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12 Beyond the Binary: Watsuji Testurō and Luce Irigaray on Body, Self, and Ethics Erin McCarthy Both Watsuji Tetsurō and Luce Irigaray critique the concepts of selfhood, body, and ethics as they have appeared in traditional Western philosophy. They both argue that Western philosophy has predominately seen self and ethics in binary, limited ways, providing us with theories that do not reflect the fullness of human experience in the world. Critiquing this individualist view of self that seems to dominate in Western philosophy—a self that is an isolated, autonomous individual whose relations with others are only contingent—they each provide us with alternative, non-dualistic models of selfhood. Nevertheless, on my reading, neither sacrifices the notion of the individual. Rather, in rejecting the binary structures that permeate Western philosophy, they opt for a model according to which both individuality and relationality are equally fundamental to human being-in-the-world. Watsuji and Irigaray also agree that the body is not merely a contingent aspect of selfhood but integral to identity. For them, body cannot be thought of as separate from mind; the body is thus an ethical and epistemological site. Hence ethics, for both philosophers, starts from a different point than ethics in much of the Western tradition. Rather than starting from the standpoint of the isolated individual, the ethical subject for both Watsuji and Irigaray is in relation: The ethical lies in the “betweenness” of human beings whose identities include the body. For these thinkers then, self, body, and ethics are intimately interrelated. There are important differences, however. Whereas Irigaray’s focus is on the reimagining of selfhood, body, and ethics for the female subject, gender concerns do not appear in Watsuji’s work. Irigaray wants to not only make a place for the feminine subject but to de-universalize the male subject so that there can truly be a place for both subjects—that is, a recognition of dif- Beyond the Binary   |   213 ference. Reading Watsuji’s work in light of Irigaray enriches Watsuji’s view of self, as we will see; however, Watsuji’s work can also illuminate Irigaray’s since it provides a model of selfhood that is not based on a binary starting point. Irigaray has herself encouraged this sort of comparison, having looked at models of the self in the Indian tradition in her 2002 book Between East and West: From Singularity to Community. In this essay, I will pursue this theme by drawing on Watsuji’s work. Reading Watsuji in light of Irigaray reveals, I believe, implications of his work that he did not foresee; and these ideas are important because they can help foster understanding across and within genders, nations, and cultural and philosophical traditions in the way that Irigaray suggests, yet perhaps in ways she too did not foresee. Bringing these two philosophical voices together, then, should allow us to further reconceptualize selfhood, body, and ethics. The Body in Philosophy: East and West In most Western philosophy, the body has not historically been considered as a site for knowledge, properly speaking, if it has been considered at all. As far back as Plato, the body was seen as something that kept us from the highest, most certain knowledge. In the Republic, for example, we learn that we must control the body with the mind—keep it in check lest it overtake us and drag us down. Elizabeth Spelman notes: “According to Plato, the body, with its deceptive senses, keeps us from real knowledge; it rivets us in a world of material things which is far removed from the world of reality; and it tempts us away from the virtuous life.”1 The soul, and not the body, is that which attains certain knowledge. Self too is situated in the soul, if not simply identified with it, while the body is regarded as merely contingent. The conception of the body that much modern philosophy inherited from Descartes shares this aspect of Platonic thought: for Descartes the body as such is an inert object; it is animated and known by the mind, but is not something active in itself. It is not a knowing, but rather a known body. As Drew Leder suggests in “A Tale of Two Bodies: The Cartesian Corpse and the Lived Body,” modern medicine is based “first and foremost, not upon the lived body, but upon the dead, or inanimate body.”2 This dead, inert body serves as a model for the living body. Descartes’s fascination with...

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