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Kiyoshi Miki

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Japanese philosopher (1897–1945)
Kiyoshi Miki
三木 清
Born(1897-01-05)January 5, 1897
Hyōgo, Japan
DiedSeptember 26, 1945(1945-09-26) (aged 48)
Nakano, Occupied Japan
Alma materKyoto Imperial University
RegionJapanese philosophy
School
InstitutionsHōsei University
Academic advisorsNishida Kitarō
Main interests
Military career
Allegiance Empire of Japan
Branch Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service1920, 1942
Unit10th Infantry Division
The Kyoto School of Philosophy
at Kyoto University
Topics
Individuals
Historical background

Kiyoshi Miki (Japanese: 三木 清, Hepburn: Miki Kiyoshi, January 5, 1897 – September 26, 1945) was a Japanese philosopher, literary critic, scholar and university professor. He was an esteemed student of Nishida Kitarō and a prominent member of the Kyoto School.

Miki was a prolific academic and social critic of his time. He also had tense relations with both Japanese Marxism and the Imperial government at various stages of his career.

Biography

Miki was born on January 5, 1897, in Isseimura, Hyōgo (now part of Tatsuno, Hyōgo). He was the eldest son of Miki Eikichi, a farmer, and his wife Shin, and was raised a devout Pure Land Buddhist. In 1910, Miki entered secondary school and went on to excel in various oratory competitions. He was admitted into the First Higher School in September 1914, where in his third year he formed a society for reading philosophical texts in Japanese. The works of Nishida Kitarō and Abe Jirō had strong influence on his choice to pursue studies in philosophy. In 1917 he met with Nishida and the following September registed in the Philosophy Department of the Faculty of Literature of Kyoto Imperial University. He began studying under Nishida and Hatano Seiichi, then in 1918 also under Tanabe Hajime. Miki wrote a wealth of poetry during this time. After graduating in 1920, Miki spent three months training in the Japanese Imperial Army, 10th Infantry Division, before returning to Kyoto Imperial University as a graduate student. While studying philosophy of history he began working as a lecturer at Ryūkoku University and Ōtani University.

In 1922 he travelled to Germany on scholarship where he studied under Heinrich Rickert in Heidelberg. Miki was in contact with over fifteen other Japanese students during his stay, including Hani Gorō, Abe Jirō, Amano Teiyū and Kuki Shūzō. In 1923 he moved to Marburg to study under Martin Heidegger, where he studied the works of Aristotle, Friedrich Schlegel, Alexander von Humboldt, Wilhelm Dilthey, Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard, among others. In 1924, Miki moved again to Paris, France where he studied the works of Henri Poincaré, Hippolyte Taine, Ernest Renan and Blaise Pascal.

Miki became a contentious figure upon his return to Japan for his outspokenness and outgoing lifestyle, as well as for a controversial involvement with a widowed older woman. In 1927 he was denied a senior position at Kyoto University and was instead granted professorship at Hōsei University in Tokyo. During this time, Miki promptly engaged with Marxist theory and developed a substantial influence over Japanese workers' movements, though did not have communist leanings. He was critical of Marxist views on religion and its limited scope of natural philosophy in modern natural science. In 1928, he was engaged to Tobata Kimiko and the following year they married.

Trouble befell him when money he lent to a friend was used, unbeknown to Miki, to make illegal donations to the Japanese Communist Party. Being implicated in the development, Miki was arrested in January 1930 and held for six months, leading him to resign his post as professor. The following November, three months after the birth of his eldest daughter, he was sentenced to one year imprisonment but had the sentence deferred. The same year, members of the Puroretaria Kagaku Kenkyūjo (Proletariat Science Research Institute), including Hattori Shisō, decried Miki's academic works after which he sought to further distance himself from Marxism. While he remained in touch with his mentor, Nishida, and other members of the Kyoto School, he worked outside mainstream academia, producing popular writings aimed at a wide audience. In 1931, Miki was appointed as a Japanese representative of the International Hegel League. He became a staunch proponent of academic freedom after raising earnest criticisms of Nazi Germany and Japanese militarism. One or more of his works were banned by the government during this time.

