AMY CHUA “Divided and Conquered” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/books/review/Chua-t.html
Anthony Pagden World at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and Westという600頁以上の大著の書評。古代の希臘‐波斯戦争から現代に至る「西」と「東」の対立を描いた本であるらしい。但し、この本でいう「東」には日本や中国は勿論のこと、印度も殆ど含まれていない。この本における「東」とは要するに中東のことである。そして、基督教／イスラームという対立に行き着く。評者は、”It’s a good bet that “Worlds at War” will appeal more to admirers of Samuel Huntington’s thesis about the clash of civilizations, which Pagden calls “a crude but useful phrase,” than to fans of Edward Said’s book “Orientalism.””といっている。これはかなり決定的な評だと思うが、面白いのは著者のAnthony Pagden氏自身が「西」と「東」の対立は根柢的には維持し得ないものであることを認めているらしいことである；
また、基督教／イスラームの対立にしても、どちらをも「一枚岩」として認識してしまっている。特にイスラムに関しては、”In Pagden’s Islam there is an odd echo of the Islam offered by the bearded mullahs who espouse violence from their mosques or caves.”
Moreover, Pagden is frequently cagey about whether he thinks fundamental differences actually exist between East and West. In his preface, he says the East-West division is “often illusory, always metaphorical.” Elsewhere, he suggests that the West is in many ways rooted in the East. (“Like so much else that became a defining part of the Western world,” Christianity had also “begun in the East”; Christ was “a typical Eastern holy man,” and “the slain god, the virgin birth, the incarnation” of Christianity were “more Asian still.”)
さらに、
という箇所をメモしておく。
The real value of “Worlds at War” may lie in a secondary theme: the West’s long, tragicomic history of trying to civilize and modernize the East. In the first century B.C., Octavian’s defeat of Antony and Egypt was portrayed by the Romans as the triumph of “a free and virtuous West” over “a tyrannical and corrupt East.” Almost 2,000 years later, in 1920, Shiites and Sunnis were killing each other in Mesopotamia, British officers were dying, and The Times of London wrote, “How much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavor to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for and do not want?”
また、EMILY BAZELON “Good Faith”*1を読む。Martha C. NussbaumのLiberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equalityという本の書評。Nussbaumは結婚した際に監督派（アングリカン）から改革派ユダヤ教に改宗している――”She’s no atheist, she’s no evangelical, and she’s still worried.” 彼女は離婚を経験している筈だが、離婚してもユダヤ教は変えなかったか。また、Nussbaumは宗教と国家の関係について、ベタな「分離」よりもジョン・ロールズ的な意味での”overlapping consensus”の構築を支持するという。
という箇所をメモしておく。
A longtime enemy of elitism in a variety of guises, she fiercely resists the power of a majority religion, aided and abetted by the state, to create an in-group while subordinating out-groups. Nussbaum anchors the countervailing equality tradition in the writings of Roger Williams and James Madison. Williams, who had extensive friendly dealings with the Narragansett Indians, wrote into the charter for the Rhode Island colony a right to freedom of conscience that shocked the British. He coined the phrase “soule rape” for the limiting of religious expression that does not violate civil law or harm others.
また、Nussbaumは宗教と国家（世俗の法）の矛盾の象徴として、ソフォクレスの「アンティゴネー」を引いているらしい；
「アンティゴネー」に言及した本として、守中高明『法』（岩波書店）*2と高橋哲哉『靖国問題』（ちくま新書）*3を再びマークしておく。
In Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone is caught between her religion and her state. After her brother is killed assaulting the city, her uncle Creon forbids her to bury him. But according to the tenets of her faith, if Antigone does not bury her brother, she will have disobeyed the gods and forfeit her own afterlife. Eventually, she kills herself.
Martha C. Nussbaum tells the ancient Greek story in “Liberty of Conscience,” her grand and penetrating discourse on religion and American law, to illustrate how an unbending state can impose a “tragic burden” on a member of a religious minority.
- 作者: 守中高明
- 出版社/メーカー: 岩波書店
- 発売日: 2005/06/24
- メディア: 単行本
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- 作者: 高橋哲哉
- 出版社/メーカー: 筑摩書房
- 発売日: 2005/04/01
- メディア: 新書
- クリック: 75回
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