Motoori Norinaga (本居宣長)
1730-1801 · Modern East Asian Thought · Prominent
Norinaga worked as a physician in Matsusaka and spent three decades on a commentary on Japan's oldest chronicle, building from it a theology of the Way of the kami, the native gods. He set mono no aware, the capacity to be moved by things, against Buddhist and Confucian readings, and made it the measure of literature and of a person. Reasoning your way to a verdict was a Chinese import, a disease. The dead go to Yomi, and grief is the honest answer.
Signature
The position Norinaga is most identified with in the Profiler:
- The Divine
- leans Describable
- Language
- Sacred Speech
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- strongly leans Purposeful (95 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Collectivism (15 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- The Divine
- leans Describable (20 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (95 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (19 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- mildly leans Immanence (35 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (85 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Ignorance
- mildly leans Bondage (38 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Allegiance
- leans Local (15 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Norinaga refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Polytheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Monarchy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Other
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Divine Drama
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Direct Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Tradition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Other
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Divine Providence
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Theogonic Origin
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Mythic Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Hereditary
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Sacred Speech
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Death
- Other
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Evaluative Judgment
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Other
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Nation
What is your primary bond and loyalty?