２１世紀ＣＯＥ研究拠点形成プログラム「死生学の構築」講演研究会
ヒレル・レヴィン教授（ボストン大学）
プラトンから「生きる」（黒澤明）まで――行き詰まり社会における問いかける生と意義ある死について――（初期近代ユダヤ教における死の儀礼化を手がかりに）[英語、質疑応答通訳あり]

From Plato to Ikiru:
On the Examined Life and the Meaningful Death inthe ‘Stuck Society’ with a Footnote from theRitualization of Death in Early Modern Judaism
時：６月２５日（水）、１５時３０分〜１７時３０分
所：法文２号館３１６教室
This lecture will consider the ‘Living Dead’ and the ‘Stuck Society’ as
cross-cultural themes that tap into the vitalizing power of death. Specificexamples will be drawn from Japanese and Jewish history.
It will consider two dimensions of a philosophical anthropology that
require significant elaboration in the development of Death and Life Studies
into Applied Ethics with humane and equitable public policy implications: theunique qualities of humans to anticipate death and not only to respond to lifethreatening dangers; and the human endowments of memory that can resultin empathic identification with or vengeful brutalization of the other.
Plato’s prescription and admonishment that “the unexamined life is
not worth living,” for many poses a dilemma. Most of us are too
overwhelmed by the exigencies of daily living to spend adequate time onreflection. The division of labor in developing societies ensures the role ofprofessional “examiners” of life, from grandmothers to pollsters, not tomention media stars, religious leaders and academics who so often tell us
more than we care to know about matters external to our lives while they

often inhibit our own capacity to reflect upon ourselves. Is it the process or
the goal that makes the examination of life so important? Are there not otherendeavors that make life all the more “worth living?”
The lecture will focus upon Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, indisputably oneof the greatest films in cinematic history. Kurosawa, like Plato before him,
poses the question of the unexamined life. He focuses on precisely a moment
when Japanese society was getting unstuck. The longer enduring sibling andprogeny of Kanji Watanabe, Kurosawa’s bureaucrat and salaryman, thismythic Japanese Jederman were unleashing entrepreneurial energies thatwould transform the world.
Several decades later, a function of economic cycles as much as
economic exuberance, Japan is again stuck. What has happened to Kanji
Watanabe’s poignant quest? “I just can’t die. I don’t know what I’ve been
living for all of these years.” At the same time, Japan’s demographics arefollowing patterns of other ‘post industrial’ societies: a lower birth rate andbetter health result in an aging population; economic retrenchment in fewer
employment opportunities for those coming of age and earlier retirement for
the aged. For both sides of the life cycle, what will be the role of life
examination in a 21st century Japan that is to get unstuck, and what
resources can be distributed to each with what expectations for social benefit?
The lecture will examine another stuck society. Jews in the earlymodern period, and how the anticipation of death and concern with memory
lead to an increase in self and collective examination. In a religion were theattention to death and the after life were not dominant themes and received
relatively scant attention, suddenly in this period, many new rituals developedaround the sick bed and in connection with the dying. With the increasing
encroachment of empirical science, precisely at this moment, increasing
domains of Jewish life were ritualized. An examination of rituals and ethicalwills as well as the presentation of some of the beautiful art and artifacts that
this generated will point to the examination of life, of individual and collective
identities were being expressed in and stimulated by this new ritualization.
The lecture will conclude with general and comparative remarks onother stuck societies in the contemporary world, memory and violence, andthe ways in which the confrontation with death influences the way in which
we live.