to yourpapers and discussions, I have a good start in my research at the
University of Tokyo.
I am thinking about liberal arts as a means to reconstruct thedestroyed world. Liberal arts as collaborative research would be engaged
with the reorganization of knowledge through which we could
understand and interact with the transforming world in a proper way.
At present, ongoing changes across the planet undermine the foundationof our everyday life and social/cultural practices. Liberal arts need to be a
response to this havoc. We need a new intellectual framework to grasp
what is going on in a proper manner. I think that is what liberal arts can,or should, do. I am very much looking forward to the next roundtablediscussion in May.
Takahiro Nakajima Akira, could you reply something to thecomments?
Akira Inoue Thank you very much for giving me an opportunity tohear the various interesting talks from different perspectives and also forthe comments upon my presentation. I would say, my doing multidisciplinary research is no more or less than one example among various
82

cases including historical ones. That means my suggestion may not be
entirely new. But the important point is that: my suggestion is
provocative in certain ways of thinking or in certain research areas, eventhough it has some of historical roots and historical examples. I do notdeny that we can learn from such examples. That is exactly what I
thought when listening to your comments and asking questions. Thankyou very much again.
Takahiro Nakajima
something?

Thank you so much. Taihei, could you say

Taihei Okada I really learnt a lot from today's roundtable discussion
but what it boils down to seems to me that there should be manydifferent forms of collaboration. I completely agree with that. But at thesame time, to be honest with you, I have had a hard time teaching jointlywith other professors in the past. Compared with teaching 13 times
consecutively, it's very different to teach twice or three times persemester. Speaking about the downside of single authorship, we
collaborate in many different ways. However, it's very difficult for me towrite with anybody else on my own original research. Simply because
nobody else has read the same documents as I have read. I don't mind
writing a chapter in edited volumes. I have done it quite a few times.
Another way of collaboration is that I talk with other historians or otherarea studies people both formally and informally. That is definitely
beneficial. So, maybe it really depends on what kind of discipline you're
working in. Depending on the discipline, different styles of collaboration
are preferred. Thank you so much.
Takahiro Nakajima
something?

Thank you very much. Jonathan, can you say

Jonathan Woodward Thank you. Well, first of all, I very much83Wrap-up Discussion

enjoyed the session. It's been a real pleasure to be involved and I've also
learned a great deal. And I think that an important lesson is that we all
have examples from our own areas, our own experiences that thatsometimes aren't relevant, but sometimes can be relevant to each other.
And by casting the net wider, we can get new perspectives on many
problems in this way.
So the whole experience for me has involved too many new things
going in my mind and not being able to say one coherent thing because I
need to put them together better, but in the last comments I like theintroduction of this word, citizen because I think that certainly
chimes well with how I view education and how I view liberal arts
education. And this goes back to the idea of my problem with thequestionDo you educate specialists and generalists in the same way?
Do you? How do you teach? How we teach influences and is influenced
by our final goals? Do we want to create researchers? Do we want tocreate politicians? Do we want to create doctors, who do we want tocreate and what are we doing? And therefore, when we think in a verybroad sense about what kyōyō should be, we have to think very carefully
about our future audience.
I've learned a lot about the history of kyōyō and who kyōyō was for.
So an important question for me now, thinking about this, is exactly
who is Todai's kyōyō for moving forward? Okay, so I think I will stop atthat point. Thank you.
Tsuyoshi Ishii I deeply appreciate all your participation in this very
extraordinary situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. I think thattoday's discussion is a great starting point for this extraordinarily
unusual semester. In the upcoming months, we as scholars should notconduct our research in isolation from each other. At the same time, we
as teachers should not isolate any single student either. In order to do so,
we have to keep collaborating together, even through telecommunication. As a member of the Komaba Community, EAA will make efforts84

to provide a platform to collaborate with you. As a starting point, I wasliterally very happy to be here sharing these very well organized hours.
Thank you very much.
Takahiro Nakajima Thank you so much. When Wang Qin spoke
about Agamben, I myself felt that Agamben's recent thinking should beread as something to transform our way of life. As illustrated by
Agamben, I think that in this pandemic situation, we should transform
our way of life. That is a very crucial point for our forthcoming liberalarts. My concrete suggestion is that we had better have new form of lifein academic activities. In brief, we shall open a TEAA time withcolleagues. Kavli IPMU has teatime every day for all the members. In asimilar way, if we can have TEAA time together with people in different
disciplines, we would create an innovative moment in the university.
That is my hope.
Last but not least, I would like to say thank you to all of you. We
had a very rich discussion. Take care of yourself in this pandemic
situation. And see you next time with having coffee or tea at TEAA
time!

