Kei Hiruta on Japan's Political Philosophy Boom

We are pleased to publish below a guest post by Carnegie-Uehiro Fellow Kei Hiruta.

Observers of Japanese society may be surprised to see an emerging interest in political philosophy in Japan. Mainstream newspapers and popular magazines have been busy interviewing philosophy professors; and bookstores across the country are holding or planning to hold philosophy book fairs. Why is this happening and what is the likely outcome?

The cause of this boom is thanks to Harvard professor Michael Sandel. His renowned lectures at Harvard were recently broadcast on NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) and turned out to be enormously popular. The Japanese translation of his book, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? has sold about 400,000 copies since its publication in May 2010, and his visit to Japan in late August was enthusiastically welcomed. Yet the boom is more than a Sandel boom; he may be an academic superstar, but he isn't the only actor in the drama.

The kind of political philosophy Sandel exemplifies is indeed new to most of the populace. The relevant distinction here is not so much between Japanese and Western philosophy but between Continental and Anglophone. Because of the strong and persistent German influence over the humanities and social science in Japan, joined by the popularity of postmodern theoretical literature in the last three decades, the analytical and normatively-oriented mode of philosophizing—so familiar to those based at Harvard, Oxford, St. Andrews, or Australian National University—strikes the Japanese audience as refreshingly down-to-earth. In his lecture at the University of Tokyo, Sandel asked whether it is fair that the Major League Baseball player Ichiro Suzuki should be paid 42 times more than the President of the United States or 400 times more than the average Japanese school teacher. This surprised and excited those who had thought that political philosophers would always ask fanciful and impractical questions such as, "What does Karl Marx mean by commodity fetishism?"

The political philosophy boom, like all booms, promises too much. In a recent special issue of the popular magazine Weekly Toyo Keizai, the discipline is reported to offer guidance on tackling various problems, including Japan's continuously high suicide rate and the uncertain future of capitalism. Yet psychologists are better qualified to address the first problem, and political philosophers are as clueless as economists about the second one.

Does this mean that the boom will be followed by disillusionment? Perhaps. A boom brings opportunities to make money, and bad philosophy is already piling up in the market to drive good ones out. If this trend continues, the boom will turn into a bubble.

That would be an unfortunate end of the story because the Japanese have a wide range of social and political issues that can be illuminated by philosophical reflection. Should we abolish the death penalty? Should we accept more immigrants? How should a country deal with historical injustices? Does gender equality require a legal right for a married couple to have different surnames? How should we control pornography without unduly restricting the freedom of expression? These are but a few samples of the issues that have long been on the Japanese political agenda and yet are still in want of reasoned argument. This, without exaggeration, is what political philosophy is able to offer.

What the current boom shows is that ideas are in demand in Japan to assist people to consider, both individually and collectively, how to live in a society where the "second lost decade" seems like it will be followed by a third one. We have every reason to hope that the demand will be met and the boom will turn into something more enduring. Whether the hope will come true is yet to be seen.

Kei Hiruta is Carnegie-Uehiro fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and a research associate in the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University.

Downward Pressure on U.S. Wages - Trade Not All to Blame

Grant Aldonas of CSIS, Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth, and Robert Lawrence of Harvard recently wrote a report entitled "Succeeding in the Global Economy: A New Policy Agenda for the American Worker" sponsored by the Financial Services Forum. While the report finds that openness and globalization has added more than one trillion dollars annually to U.S. GDP, the debate has been too narrow, unfairly blaming trade for workers' woes. Here is an excerpt:

Since 2000 U.S. corporate profi ts have nearly doubled, from $817.9 billion in 2000 to $1.62 trillion in 2006. This rise has not been concentrated in one particular sector, but rather has been enjoyed quite widely across many industries. As a share of total national income, these corporate profits are today near 60-year highs at about 14 percent. The concentration of equity ownership in America means that higher corporate profitability may have contributed to the just discussed skewness of total-income growth.

To summarize: in recent years the large majority of American workers has seen poor income growth. Indeed, 96.6 percent of Americans are in educational groups whose mean total money earnings have been falling, not rising, since 2000. Only a small share of workers at the very high end has enjoyed strong growth in incomes. The strong U.S. productivity growth of the past several years has not been reflected in wage and salary earnings, and instead has accrued largely to the earnings of very high-end Americans and to corporate profits.

Read the full report here.

Bill Gates: Reducing Inequity Is Top Priority

Bill Gates gave this inspiring commencement speech last week at Harvard. His central message is something that we would agree with at the Carnegie Council:

"...humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement." He is calling for a fairer world, one in which people use discoveries but go further by applying them for good.

We would agree: The motto of this blog and our online magazine Policy Innovations is innovations + ethics = better globalization.

Now, it is the duty of higher education to teach students about these problems, to give students a more global perspective. It seems Gates saw some failure but also some hope in this regard:

"I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them."

Gates's hope is well founded, I think. As I have written here, here, and here, in just the eight years since I attended graduate school, I have noticed a remarkable embrace of social activism, and ethical and global awareness in the academy. This movement has something to do with this generation of students' rejection of cynicism pervasive in politics, disappointment in government's ability to provide solutions, and a reassessment of the role of the corporation in society. These are positive developments, and America can be proud of this generation of young people.

A top mission of Policy Innovations is to provide students with case studies of people and their ideas for global social justice. We are happy to hear of more and more schools putting our website on their syllabi and asking to hear our story.

From Hybrid SUVs to Hybrid MBAs

All the world loves greener, more socially-responsible hybrids.

Now Harvard Business School is following an emerging trend among graduate schools of offering a hybrid degree incorporating parts of an MBA with a public affairs degree--to prepare students for careers in the ever-overlapping private, public, and nonprofit sectors. The Harvard degree will launch in 2008.

The Fletcher School at Tufts earlier launched its Master of International Business (MIB) as another public-private-nonprofit degree:

"How is the Fletcher MIB different from an MBA?

The Fletcher MIB is a hybrid international business/international relations degree. It was founded on the principle that business professionals today must be well-versed not only in business management and strategy but also the complex reality of external governmental, legal, social, and environmental factors that influence business."

Johns Hopkins SAIS and University of Pennsylvania Wharton School have for 20 years offered a dual MA-MBA degree to prepare students "to lead in today’s globalized environment, in which both managerial acumen and international comprehension are essential, and in which knowledge of both business and public policy are vital for success."

The premise behind these initiatives is that the world's problems encompass all sectors. Harvard's Kennedy School Dean David Ellwood put it this way:

"Every interesting public problem in the world today crosses the boundary between business and government. Frankly, I think that for too long there have not been enough connections."