According to the deontology, Sandel writes, “The antecedent unity of the self means that the subject, however heavily conditioned by his surroundings, is always, irreducibly, prior to his values and ends, and never fully constituted by them” (22). As a result, the self is defined as a “subject of possession” (54), such that “values and ends are always attributes and never constituents” (64). Stated this way, liberalism proves itself to be a subjectivism: It promotes the idea of a sovereign, self-creating person, a pseudo-god who fashions themselves ex nihilo. The exact meaning of this subject ought to be clarified: In its grammatical function, as the subiectum, that which is “thrown under,” it is that which acts and of which things are predicated, giving it a logical role, as in Kant.
What is distinctive about this subject, though, is that it is highly unsubstantial; this concept of the subject lacks any defining content—indeed, it is defined precisely by its conspicuous lack of fullness. This self does and has, but in itself, it is not anything. Like water, it is porous and falls through your hands when you try to hold it, for it lacks clear boundaries; the only real limits it has, if we count the body—since this self, of course, is not a body, but only has it—are defined by its autonomy: Whatever limits the will, limits the self.
As a “subject of possession,” none of my traits, by which I commonly identify myself, are properly speaking mine, except in the weakest sense, namely, as being on my person; in truth, who I really am, is the one behind these traits. For this reason, despite claiming to be more worldly and rooted than Kant, Rawls is actually no better, given that he insists on the separation between a subject and their properties. It is just this distinction that justifies his bold assertion that there are no such things as moral deserts: Nobody deserves anything because nobody—as a noumenal subject behind an empirical self—really possesses anything intrinsically, only extrinsically, i.e., accidentally. And to award merit to an accident is to assign moral worth arbitrarily (85).
Knowing that Kant’s idealism is too fantastical, Rawls proposes that the original position is a more empirical and situated condition for the deontological self. The idea is that because it is hypothetical, it describes “the conditions in which the parties… carry out their deliberations, not the actual conditions in which ordinary human beings live their lives” (41; emphasis added). In other words, in contrast to Kant, who believed that the self is genuinely double, consisting of both a phenomenal and a noumenal aspect, Rawls’ thought experiment is just that—an imaginative exercise that can be performed right now, and whose abstractness is therefore provisional rather than constitutive. It is not that we are actually deprived of our identities, but we are being asked to set these aside momentarily and to adopt an attitude of “mutual disinterest” (54) before returning to our assumed identities.
While this is plausible, Sandel points out that even if the experiment is hypothetical, its premises are not: Rawls assumes that we are in fact disinterested beings, that we are disconnected individuals, that justice comes first, and that identities are superficial accidents. All of these things are necessary for the original position. The last point, about the superficiality of identity, is particularly important, because as mentioned, it forms the basis for Rawls’ rejection of desert. It is also rooted in a fundamentally empty self, one which “is less liberated than disempowered” (177)—or rather, one which is disempowered because liberated, namely, liberated from all those things which ostensibly make us who we are.
Rawls, like Kant, like many philosophers throughout history, seeks the essence of the self, only to dismember it in the process. While most philosophers do this, I think, because of a prejudice against contingency, Rawls does so from a specific motivation, viz., to cement justice as fairness. Such is the purpose of the veil of ignorance which, treating all possible attributes of us as intrinsically suspect and detachable, makes us ignorant about what it even means to be a self; instead, we are so blinded that we become like an unknown and unknowing God, looking down at ourselves from above, utterly cut off from what is sensible; we assume the “view from nowhere,” as a result of which we become nobody.
Hence, as Sandel’s striking example of the admissions letters (141-2) shows, this view of the self is laughably out of touch with lived experience by reducing us to blameless, creditless recipients of traits—we are all accidents of a lottery, and our agency and responsibility are thus devalued and shorn. But contingency is no excuse for fatalism: Just because I could have been born elsewhere but happened to be born here, does not somehow dis-entitle me to making the most of where I live and appropriating it for my own life. It happens to be the case that contingency is the highest proof of necessity, for had I not been born here, to such and such parents, with such and such traits, then—barring the fact that this could all be otherwise, which is counterfactually meaningless (because speculative)—I would not be me, I would not be at all.
