Motoori Norinaga · Philosophy
Motoori Norinaga’s discovery that the heart of <em>The Tale of Genji</em> - and of human life - is <em>mono no aware</em>, the deep sensitivity to the pathos of passing things, and his revolutionary claim that literature is to be judged by whether it knows that pathos, not by whether it teaches a moral.
You learned that Norinaga read The Tale of Genji not as a moral warning but as the supreme expression of mono no aware - the sensitivity to the sorrow and beauty of transient things - and held that a work of literature is good insofar as it knows that pathos. Explain mono no aware and Norinaga’s test for literat…
Leads to Murasaki Shikibu.
Begin this lesson →epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.