Body and Politic in Modern Japan: The Transmission of Spencer’s “Organism” Concept to Japan

Kim Taejin

doi:10.22901/trans.2016.9.2.107

Organicism has long been considered as a subcategory of social Darwinism. However, admitting that organicism is intimately connected with social Darwinism does not mean that there is any necessary connection between organicism and authoritarian or totalitarian discourse. These misunderstandings are based mainly on the belief that organicism cannot be compatible with individualism. This alleged incompatibility, however, rests on the confusion about the viewpoints on the body. It is the aim of this article to reexamine Spencer’s logic through the history of medicine. Cell theory can illustrate that independent units constitute the body in cooperation with other units without the centralization of control and the subjugation of the parts to the interests of the whole. In this view, the reception of the meaningn of organism in Japan cannot be irrelevant to the conception of the body in Japan. Consequently, organism and its Japanese equivalent, “yukitai” (有機體), cannot have the same meaning and the same result. When Spencer’s social organism was translated in modern Japan, Japanese translator agreed with Spencer that there is the same logic between the biological and social body. Nonetheless, Spencer’s organicism rather than his individualism was appropriated to support the introduction of the parliamentary system. This discrepancy may be based on the difference of the perspectives on the body.

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* 2021년 이후 발행 논문의 참고문헌은 현재 구축 중입니다.

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