Anglicanism as Public Philosophy
Abstract
The contrast in social life between a messhi bōkō (sacrificing one's personal interest to the public good) and mekkō hōshi (sacrificing the public for the sake of the individual) cannot be settled in terms of a dualism. The Christian Church from its earliest times was without doubt a `public' community. Setting up a hypothesis that the concept of `publicness' presented by public philosophy is actually closely related to the `catholicity' that has been a characteristic of Christianity since the time of the Early Church, the main object of this essay will be to demonstrate, by introducing concrete theological illustrations, that Anglicanism has the potential to be a `public philosophy'.