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Contributors

Akira Inoue (井上彰) is an Associate Professor of Political Philosophy
at the Department of Advanced Social and International Studies in the
Graduate School of the Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. His
publications include  Rawlsian Contractualism and Cognitive
Disabilities,in Edwin E. Etieyibo (ed.) Perspectives in Social Contract
Theory, Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values andPhilosophy, 2018, pp. 155-177, Justice, Fairness, and Deliberative
Democracy in Health Care,in Akira Akabayashi (ed.) The Future of
Bioethics: International Dialogues, New York: Oxford University Press,
2014, pp. 579-585. He has also published in Australian Journal of Legal
Philosophy, Australian Journal of Political Science, Journal of Ethics &Social Philosophy, Journal of Value Inquiry, Law and Philosophy, Public
Health Ethics, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, and The Tocqueville
Review / La revue Tocqueville.
Tsuyoshi Ishii (石井剛) is a Professor of modern Chinese Philosophy
and Intellectual History at the Graduate School of the Arts andSciences, University of Tokyo, and Deputy Director of the East Asian
Academy for New Liberal Arts (EAA). His publications include 齐物
的 哲 学：章 太 炎 和 中 国 现 代 思 想 的 东 亚 经 验 ( Shanghai:
Huadongshifandaxue chubanshe, 2016), Tai Zhen and Chinese Modern
Philosophy: From Philology to Philosophy (Tokyo: Chisenshokan, 2014).
Takahiro Nakajima (中島隆博) is a Professor of Chinese Philosophy
and World Philosophy at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia,
University of Tokyo, and Director of the East Asian Academy for New
87

Contributors

Liberal Arts (EAA). His publications include Language qua Thought(Iwanami, 2017), Zhuangzi and the Happy Fish (Eds. Roger T. Ames
and Takahiro Nakajima, University of Hawai'i Press, 2015).
Kaz Oishi is a Professor of English Literature at the Graduate School of
the Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. His publications include
The Transfiguration of the English Society and the Poetics of Architecture
1850-1950 『家のイングランド──(
変貌する社会と建築物の詩学」, Nagoya UP, 2019 ), Coleridge, Romanticism, and the Orient:Cultural Negotiations, co-edited with David Vallins and Seamus Perry( Bloomsbury, 2013 ), and Cross-Cultural Negotiations: Romanticism,
Mobility and the Orient, POETICA, vol.76 (Special Issue), co-editedwith Felicity James (2011). He has also contributed book chapters to
Steve Clark and Masashi Suzuki (eds.), The Reception of Blake in the
Orient (Continuum, 2006), Steve Clark and Tristanne Connolly (eds.),
British Romanticism in European Perspective: Into the Eurozone(Palgrave, 2015), and Peter Cheyne (ed.), Coleridge and Contemplation(Oxford UP, 2017).
Taihei Okada (岡田泰平) is an Associate Professor of Southeast Asianstudies and modern history at the Graduate School of the Arts andSciences, University of Tokyo. His publications include Sexual
Violence and Trials ─ Cases from the Japanese War Crimes in thePhilippines, Globalizing Justice and Anthropology (Eds. Hosoya
Hiromi and Sato Yoshiaki, Tokyo: Showado, 2019),Benevolenceand
Its Contours: A Social History of US Colonial Education in the Philippines(Tokyo: Hosei University Press, 2014).
Yuichiro Watanabe (渡邊雄一郎) is a Professor of Plant Molecular
Biology at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Life
Sciences, University of Tokyo, Director of the PEAK ( Programs in
English at Komaba)/GPEAK committee. His publications include Life88

and Information (Tokyo: Univ. of Tokyo Press, 1999), Scientific Understanding of Radiation (Tokyo: Maruzen, 2012).
Jonathan Roger Woodward is a Professor of Chemistry at the Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo and Director of the
Global Faculty Development (GFD) initiative. He has publications in
the areas of both physical chemistry / biophysics (e.g. 'Optical Absorption and Magnetic Field Effect Based Imaging of Transient Radicals,'
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 54, 8494-8497 (2015)) and science pedagogy(e.g. 'A Tiny Adventure: The Introduction of Problem Based Learningin an Undergraduate Chemistry Course', Chem. Educ. Res. Pract, 11,33-42 (2010)).

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