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Kiyoshi Miki as a Precursor of Humanistic Psychology: Utopia and Eupsychia

  • This article explores the relevance of the life and works of Kiyoshi Miki (1897 – 1945), a Japanese philosopher, to Maslovian humanistic psychology. Although Miki and Maslow differ in many respects, they shared a few common points that are important to examine. In his early articles, Miki equated philosophy with confessions of the soul and argued that individuality was impossible within the traditional framework of logic. His first main work on Pascal’s anthropology was an attempt to assimilate and synthesize the German existential/hermeneutic and the French moralist traditions he had learned in Europe in the early 1920s. Despite pioneering works by Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm, humanistic psychology has not exhausted the potentialities of Marxism. Maslow and other intellectuals sympathetic to this materialist philosophy were mutually disappointed. However, Maslow’s enlightened or eupsychian management may be an important step toward social revolution, compensating for a missing psychological viewpoint in traditional Marxism. Miki’s hermeneutic approach to this ideology offers two important points relevant to humanistic psychology: his concept of basic experience – later called Pathos – as the basis of any ideology, and the distinction between dialectic and organicism. His last years, during the War and fascism, raise important questions regarding what talented, self-actualizing intellectuals can do without freedom of speech and expression under a totalitarian and authoritarian regime. Finally, this article addresses how well Miki’s concept of utopia – on which he wrote an essay in the context of a dark age—corresponds to Maslow’s idea of eupsychia.

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Metadaten
Author:Shoji Muramoto
Parent Title (English):Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 63, No. 4 (2023), pp. 477-494. [Online ISSN1552-650X] [doi.org/10.1177/00221678221075398]
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2023
Release Date:2024/04/04
Format:to purchase via publisher
IdNo:Muramoto_S_2023
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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