This is the same reasoning belying Sandel’s defense of the (partially) constituted self, like in the preface where, regarding the right to religious liberty, he specifies that conscience is not just a matter of “preferences,” as if it the choice were arbitrary or the end neutral, but of “performance of duties,” that is, “ways of acting and being” that are “central to… self-definition” (xiii). What is at stake between these two conceptions of selves, which in turn rests upon the relation between the right and the good, is whether what we do and who we are—which are inseparable—matter.
If it is the case that I did not earn my place in college, that what I call “mine” is never really so, and that all my choices are actually of equal value (and thus devalued) in a vacuum of neutrality, then no standards can be applied to me as an agent, properly 
speaking, but only to these abstract qualities which I hold at a distance, until “it becomes increasingly unclear in what sense this is my end rather than yours, or somebody else’s, or no one’s at all” (57). To reduce my self to an empty holder is to deprive me of responsibility, despite the fact that, as a free will, I have no choice but to execute what I have been given—in short, my absolute freedom entails that I have no free will; I am burdened with this accidental body, with these accidental aims, yet I have no choice but to discharge them, their having no intrinsic relation to me. Though if we accept that we are constituted, then we also accept that what we do matters, that our actions have worth. It then becomes a question of what I do given who I am, which occurs within a historical community.
In addition to the “antecedent unity of the self” that is vital to Rawls’ project, there is also the “antecedent individuation of the subject” (53), which is a further condition for the primacy of the right over the good, insofar as it necessitates the existence of many selves. This consideration arises from a simple fact: Justice is only possible between subjects, whereas if there were only a lone individual, then the very idea of justice would be senseless and impossible. However, taken seriously, this has the effect of reducing others to mere instruments, as it were—in a way, it is comparable to the idea that God created the world and populated it because He was lonely.
As Sandel explains it, “co-operation” and “mutual advantage,” rather than stemming from our “subjectivity,” derive “merely from the happy accident of [our] circumstances” (ibid.). Liberal society is founded upon a technical necessity, giving rise to the idea of society as a contract that we rational and autonomous monads implicitly, consensually sign. Liberalism, in ensuring that each person is walled in by their own interests, thus presupposes what Marx criticized in On the Jewish Question as the right to separation.
Based upon Rawls’ prioritizing of justice, which involves an unencumbered self, my mother, father, older sisters, and friends are, in truth, but “strangers” (183) who, moved by “mutual disinterest” (54), calculate the utility of raising, living alongside, or befriending me; because in the final analysis, such roles are empirical impurities that falsely dictate a certain moral content, e.g., love or benevolence, when we are all, each of us, self-enclosed wills. This is an abstract “state” as opposed to the actual “civil sphere” wherein community is lived out, in the language of Marx: To make justice, which is neutral and totally fair, paramount is to irrevocably fragment any hope of strong bonds.
precondition for all other values, without which they would be impossible. By extension, this means that even goodness itself depends upon justice’s enactment. Whereas one might argue that justice ought to be implemented since it is “good” to have, liberalism holds that the converse is true: It is only once justice has been established that anything 
Instead, we are born at a specific time, in a specific place, to specific people, with a specific community. This does not mean that who we become or what we will do is automatically predetermined at the outset; rather, it simply means that we are provided with a set of determinate and limited options 
Simply put, to reverse the priority of justice over the good is to propose that there are certain ways of life, values, and moral principles which, independent of our choice, are good in virtue of themselves. It is then up to us to know and learn these codes of conduct, not because we chose them but because, truly, in and of themselves, they have been and will be good. Morality, in short, pre-exists us. Thus, freedom of speech would not be an absolute right whose limits are up to our discretion, as we commonly believe today; there would be real constraints—real in the sense of both transcending mere majority agreement and binding us with moral weight—that come built into the very activity of speaking, and which consequently are not subject to legal review. Liberalism implies revisability since choice is contingent; therefore, constitutions are amendable, owing to historical change. This is a consequence of the primacy of justice, where choice is front and center. In contrast, if the good took precedence over the right, then revisability would be ruled out 
According to Sandel, the modern-day conception of the autonomous self derives in large part from the critical philosophy of Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, who defined enlightenment as a kind of maturity, that is, a radical independence from all reliance upon tradition, external influence, or authority. There are two strands within Kant’s thinking that come together to fashion this conception of the self, the first theoretical and the second practical. In the 
follows that our empirical selves—our bodies, the accidental facts about us, our traits, 
by natural, physical laws. Kant himself argues for the 
