Miki Kiyoshi and Watsuji Tetsuro’s concept of the ‘human being’ in the interwar and postwar period (1920s-1950s)
Chiara Brivio
This project will examine the works of two of the most important modern Japanese philosophers, namely Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945) and Watsuji Tetsuro– (1889-1960).
This project will move in the framework of the history of ideas, analysing the developments that the concept of ningen (human being) underwent in both Miki and Watsuji’s philosophical systems. These two philosophers engaged in a discourse around the ‘human being’ as a mode of existence that is socially and historically shaped and they saw in the ‘Japanese’ human being the concrete realization of their philosophical ideas. The idea of a new Japanese human being had its natural overcome in the political discourse over the Japanese nation and over the Japan’s role in the East Asian scenario during the Second World War. With a revisionist approach, this project will thus trace a red thread between the original idea of the human being as a philosophical concept and its later developments in the direction of politics.
