Dr. Takashi Watanabe obtained his Master of Literature qualification in 1998 from Kumamoto University. The title of the thesis was Study on the Origin of Good and Evil in Rousseau. During his doctoral course in Kyushu University, he continued his studies focusing more specifically on Rousseau's political philosophy and was awarded his Ph.D. from Kyushu University in 2006. The title of the thesis was A Study Concerning the Fundamental Structure of Rousseau’s Political Philosophy. After obtaining Ph.D., he kept studying Rousseau's political philosophy especially on his unique idea: general will and its role in his social contract theory. The interpretation of the relation between individual’s conscience and general will which has provoked heated and continuous arguments among researchers was also his chief concern. While he was in the doctoral course, he started to address his research to the environmental problems, which recently became a greater concern for modern society. After graduation, he started his teaching career in university at several …show more content…
Ignorance is generally considered as a sort of scientific uncertainty, which is the main reason for taking a precautionary approach. However, unlike scientific uncertainty which is commonly discussed in the field of science, when ignorance is concerned, any precautionary approach on the basis of scientific knowledge can become useless except in its extreme form, such as completely suspending the application of science/technology in any form whatsoever. This type of extreme argument is inevitable so long as we take ignorance into consideration. The difficulty of the problem lies here; the more non-realistic and abstract the problem becomes, the less significance the argument has even though the problem itself is crucially important for the future management of the environmental