Throughout the mid-1930s Miki regained his academic standing, forming strong collaborations with his contemporaries. Most notably he became closely associated with Jun Tosaka, a fellow student of Nishida, and remained in close contact with their mutual teacher. He wrote articles for a conservative newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, providing commentary on issues of the day. In 1936 his first wife died, after which he would remain unmarried for three years. In the late 1930s he was employed by the Japanese government to give a series of lectures in China and Manchuria. His firm belief that philosophy should lead politics encouraged the political activism of fellow intellectuals, and when offered in 1937, he eagerly accepted the opportunity to head the cultural division of the Shōwa Kenkyūkai (Shōwa Research Association), the brain trust of Prince Konoe Fumimaro's Shintaisei (New Order Movement). During this time Miki conceptualized the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere though felt deeply betrayed by the Imperial Japanese Army's misuse of the doctrine, employing it in justifying aggressive expansion in China and Southeast Asia. Following the collapse of the Shōwa Kenkyūkai in 1940, Miki became isolated and depressed. During this time he continued to collaborate with fellow academics and members of the newly formed Kokumin Gakujutsu Kyōkai (Civilian Academic Society). In 1942 he served one year in the Imperial Army as a military journalist deployed in the Philippines.

His second wife Kobayashi Itoko died in 1944, after which he moved to Saitama Prefecture with his eldest son. In 1945 he was arrested again and charged with sheltering political fugitive and fellow Kyoto School thinker Takakura Teru. He was imprisoned in Sugamo Prison before being transferred to Toyotama Prison, where on September 26, 1945, he died of nephritis—40 days after the end of World War II. His death, suggested to be the result of prisoner mistreatment, caused anguish among Japanese intellectuals. Following this, the Allied Occupation pressed to have political prisoners released.

Thought

Satō Nobue, a leading scholar on Miki's body of work, rejects the notion that Miki was a mere follower of Nishida, Hegel or Blaise Pascal. Instead, Miki can be seen to have an independent and syncretic approach to his work. Shoji Muramoto credits Miki as "the central figure in the Japanese humanistic movement" and the first to author a book "explicitly related to the existentialist tradition written by a Japanese thinker", his 1926 Study of the Human Being in Pascal. Miki himself writes, "one who strives for a good life is either an idealist or a humanist." His adherence to humanism throughout his works however is disputed.

Tradition was a particular preoccupation of Miki's philosophy. In maturing his thought, he came to emphasize that "the philosophy of history is the logic of historical consciousness". His conception of tradition as active, ongoing transmission by human action he contrasts with the immanent evolutionism of Hegelians and conservative traditionalists. In his 1940 essay "On Tradition", he states "a proper understanding of tradition must consist of an emphasis on both the transcendence of tradition and our active attitude toward it." Through this he stresses a unification of praxis and tradition.

Miki's thought also emphasized the nature of certain concepts in opposition, such as spoken and unspoken philosophy, nature and history, subject and object, logos and pathos, process and moment, organicism and dialectic, immanence and transcendence, and so on. His philosophy saw dialectic or the logic of imagination as the process of reconciliation between opposites, with the principal organ of this process being imagination that creates types or forms.

In response to the growing labour movements in Japan during the late 1920s, Miki published three successive books on the subject of Marxism: Modern Consciousness and the Materialist View of History (1928), Preliminary Idea of Social Science (1929), and Idealist Theory of Form (1931). During this time Miki made efforts to distinguish his own philosophy from Marxism, especially following his arrest in 1930, and remained critical of Marxism as a political ideology. He had been, for a time, a member of the Proletariat Science Research Institute prior to his expulsion. Miki would however not broach Marxism again in his later works. Kenn Nakata Steffensen suggests that to consider Miki's work as either fascist or Marxist is incorrect, stating that it stands in critique of liberalism, Marxism, nationalism and idealism.

