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Encounter with «Moral science» in Late Nineteenth-Century Japan

  • Sayaka Oki

The term «moral science» was used in universities and academies prior to the emergence of the expression «humanities and social sciences». However, its connection with the modern eastern Asian context has not yet been sufficiently investigated. This paper tries to fill the gap with a case study on its import and appropriation by late nineteenth-century Japan to its socio-cultural sphere, having lacked the framework of classifying the sciences into «moral» and «physical» ones. The study achieves this by examining the activities of Meirokusha, a learned society created in 1773 to promote Western studies, and the writings of one of its leading members, Yukichi Fukuzawa, who tried to understand Francis Wayland’s Elements of Moral Science (1835), a famous American textbook in his time.

  • Keywords:
  • Moral Science; Meirokusha; Francis Wayland; Yukichi Fukuzawa; Shigeki Nishimura,
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Sayaka Oki

University of Nagoya, Japan - ORCID: 0000-0001-9427-1204

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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Encounter with «Moral science» in Late Nineteenth-Century Japan

Authors

Sayaka Oki

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0242-8.10

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

East and West Entangled (17th-21st Centuries)

Editors

Rolando Minuti, Giovanni Tarantino

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

228

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0242-8

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0241-1

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0242-8

eISBN (epub)

979-12-215-0243-5

Series Title

Connessioni. Studies in Transcultural History

Series ISSN

2975-0393

Series E-ISSN

2975-0261

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