like Newton, when he speaks of the universal law of gravitation, for example, does not “create” the phenomenon of gravity; he observes, records, and formulates it as a mathematical statement. The laws of nature operate independent of us, and our scientific knowledge of it is theoretical in that it takes cognizance of it. Kant also defines nature as phenomenal, that is, as consisting of 
experience of freedom, the sense that whenever I perform an action, like typing this essay, it is 
Under the civil constitution, external relations are created through the limiting of freedom. Put another way, the commonwealth establishes freedom by limiting it, for absolute freedom ends up being contradictory. The greatest threat to my freedom is the freedom of another, so in the event that I will both that I may limit another’s freedom and that they, in turn, may limit mine, this is clearly untenable: one cannot will that freedom be unlimited, as this cannot be universalized. For example, in the case of private property, if I will that the entire land be mine while also acknowledging that everyone else has similar ambitions, then this clearly results in a rational untenability: the very concept of private property is dissolved in such willing, because the moment I stake my claim, I have no way of deterring someone else except through force, which creates a cycle of violence. 
On the other hand, assuming we each submit ourselves to 
interference, which is fundamentally unjust. If I wish to have my own property, then I can never cease being on the defensive, because in the absence of any binding rules, there is nothing to stop someone else from taking that property. Unbridled freedom, conflicting desires, and scarcity of resources combine to render true freedom unachievable. The state of nature is devoid of any sense of justice, and hence, it is without laws. Therefore, in order for humans to live freely together, they 
This does not mean that 
The civil constitution, then, is the coercive legislation of free individuals through right. In the case of the violation of right, though, Kant claims that a people is never entitled to rebel against the sovereign lawfully. The sovereign, which is the legislator, represents the general will of the people, so any rebellion would be self-destructive. That is, if a people thinks that insurrection is lawful against their sovereign, then they have thereby made themselves sovereign, which is contradictory, considering the sovereign already represents the people. This would result, in short, in two republics, at which point it ceases to be a unified polity. Second, although there is a separation between the sovereign and the government, which is the executor, still this does not warrant any revolt against the commonwealth because such an act is principally contradictory, contradictoriness being an automatic disqualification of legality. 
Kant argues that although rebellion is outlawed, there is something which can never be rightfully silenced, which belongs to all equally, and 
Additionally, when it comes to the issue of an apparently unjust law—“apparently,” because no law can exist that could not be agreed to by the people themselves—this is not a justification for tearing down the structure but for correcting within the system. That a law is perceived as unjust indicates that the people were not sufficiently educated on it. A shortcoming in the law is therefore a matter of ignorance, of irrationality; as a result, the solution is 
Sartre’s phenomenology is 
from walking, since his legs are rather what allow him to walk at all; he is free to keep walking if he so chooses. Nor is it the pain he feels 
But Sartre’s powerful account of choice is predicated on a specific conception of consciousness, a conception which, lacking any content, renders it overly idealistic, overlooking our embodied being-in-the-world. At the outset, Sartre could argue that, on the contrary, he 
However, I contend that the converse is true. It is precisely because the hiker 
Merleau-Ponty talks of a “natural body” that is a source of “absolute valuations” (464), referring to the fact that consciousness is not the sole arbiter of meaning. That is, because I do not merely 
Telling an exhausted person to get over her pain because it is entirely up to her and “in her head” is equivalent to, and just as effective as, telling a sad person to “turn that frown upside down!” A cheerful attitude makes a difference 
This leads to the question of the situation, a theme which, although important to both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, has different meaning for the two of them. Because he distinguishes between two types of being—being-in-itself and being-for-itself—Sartre can posit the conscious individual in opposition to the world; the former nihilates, and in so doing gives meaning to, the latter. Thus, for the hiker, his legs, his body as a whole, the mountain, the heat, and perhaps his dehydration are all indeterminate and neutral; they have no sense independent of him, so he is completely free toward them. As he cannot get rid of them, either by sheer negative willpower or closing his eyes, they form his horizon, his world—in a word, his 
consider this a good reading. To begin, freedom actually has primacy in Sartre’s account, creating an asymmetry: The equality of freedom and world is an illusory equality, for in the end, the situation always depends on, to the extent that it is constituted by, the meaning we give it. As such, the situation has no autonomy whatsoever, being merely the projection or external manifestation of our consciousness, without which it is nothing but mute, undifferentiated, superfluous being. In other words, a residue of idealism contaminates Sartre’s phenomenology of the situation: Because the world (in-itself) is pure matter that means nothing, and because consciousness is arbitrary yet evaluative, the world can only receive all of its determinations from us. The consequence of this is that, because the situation turns out to be a mask worn by freedom, a kind of provisional third term of mediation, Sartre ought to have said that “there is freedom only through freedom.” 