Miki developed a reading of Heidegger's early philosophy as essentially being in the tradition of Christian individualism, reaching back to Saint Augustine and being fundamentally anti-Greek in character. As such, his reading of Heidegger falls with the broad class as Jean-Paul Sartre, in that it ignores the priority Heidegger gives to the ontological question of Being, in favor of seeing Heidegger's philosophy as an analysis of human existence.

The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was influential in his intellectual development.

List of works

Monographs

Ch. 1 - The Analysis of the Human Being
Ch. 2 - The Wager
Ch. 3 - Discourse on the Passion of Love
Ch. 4 - The Three Orders
Ch. 5 - Method
Ch. 6 - The Religious Interpretation of Life
  • Modern Consciousness and the Materialist View of History (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1928).
Ch. 1 - The Marxian Form of Anthropology
Ch. 2 - Marxism and Materialism
Ch. 3 - The Philosophies of Pragmatism and Marxism
Ch. 4 - Hegel and Marx
  • Preliminary Idea of Social Science (Tokyo: Tettō Sho’in , 1929).
Ch. 1 - The Structure of Inquiry
Ch. 2 - The Basic Idea of Hermeneutical Phenomenology
Ch. 3 - The Task of Scientific Critique
Ch. 4 - Theory, History, Policy
Ch. 5 - Organicism and Dialectic
Ch. 6 - Materialism and Its Actual Form
  • Problems of the Idealist Philosophy of History (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1929).
Ch. 1 - Critical Philosophy and the Philosophy of History
Ch. 2 - The Problem of Historical Causality
Ch. 3 - The Problem of Individuality
Ch. 4 - Dilthey’s Hermeneutics
Ch. 5 - Hegel’s Philosophy of History
Ch. 6 - Logical Consciousness during Crisis
  • Idealist Theory of Form (Tokyo: Tettō Sho’in , 1931).
Ch. 1 - Historicism and History
Ch. 2 - The Structure of Epistemology
Ch. 3 - Formalist Logic and Dialectic
Ch. 4 - Limitation and Progress of the Development of Science
Ch. 5 - The Social Determinateness of Natural Science
Ch. 6 - A Theory of Enlightenment Literature
Ch. 7 - Artistic Value and Political Value
Ch. 8 - A Theory of Literary Form
  • Philosophy of History (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1932).
Ch. 1 - The Idea of History
Ch. 2 - The Historicity of Being
Ch. 3 - Historical Development
Ch. 4 - Historical Time
Ch. 5 - The Structure of Views of History
Ch. 6 - Historical Knowledge
  • Position of the Human Being during Crisis (Tokyo: Tettō Sho’in , 1933).
Ch. 1 - A Philosophical Account of Crisis Consciousness
Ch. 2 - An Ontological Account of the Dialectic
Ch. 3 - The Problem of Metaphysics’s Future Prospects
Ch. 4 - A Theory of the Composition of Worldviews
Ch. 5 - The Forms of Social Knowledge
Ch. 6 - Ideology and Pathology
Ch. 7 - The Physiology and Pathology of Literary Criticism
Ch. 8 - Today’s Ethical Problems and Literature
Ch. 9 - Anxious Thinking and Its Overcoming
  • Anthropological Theory of Literature (Tokyo: Kaizōsha , 1934).
Ch. 1 - The Problem of Generations in Literature
Ch. 2 - Literature and the Problem of Neo-Humanism
Ch. 3 - The Spirit of Rhetoric
Ch. 4 - Historical Consciousness and Mythical Consciousness
Ch. 5 - Observations on Poetry and Song
Ch. 6 - Ethics and the Human Being
Ch. 7 - Heidegger and Philosophy’s Fate
