<Articles>A Response to Anna Strhan's Paper : A Clues for Discussing An-Other Religious Education

Abstract

Reading Anna Strhan's paper led me to consider the problems of locating religious education and moral education in relation to current Japanese education. I will respond to the question of religious education in Strhan's paper and consider her interpretation of the insights within Levinas's thinking. Then, after exploring the problem of the relation between morality and education in Japan, I will consider relations between morality and religion from a Levinasian standpoint. At first, I will analyze the problem of subject (subjectivity) in the critical realist model in Religious Education. Next, I will deal with the meaning of 'being religious' and 'ethics' within Levinas' thought. To conclude, I would like to comment upon how we might search for an-other religious education from the point of view of ethicality in Levinas' thought as a reconsideration of daily life. I will then reconsider religious education through the perspective that Levinas opens up, to retain the possibility of speaking about religion after being released from various theoretical forms of 'private' religion, in other words, speaking about 'religiousness' beyond the framework of 'belief ' In this sense, I will suggest Strhan's study contributes to the question of what religious education is.