'Liberty' in Early TokutomiSoho Thoughts by "Liberty, Moral, and Confucianism"

• Main Authors: Wang, Yi Ting, 王薏婷
• Other Authors: 小林幸夫
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/14187149018602385722

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 日本語文學系碩士班 === 96 === TokutomiSoho was born in Kumamoto in the third year of Bunkyu. His thoughts could be traced back to YOKOI JITSUGAKU PARTY(橫井實學黨)and Christianity. Although he was deeply influenced by YokoiShonan(橫井小楠), TokutomiSoho actually had spared no effort to deny “Confucianism”. Therefore, his longing for Western liberalism was integrated with the animadvertion of “Confucianism”. This thesis based on TokutomiSoho’s early essay －“Liberty, Moral, and Confucianism”, will focus on his thoughts on“Liberty”. In the essay, he discussed “what is Liberty, what is Moral, and the relations between those two”. Thus, by analyzing the “Liberty, Moral, and Confucianism” , I’d like to examine the ‘Liberty’ in early TokutomiSoho’s thoughts and how he absorbed Western liberalism with the criticism of “Confucianism”. Also, during the ages of Japan’s Civilization and Enlightenment(文明開化) and its regaining independence, TokutomiSoho’s thoughts somehow contained Nationalism in the early stage. The essay aforementioned was written in the seventeenth year of Meiji, given the background that Japan’s Freedom and People’s Rights Movement(自由民權運動) tended to decline, while at the same time its government embarked on reactionary education of Confucianism after the cope in the fourteenth year of Meiji ,consequently his thoughts on ‘Liberty’ contained the characteristic of ‘political liberty’. This thesis examines how TokutomiSoho interpreted, and assimilated ‘Liberty’ from Enlightenment(啓蒙主義) and Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, and further, formed his own thoughts on ‘Liberty’. By analyzing the “Liberty, Moral, and Confucianism”, I cleared that TokutomiSoho’s ‘Liberty’ is mainly developed under his criticism of “Confucianism”. His intention was to cultivate ‘people’ (平民) by new moral, that is , ‘exertion of the duty’. After expounding Western liberalism and Japanese liberalism, the idea that new moral is the characteristic of the ‘Liberty’ in TokutomiSoho’s thoughts and is also the restriction of that can be found.