Crucially, the lived body is practical, not theoretical; it is not a manner of knowing but of doing; it is capable or incapable. Thus, the body is not part of the situation, if by situation is meant the objective or external world that in a sense stands opposed to freedom, for the body rather enables freedom in the world; or, put differently, the body is not the situation but that which 
not have dominion over the body as if the latter were its property to do with as it pleases. Sartre assumes that pain or laziness is something I reflect on intentionally, when it is entirely possible, and likely, that it forces itself and intrudes upon me in my very being. If the hiker’s pain makes itself felt to such a degree that he must stop, then it is not because, like a judge, the for-itself decides to let pain plead its case in court; on the contrary—to reiterate—the pain 
According to Sartre, consciousness is nothing. More precisely, consciousness, which is not a being but a relation, “makes” nothingness; consciousness is the very act of nihilating, by which it negates, or non-identifies itself with, everything to which it relates. On this view, there is no real self, or ego, because it is constituted, 
hindrance” (Sartre 40). Against Husserl, who supposes that an ego needs to underlie our stream of consciousness—such that, by making experience possible in the first place, it is transcendental—Sartre counters that this is an unnecessary hypothesis. It is not consciousness that unifies itself, but the objects at which it is aimed. An object, because it is stable, fixes my self-identity as the one who is looking at it. Hence, at the end of the text, Sartre has substituted pure consciousness for the ego: “our thesis: transcendental consciousness is an impersonal spontaneity… Thus each instant of our conscious life reveals to us a creation 
I am, in other words, is my own self-expulsion; there is only an outside that negates me, but no inside that affirms my being. This seems to reflect, on one level, an arbitrary privileging of visual perception, where the fact that I look out upon the world and cannot look in upon myself eliminates any possibility of my having any non-exterior being, introspection being thus ruled out; and subsequently, on another level, a detachment from my concrete life experience, so that “my” body, being an object of sight, or even of consciousness in general, is thereby distanced from myself. Consciousness dissociated from an I or ego, therefore, makes it seem as if I am an immaterial pair of eyes that merely spectates the world without having any contact with it. 
Sartre would certainly acknowledge this, although he would reply that it is not an “I,” but pure consciousness, which is the source of attention. And yet, this is not a helpful answer: first, because without any content, consciousness has nothing to go off, no peculiar, individual inclinations or preferences by which it could choose whether to attend to, say, the chair or the book on biology; second, because without an answer to “Who?”, this pure awareness is nobody’s. It is absurd to think that my self is constructed on the basis of objects, like the table on which I write, as if, from my intentional awareness of the table, I could thus determine what I will write my philosophy paper about. 
