The political philosophy of Miki Kiyoshi: A close reading of the philosophical foundations of cooperative communitarianism

The thesis is a historical and philological study of the mature political theory of Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945) focused on Philosophical Foundations of Cooperative Communitarianism (1939), a full translation of which is included. As the name suggests, it was a methodological and normative communitarianism, which critically built on liberalism, Marxism and Confucianism to realise a regional political community. Some of Miki’s Western readers have wrongly considered him a fascist ideologue, while he has been considered a humanist Marxist in Japan. A closer reading cannot support either view. The thesis argues that the Anglophone study of Japanese philosophy is a degenerating research programme ripe for revolution in the sense of returning full circle to an original point. That means returning to the texts, reading them contextually and philologically, in principle as early modern European political theory is read by intellectual historians, such as the representatives of Cambridge School history of political thought. The resulting reading builds critically on the Japanese scholarship and relates it to contemporary Western and postcolonial political theory and the East Asian tradition, particularly neo-Confucianism. The thesis argues for a Cambridge School perspective radicalised by the critical addendum of geo-cultural context, supplemented by Geertzian intercultural hermeneutics and a Saidian ‘return to philology’. As against those who have seen radical reorientations in Miki’s political thought, the thesis finds gradual progression and continuity between his neo-Kantian, existentialist, Marxian anthropology, Hegelian and finally communitarian phases. The theoretical underpinnings are his philosophical anthropology, a structurationist social theory of praxis, and a critique of liberalism, Marxism, nationalism and idealism emphasising concrete as opposed to abstract theory and the need to build on existing cultural traditions to modernise rather than westernise East Asia. This post-Western fusion was imagined to be the beginning of a true and pluralistic universalism.

Home: the foundations of belonging

To be at home means to be embedded in a dense pattern of relationships to people and place which gives rise to an inherently meaningful experience of the world. This order is neither abstract nor imposed from without, but crystallises from the shared experience of people inhabiting a concrete location. Home involves the localisation of meaning in a concrete setting and in the activities of everyday life, and this embodies an ongoing process of ‘cosmicisation’ which is vital for both social life and individual well-being. Home is not a fixed structure, static and frozen, which shuts out the external world; it is a dynamic centre which draws in experience and gives it meaning. It is a constellation of significance rather than a singular and unitary essence. It is produced by localising processes, which work to concentrate and stabilise value around a secure centre. The elaboration of seven interlinked localising processes forms the core of the thesis: The cultivation of place The accumulation of collective memory The crystallisation of life-ways and their evolution into tradition The generation of mutuality of being through sharing in fundamental biological processes which generate and preserve life Social circles of gift exchange and recognition which reinforce this mutuality of being The elaboration of symbolic boundaries The counterparts of localising processes are globalising ones. These involve the dismantling of the taken-for-granted relationships of everyday life and their reconstitution within spatially extended networks, governed by rationalised institutions, within separate spheres of economic production, commercial transactions, political administration and cultural exchange. The global market, the public arena, technological development and the bureaucratic state are all solvents of localised associations, which result in the dissipation and relativisation of value. However globalising processes never entirely displace localising ones. Even today, localising processes shape those areas of our lives which anchor our identities and provide a sense of meaning: the everyday interactions of home, family, community and intimate circles of friendship.