Dr. Erin McCarthy

My field of research is Comparative Feminist Philosophy. My current project is a manuscript entitled Ethics Embodied to be published with Lexington Books. In Ethics Embodied, I discuss the prospects for integrating aspects of Japanese Zen Buddhism, contemporary Japanese philosophy and western ethics through a feminist lens. More specifically, I propose an alternative orientation for thinking about selfhood and ethics that draws on my comparison of Western feminist and Japanese philosophy. The notion of self that emerges from this comparison provides an understanding that better responds to the globalized world inasmuch as it enhances the capacity to listen for and across differences, a way of being-in-the-world that I believe is increasingly important to foster in our students, particularly those pursuing a liberal arts education. Part of this shift requires an understanding of the body as epistemological site. Zen Buddhist master Hakuin asserts that “This body itself is the Buddha.” Contrary to traditional Western philosophy's habit of bracketing the body in favor of the mind, Hakuin's statement suggests a radical rejection of this tradition – in fact, on this view, true selfhood, ethical being-in-the-world, is not possible unless the “oneness of body-mind” is not only intellectually understood but also lived, and true understanding is never possible only through the intellectual. In my book, I argue that, the view of both self and ethics that emerges out of Watsuji Tetsurō (1879-1960) and Yuasa Yasuo (1925-2005), both with connections to the Zen Buddhist tradition, can be an inclusive, non-sexist concept. Such a concept of self, I argue, gives support to feminist views of embodied epistemology such as the one defended by Luce Irigaray among others. I also argue that aspects of the Japanese philosophical, particularly Zen, view of body-mind oneness can be used to address some of the fundamental problems raised in feminist work on the body and ethics. Watsuji's concept of self as ningen, for example, supports and develops Irigaray's non-binary concept of selfhood. The relational ethics proposed by Nel Noddings also finds support and articulation in Watsuji's notion of ethics as “betweenness”, illustrated in his analysis of the connection between mother and baby. Finally, I think Watsuji’s work may also help provide a framework for conceptualizing a knowing body that includes more than so-called “female knowledge.” At the same time, integrating Western feminist philosophy into Watsuji’s philosophy corrects his arguably patriarchal slant. Listening to the resonances and differences between these traditions of thought, I develop the implications of an emplaced, embodied, inclusive, ethical self. I urge that such a concept of self promotes the recognition of different perspectives and provides a distinctive way of looking at what it means to be-in-the world and how to shape the world in which we live. Ethics Embodied provides an alternative – though not by any means the only – path for exploring the perennial philosophical questions "Who am I?", "What makes me who I am?" and "How should I live my life?"