that I customarily expect, I will certainly change in my behavior and outlook. At the same time, Sartre forces himself to walk a tightrope between causal determinism, considering he argues my ego is constructed on the basis of the objects of my consciousness—a view which he vehemently rejects; or else he must subordinate the environment entirely to my free choice, by which I instill value, which has the effect of stripping me of any and all determinative properties. Through his insistence upon absolute freedom, which is achieved at the expense of any self-constancy, since consciousness is nihilation, Sartre prevents me from being a “me” at all. I am apparently always “transcend[ing]… toward emptiness, toward 
A crucial component of Sartre’s theory is that of reflexivity, or the idea that even amidst pre-reflective consciousness, when I am immersed in an activity or object, yet I still possess an implicit, non-positional knowledge of myself. Just as impersonality struggles to give rise to personality, so it is a clever sleight of hand, comparable to a 
begin, if I trick myself into feeling happy, then this does not change the underlying fact of my sadness, for I have only applied a false veneer. When I return to the privacy of my room, away from the public eye, away from a mirror, too, I can feel my sadness genuinely, freely. My sadness is not external to me, as if, of my own volition, I could sweep it away like a spiderweb; rather, I 
position, holding simultaneously that I have agency over objects but also that my agency is constituted 
Rarely is it so simple, as the Stoics and Sartre seem to think, that in the midst of attachment, I can just decide 
After describing his sad state as of late, Hamlet points to “the earth” as a “goodly frame” (line 264) and the sky a “most excellent canopy” (line 265) that is “brave” (line 266) and “majestical,” being “fretted with golden fire” (267). He is clearly in awe of the natural world around him, which displays itself in grand, brilliant terms. The world is a 
However, having “lost all [his] mirth” (line 262), the world appears differently: The earth is now “a sterile promontory” (line 265) and the “o’erhanging firmament” (line 266), which formerly stunned him with its elegance, “appeareth nothing […] but a foul and pestilent / congregation of vapours” (lines 268-9). In his sadness, the world has lost its previous grandeur; it has been stripped, denuded of its beauty. The bright, careful, and overpowering qualities have been demoted, giving way to coldness, lifelessness, and randomness. Although he predates the natural philosophers who would introduce the “new philosophy,”
But what is most significant in Hamlet’s speech is his awareness of these two incompatible perspectives. Accordingly, the prince is once again truly modern to the extent that, by preceding his reductions in both cases with “seems 
To what is this lucidity attributable? While it may be argued that Hamlet’s outburst is merely a gimmick meant to mislead his father’s spies, that is, a contrived expression of his “antic disposition” (1.5.170) 
When Hamlet transitions from the world to humanity, his ambivalence is still evident. He exclaims, “What a piece of work is a man” (line 269). Once again, he is impressed with God’s craftsmanship, for humans 
Finally, as if holding up a mirror to himself, he asks, “[W]hat is this quintessence of dust?” (line 274), once again preceding it with the telling phrase “to me” (lines 273-4). His final rhetorical question has several dimensions, in keeping with his cosmic thoughts. First, it once again assumes a strict materialism. Much as the world can be reduced to a bare “promontory” infused with “foul and pestilent […] vapours,” so the human being may be decomposed into mere “dust,” anatomical bits—blood, bones, sinews, 
The human is an absurdity in that she is dust, to be sure, but 
My last reflection
In the past year or so, I cannot help but feel I have betrayed my ideal and failed in the very mission of Neologikon. This sounds overly dramatic, of course, and it probably reeks of some species of idealism; however, I believe it is true, and I know so because I am the one who formulated it. It may well be argued that an ideal is an ideal precisely because it cannot be perfectly realized. Kant, throughout his critical philosophy, insists over and over again that although certain Ideas are either theoretical impossibilities or unrealized potentials, nonetheless we must not stop striving after them; in fact, it is the very non-actuality of the Idea that compels us to bring it about, even if we suspect that we will not be able to do so. Just because peace has not been achieved, or the Kingdom of Ends established, or 
So what, then, is the mission, the impossible ideal of Neologikon to which I have felt myself unequal? Quite simply, it is, as my banner states, to avoid “the unexamined life” and instead promote a life worth living. Socrates has been for me—as he has for so many others—the great inspiration behind what I do. I have always held that philosophy is a way of life. Much of this is repetitive; it is stated in my 
The humanities study what it is and what it means to be human. When I first started studying philosophy, it was only a matter of time until I realized that I could not avoid, well, 