Ch. 8 - The Human Being and the State in Spinoza
Ch. 9 - Nature and History in Goethe
  • Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1935).
Ch. 1 - The Definition of Learning
Ch. 2 - Method
Ch. 3 - The Subject of the Metaphysics
Ch. 4 - Being as Truth
Ch. 5 - The Concept of Existence
Ch. 6 - Potentiality and Actuality
  • Times and Morality (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha , 1936).
  • Aristotle (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1938).
series.]
Ch. 1 - The Fundamentals of Education
Ch. 2 - The Aim of Education
Ch. 3 - Education and Society
Ch. 4 - The Educational Curriculum
  • Socrates (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1939).
  • Records of the Present Age (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha , 1939).
  • Logic of Imagination, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1939).
Ch. 1 - Myth
Ch. 2 - Institution
Ch. 3 - Technology
  • Introduction to Philosophy (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1940).
Ch. 1 - The Problem of Knowledge
Ch. 2 - The Problem of Action
  • Notes on Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō , 1941).
  • Learning and Life (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha , 1942).
Ch. 1 - A Theory of Learning
Ch. 2 - A Theory of Reading
Ch. 3 - A Theory of Being Cultured
Ch. 4 - On Science
Ch. 5 - On Eloquence
Ch. 6 - The Reconstruction of Intelligence
Ch. 7 - On Shestovian Anxiety
Ch. 8 - On the Active Human Being
Ch. 9 - Nietzsche and Contemporary Thought
Ch. 10 - Anxious Thinking and Its Overcoming
Ch. 11 - Human Reproduction and the Task of Culture
Ch. 12 - The Reconstruction of National Character
Ch. 13 - To the Youthful Intellectual Class
  • Notes on Philosophy, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō , 1942).
  • Reading and Life (Tokyo: Oyama Shoten , 1942).
Ch. 1 - My Youth
Ch. 2 - A History of My Reading
Ch. 3 - How to Study Philosophy
Ch. 4 - Can Philosophy Be Made Accessible?
Ch. 5 - How to Read
Ch. 6 - The Ethics of Books
Ch. 7 - The Contempt for Translation
Ch. 8 - The Objectivity of Dictionaries
Ch. 9 - Reminiscences of Professor Heidegger
Ch. 10 - On Professor Nishida
Ch. 11 - Some News from Me
  • Philosophy of Technology (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1942).
Ch. 1 - The Essence of Technology
Ch. 2 - Technology and Society
Ch. 3 - Technology and Morality
Ap. 1 - The Principle Behind the Study of Technology
Ap. 2 - Technology and the New Culture
  • Methodology of Literary History (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1946).
Ch. 1 - The Scientific Method
Ch. 2 - Literary Criticism and History
Ch. 3 - The Psychological Method
Ch. 4 - Form and Law
Ch. 5 - Literature and Daily Life
  • Notes on the Theory of Life (Osaka: Sōgensha , 1947).
  • Philosophy of Knowledge (Tokyo: Oyama Shoten , 1948).
Ch. 1 - Being and Truth
Ch. 2 - Intuition and Judgement
Ch. 3 - Subject and Object
Ch. 4 - Knowledge and Life
Ch. 5 - Epistemology
Ap. 1 - Bolzano’s ‘Propositions in Themselves’
Ap. 2 - Logic and Intuition
  • Logic of Imagination, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1948).
Ch. 4 - Experience
  • Philosophy and Life (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō , April 1950).

