Tominaga Nakamoto

Tominaga Nakamoto ( Japanese 富 永 仲 基 ; * 1715 ; † October 12, 1746 ) was a Japanese philosopher. He attended the Kaitokudō Academy, founded by members of the Osaka business community, but was expelled from the academy shortly after he was 15. Tominaga belonged to a Japanese school of rationalism and advocated a Japanese variation on atheism, Mukishinron (no gods or demons). He was also a merchant in Osaka. Only a few of his works have survived: his setsuhei (“discussions about mistakes”) have been lost and could have been the reason for his exclusion from the Kaitokudō Academy. Only about nine other works are known. His traditional works are Okina no Fumi ("The writings of an old man"), Shutsujō Kōgo ("Words after the Enlightenment, on the textual criticism of Buddhist sutras") and three other works on ancient musical scales, ancient measurement logics and poetry.

He adopted a deeply critical stance towards normative systems of thought, based in part on an emphasis on the objectivity of the Kaitokudos school, but clearly heterodox in avoiding the institution's dominant philosophies. He criticized Buddhism , Confucianism and Shintoism . While all of these traditions saw history as a source of authority, Tominaga saw the appeal to history as a pseudo-justification for innovations that seek to outperform other sects in their vying for power. For example, he cited the various Confucian masters who saw human nature as partially good, neither good nor bad, all good and inherently bad, and analyzed later performers who tried to include and reconcile all masters. He criticized Shintoism as an obscurant, mainly because of its tendency towards secret instruction. As he always said, "hiding is the beginning of lying and theft". In his study of the Buddhist scriptures, he claimed that the Hinayana scriptures preceded the Mahayana scriptures , but also claims that the vast majority of the Hinayana scriptures were written much later after the life of Gautama-Buddha , a position which was later supported by modern written studies.

literature

• Whalen Lai: The Search for the Historical Śākyamuni in Light of the Historical Jesus . In: University of Hawai'i Press (Ed.): Buddhist-Christian Studies . 2, 1982, pp. 77-91.
• T. Barrett: Tominaga Our Contemporary . In: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Ed.): Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series . 3, No. 2, 1993, pp. 245-252.
• Bernard Faure: Clerical Vices and Vicissitudes . In: The Red Thread . Princeton University Press, 1998.
• Michael Pye: Modern Japan and the Science of Religions . In: Brill (Ed.): Method & Theory in the Study of Religion . 15, No. 1, September, pp. 1-27.
• W. Brecher: Strange Thoughts: A Confluence of Intellectual Heterodoxies . In: The Aesthetics of Strangeness: Eccentricity and Madness in Early Modern Japan . University of Hawai'i Press, 2013.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Shūichi Katō: Tominaga Nakamoto, 1715-1746: A Japanese Iconoclast . In: Monumenta Nipponica . 22, No. 1/2, 1967, pp. 177-193.
2. ↑ Tetsuo Najita, Visions of Virtue , ChicagoL UOC Press, pp102-106 .
3. ^ Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern People: India, China, Tibet, Japan
4. ↑ James Edward Ketelaar: Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution . Princeton University Press, 1993, ISBN 978-0-691-02481-3 , p. 21.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Tominaga is the family name, Nakamoto the first name.