phenomenon I have always deplored. The tendency toward specialization is both external and internal, the former because it is required/expected within academia and society at large (without which both would collapse), and internal because each of us is naturally drawn toward certain things more than others through affinity. As such, you will find that, for example, 
That is beside the point, though. I do not want to just write about phenomenology, nor do I want to specialize in a specific philosopher (as much as I might admire their thinking), nor do I want to confine myself to philosophy as a whole. I like to think back to my self in 2016, when I first started blogging and the world of learning was infinite—which is not to say that, now, it is no longer infinite, but only that my vision has narrowed, so that infinity is a little less: Back then, I would have disliked the idea of being “the philosophy guy,” because I thought, and still think, that this is an arbitrary self-limitation. As strange as it sounds, I think that a philosopher should not simply think about philosophy. To reiterate, I know I am allowed to change my attitude as I grow older, but the fact is that my attitude has 
interest in, and hence to study, the past. This brings me to the themes of audience and presentation. We all start out on a pretty level playing field, then we learn, consolidate, and specialize. Thus, my latest blogs, in contrast to my earliest ones, show a greater familiarity with names, terminologies, and connections between ideas, which, on the one hand, facilitates a broader intellectual discourse but, on the other hand, can serve as an impediment or deterrent to most readers who have little-to-no acquaintance with the subjects on which I write, particularly when I am more knowledgeable about them. In other words, it is easier to write for amateurs when one is an amateur oneself, moved by pure love unalloyed by extensive intellectualization. Some of my latest blogs, like those on
Lastly, returning to my conviction that philosophy ought to be vital, that is, a way of life, I want to stress that from the beginning, my hope was for Neologikon to contribute in some way to “the examined life.” Various factors make this difficult to actualize—among them, formal factors (specialization/jargon) and material ones (specific thinkers/subjects). The question of applicability, relevance, or importance will inevitably correspond to the discipline in question, whether it be philosophy, history, or literature. Many people find that literature directly impacts their lives in a profound way, yet few walk away from a history book having been transformed (meanwhile, we assume that psychology is by nature applied). Thus, relevance cannot always be my object; not all of what I study and write about is readily usable or significant for one’s existence. 
way, if you are supposed to have “gotten something” from what I wrote, then it means that I myself “got something” out of what I wrote about, or else, why would I have written about it? The logic here does not hold, however, because there is always the possibility that I could share something to which I was personally indifferent but which awakens something in the reader. Therefore, the standard of significance need not go both ways in order to be valid. A director can make a movie she dislikes but which her audience loves, and a poem without heart in it may still deeply touch a reader. With this in mind, what might it mean that I, part of whose mission is to inspire wonder in others, often do not feel wonder myself? Is this a failure or not? Is it hypocritical for me to suggest that my reader implement, say, Aristotle’s 
Alexander Nehamas, in his book 
Meanwhile, we readers have the luxury of following the dialogue externally, without any stake, knowing it will end with Socrates having successfully refuted his opponent. We can thus walk away unscathed. All of this, I am aware, might sound unfair. For starters, Socrates is not alive today, of course, so even the bravest among us who 
Reading and writing all these seven years has been a tremendous experience, but I also recognize that it can dull my sharpness. Knowledge is not wisdom. And when, as I said, reading and writing become matters of reaching a deadline, being productive, or “informing” others, it is easy to lose sight of wisdom for knowledge. Philosophy, which is the love of wisdom, the examined life, cannot just be “read” then “spread”; it must be
This is why Watsuji will outline a hermeneutics of climate, that is, an interpretation of how our environments make us who we are: “it is only through the interpretation of historical and climactic phenomena that we can show that these phenomena are the expression of man’s conscious being, that climate is the organ of such self-objectivisation and self-discovery and that the climactic character is the character of subjective human existence” (16). “Thus,” he concludes, with slight repetition, “a grasp of the distinctive historical and climactic make-up of human being becomes an ontological existential comprehension” (16). What this means is that the climate is not something external to us, as we commonly think. 
