ブックタイトルRILAS 早稲田大学総合人文科学研究センター研究誌

概要

RILAS 早稲田大学総合人文科学研究センター研究誌

WASEDA RILAS JOURNAL NO. 1 (2013. 10)Globalization and Ethics for the FutureGlobalization and Ethics for the FutureKazuisa FUJIMOTOAbstractThis article approaches the notion of developing an ethics for the age of globalization. Developing such anethics necessitates revisiting the premises of traditional ethics, which include three presuppositions: (1) Presentism,(2) Anthropocentrism, and (3) Individualism (voluntarism). The ethical subject is restricted to the agentsand themes that appear in the present time and space, leading to the position of human being as a privileged actorin ethics as well as to Individualism (voluntarism). These traditional ethical paradigms were established at anepoch when the power of technology was relatively small, and in today’s globalized world, these paradigms mustbe redefined. We need to extend the range of ethics according to the extension of the politico-market system andtechnology, taking into account all absent agents and factors. This new approach requires the expansion of thethree ethical presuppositions: (1) from Presentism to Futurism, (2) from the restrictive consideration for humanityto a general consideration for all lives or all beings, and (3) from the individual subject to a collective subject interms of responsibility. Above all, it is imperative to take into consideration the temporal dimension, the futuregenerations of the world that are not yet present, and those generations that may even never be present. Such anethics, which calculates the incalculable, has to leave open the possibility of becoming for the world, in the world,and the very possibility of the world. True“globalization”consists of such a“worldization,”that is, the movement,formation, or becoming of the world to come. In order to allow this“wordlization”to fit into our ethicalframework, we must also expand the concept of“globalization,”redefining it as not simply a political, economicmovement but a movement of“englobing”all beings and all lives, including future generations. Such an ethicalglobalization will be a globalization of hope.Globalization and EthicsIt has been a long time since globalization first provokedviolent changes in the diverse fields of politics,economy, society, and culture. This stream, principallyderived from economic globalization (the expansionof a capitalist economy and the formation of a globalmarket), has brought about a huge increase in thecross-border flows of peoples, goods, materials, andinformation by lowering many of the barriers betweennations. Needless to say, we should not overlook inthis context the role of the worldwide information network(that is, information and media globalization).From a philosophical viewpoint, this sort of globalizationin the market, transportation, information,etc., consists in a departure from the material, thephysical, and the natural, such as land, ground, soil,territory, region, country, history, community,restricted society, traditional culture, race, blood, origin,etc. There is, thus,“deindustrialization”(a drift topost-secondary industry) and a structural shift to tertiaryindustries (the service industry) and theinformation industry in economically advanced countries,and at the same time, an“international divisionof labor”that imposes primary and secondary industrieson“developing countries.”In this new globalregime, the relocation of material production to the“Third World”gives rise in advanced countries to theillusion of emancipation from material constraints, anillusion confirmed by advanced information technologiesand the“media”(the media technology or mediaindustry) that pervades our everyday life.It goes without saying that this globalizationnecessitates a great change (“Reform,”“Renovation”)in political, economic, legal, and cultural systems, butthis necessity also extends to the fields of philosophy165