Translations

Collected Works

Collected Works , 20 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1966–86).

CW1:

  • Study of the Human Being in Pascal (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1926), reprinted in CW1:1-191.
  • Notes on the Theory of Life (Osaka: Sōgensha , 1947), reprinted in CW1:193-361.
  • ‘My Youth’ (Miyako Shimbun , 18–19 January 1941), reprinted in RL and CW1:363-7.
  • ‘A History of My Reading’ (Bungei , June 1941-January 1942), reprinted in RL and CW1:369-431.
  • ‘Some News from Me’ (Shisō , March 1924), reprinted in RL and CW1:433-449.
  • ‘How to Study Philosophy’ (Tosho , March–May 1941), reprinted in RL and CW1:451-75.
  • ‘Can Philosophy Be Made Accessible?’ (Tettō , July 1932), reprinted in RL and CW1:477-87.

CW3:

  • Modern Consciousness and the Materialist View of History (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1928), reprinted in CW3:1-155.
  • Preliminary Idea of Social Science (Tokyo: Tettō Sho’in , 1929), reprinted in CW3:157-365.
  • Idealist Theory of Form (Tokyo: Tettō Sho’in , 1931), reprinted in CW3:367-521.

CW6:

  • Philosophy of History (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1932), reprinted in CW6:1-287.
  • ‘Outline of Social Science’ (Iwanami Kōza: Tetsugaku , April–August 1932), reprinted in CW6:289-453.

CW8:

  • Logic of Imagination (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1939–48), reprinted in CW8:1-509.

CW9:

  • ‘Aristotle’ (Iwanami Kōza: Sekai Shichō , March 1929), reprinted in CW9:1-27.
  • Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1935), reprinted in CW9:29-177.
  • Aristotle (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1938), reprinted in CW9:179-305.
  • Socrates (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten , 1939), reprinted in CW9:307-447.

CW10: Philosophical Reviews

CW11: Essays on Literature

CW12: Literary Reviews

CW13: Essays, Vol. 1: Religion, Education and Culture

CW14: Essays, Vol. 2: Religion, Education and Culture

CW15: Essays, Vol. 3: Society and Politics

See also

References

  1. Murthy, Viren (2014). "Critical Theories of Modernity". In Duara, Prasenjit; Murthy, Viren; Sartori, Andrew (eds.). A Companion to Global Historical Thought. Wiley Blackwell. pp. 228–242. doi:10.1002/9781118525395.ch15. ISBN 9780470658994.
  2. Curley, Melissa Anne-Marie (2008). "The Subject of History in Miki Kiyoshi's "Shinran"". In Hori, Victor; Curley, Melissa Anne-Marie (eds.). Neglected themes and hidden variations. Nagoya, Japan: Nanzan. ISBN 9784990424800.
  3. ^ Dilworth & Viglielmo 1998, p. 289.
  4. ^ "Miki Kiyoshi". Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Encyclopedia.com.
  5. ^ "Kiyoshi Miki (1897-1945): Age, Life, Works and Implications for Jungian Psychology". Journal of Foreign Studies. 61 (6): 7–29. 2010.
  6. Masuda, Keizaburō, ed. (1986). Nenpu. Miki Kiyoshi Zenshū (2nd ed.). Iwanami Shoten.
  7. ^ Dilworth & Viglielmo 1998, p. 290.
  8. ^ Muramoto, Shoji (2000). "Historical Reflections for the International Development of Japanese Humanistic Psychology". Archived from the original on 2012-08-05.
  9. ^ "Miki Kiyoshi". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
  10. ^ Dilworth & Viglielmo 1998, p. 291.
  11. Yusa, Michiko (2002). "Formation of the Kyoto School of Philosophy: (1929–1932)". Zen and Philosophy. University of Hawai'i Press.
  12. ^ Dilworth, David A.; Viglielmo, Valdo H., eds. (1998). "Preface". Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents. with Agustin Jacinto Zavala. Greenwood Press. p. xv. ISBN 0-313-27433-9.
  13. ^ Dilworth & Viglielmo 1998, p. 292.
  14. Dilworth & Viglielmo 1998, pp. 292, 295.
  15. ^ Steffensen, Kenn Nakata (2014). The political philosophy of Miki Kiyoshi: A close reading of the philosophical foundations of cooperative communitarianism (PhD). University College Cork.
  16. ^ Dilworth & Viglielmo 1998, pp. 296.
  17. Dilworth & Viglielmo 1998, pp. 295.
  18. Miki, Kiyoshi (1940). "On Tradition" (Document). Translated by Jacinto Zavala, Agustin. Kiyoshi Miki. In Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents, edited by David A. Dilworth and Valdo H. Viglielmo (2011) with translation by Agustín Jacinto Zavala. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Miki Kiyoshi.
  19. Townsend, Susan C. Miki Kiyoshi, 1897-1945: Japan's Itinerant Philosopher. p. 157.
  • Dilworth, David A.; Viglielmo, Valdo H., eds. (1998). "Miki Kiyoshi". Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents. with Agustin Jacinto Zavala. Greenwood Press. pp. 289–320. ISBN 0-313-27433-9.

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