The climate is not “out there”; it is not “the great outdoors,” the exotic beaches to which we travel for vacation, the cool volcanoes that tourists like to admire, or the isolated and majestic forest to which we retreat for self-discovery or a hike—instead, the climate is already here, now, with us. Even now, as I sit at my desk, enclosed in my room, writing, I pretend as if I am cut off from 
Briefly, I want to explain why I have focused only on the first section of 
states that the inhabitants of the South Sea islands, like Java, are lazy, complacent, and weak because they resign themselves to the abundance produced by their climate (22-3; Kant, too, makes this point in his 
In order to explain himself, Watsuji could refer to the following passage from the final chapter, where he writes, “This does not mean that natural phenomena gave rise to distinctive effects on the soul of man as if it were a piece of blank paper… Hence the characteristics of nature should be understood as related to the spiritual make-up of those who live with that nature” (203-4). That is, just as climate and human existence cannot be reduced to causal terms, and just as I explained how moods are not so much determined as conditioned, so Watsuji does not wish to passify populations “as if [they] were a piece of blank paper.” However, it is difficult to believe this when he next speaks of a “spiritual make-up,” seemingly independent of “the characteristics of nature.” Where, then, does this spirituality come from, if not the environment? How can Watsuji avoid determinism here? Does this mean that the two interact and that, as a result, the one can alter the other, in which case “spiritual make-up” is variable? On the other hand, Watsuji, it will be argued, was obviously writing in a different time, when these things were more permissible to say; however, that does not justify 
One can say that this is not Watsuji’s problem but only my own, since I am the one reading this connotation into it, yet this is irresponsible nonetheless; to call someone, let alone an entire race of people, “unemotional” is not the same as “stoical,” which 
The second reason Watsuji’s classification is problematic is because it is simply wrong. Take the case of Africa, which Watsuji classes as a desert type. First of all, Watsuji never traveled to Africa; he never saw the continent firsthand. More than that, he clearly read little about it, based on the fact that he cursorily and summarily calls it a desert. Unfortunately, this is a common perception, especially in the West, where there is a tendency to equate Africa with the Sahara, as if the entire continent were made of sand, forgetting about the sub-Saharan regions. The truth is that Africa, which is, mind you, massive, boasts 
experience. This is why “impressions of an individual” are not limited expressions but, on the contrary, the most important, and hence must not be “vague” but “strongly” experienced. However, Husserl, who founded phenomenology, would most likely cringe at the idea that one could write a phenomenology of “the Indian” or “the Chinaman,” considering he wanted to instead study the universal structures of consciousness, regardless of nationality or climate; and even Heidegger, who combined phenomenology with hermeneutics, and after whom Watsuji modeled his method, would, I think, disapprove of Watsuji’s work here, seeing it not as phenomenology but philosophical anthropology. Of course, there can be disagreement between phenomenologists about what phenomenology really studies, but the fact is that Watsuji, if he were to justify his stereotypes through phenomenology, would have little support, if one is being truly honest. 
In spite of these criticisms, Watsuji does raise two interesting points which, owing to his conception of climate, ought to be positively appropriated or engaged. First, at the end of the book, he observes that “with the world-wide cultural contacts of this modern age, the whole world seems to have coalesced into a single ‘place’” (172); as a result of “the shrinking of the world” (173), “the world seems to have become one” (207). The world has become one? Has it not always been one? He is obviously speaking here of the empirical world, that is, the globe. Although he did not have the word for it back then, he is referring to what we now know as “globalization.” Throughout history, it is true, globalization has always existed; however, what is unique about the postwar era, and especially the Internet era of the 21
these franchises, so it is not as if it is 100% homogenous). As Watsuji points out, “[B]y maintaining and fostering [our climatic] destiny, [we can] make contributions to human culture of which no other people is capable… [E]very part of the world has its own distinctive character” (207). Because culture and climate are deeply connected, if we impose one culture on another without taking the climate into account, assuming that the two are independent of each other, even through soft influence, then we risk effacing what makes us “distinctive.” Although one might reply that this is a good thing, since it means we become more similar to one another by getting rid of distinctions, this is clearly an offense to the traditions and history of a people; it amounts to cultural erasure or, worse yet, genocide. We can become more integrated while retaining cultural differences; it is simply a question of respecting these differences and coexisting. There is something that is lost when a local business that makes the traditional clothing of a culture is destroyed by a multinational corporation. 
The second aspect to think about is climate change. Human-caused carbon emissions have been greatly accelerating the rate of climatic change for a few centuries, which is giving rise to all sorts of horrifying realities: the shrinking of polar caps, more storms and tornadoes, frequent wildfires and droughts, more infectious diseases, loss of habitats, rising sea levels, and more. Down at the end of the line is, of course, the inhospitability of Earth. I need hardly state the obvious, which is that this 
Historically, philosophers are always trying to outdo one another by proposing that something fundamental has been left out of the picture and that 
Neologikon 