Climate, Sustainability And The Space Of Ethics

In sustainability, climate is mostly understood as a collection of scientific data of natural phenomena. Confronting this tendency, this article has two aims. First, it explores a distinctive notion of climate by Tetsuro Watsuji in order to illuminate climate as a concrete form of bond in which “who we are”—the subjective human experience—is indivisibly intertwined with the natural phenomena. Second, following Watsuji, this article elucidates the inter-personal nature of climatic experiences to establish communal sharing as an ethical basis for sustainability. Concretizing the argument, this paper investigates the space of ethics as embodied in Japanese vernacular and contemporary houses.