2014/02/14 by Viren Murthy · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Aesthetics #Art #Art history #Chinese history and philosophy #Consciousness #Critical Theory and Philosophy #Emancipation #Epistemology #Hegelianism #History #Law #Literature #Modernity #Philosophy #Philosophy of history #Political Economy and Marxism #Political science #Politics #Theology #Vision
paper · doi:10.1002/9781118525395.ch15
openalex publication_date 2014/02/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In the midst of the optimism of the nineteenth century, Hegel reflexively grounded modernity in Spirit and constructed a progressive vision of world history. If Hegel's project could be described as an attempt to legitimize modernity through history, the twentieth century, especially the years immediately following World War I and beyond, witnessed a counter-current against both modernity and history. This chapter talks about a number of anti-modern and post-Hegelian thinkers in Germany and Japan, including Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin, Nishida Kitarō and Miki Kiyoshi. It also comments on how anti-modern thought could be synthesized with a project of human emancipation. The chapter also describes Georg Lukács' theory of capitalist modernity as he outlines it in History and Class Consciousness. Just as German-Jewish intellectuals often drew on aspects of Judaism to construct counter-visions to Hegelian history, Japanese intellectuals in the interwar period often looked to Shinran for counter-narratives.