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Kiyoshi Miki (1897-1945)

- About Meditations -

“Plato wrote that Socrates continued meditation immersing himself whole day and night at the camp in Potidaea. Exactly, what Socrates did at the time was meditation, not thinking. Instead of doing meditation, he thought of something when he appeared in the market for having spirited discussions with anyone. Indeed, the fundamental form of thinking is a discussion. Socrates at the camp in Potidaea and the philosopher in the market, which is nothing but show clearly the difference between meditation and thinking.

The contrast between meditation and thinking should be clarified by the fact that men can be thrown into meditation suddenly even in the midst of thinking.

Meditation has no processes. At the point, it is different from the matter of thinking that always follows its course essentially.

All meditation is sweet. That is why men want meditation and as long as the definition is true, everyone has the taste of mysticism. However, meditation does not depend on our will from the first.”

… Miki was a Japanese philosopher. After graduated from Kyoto University, went abroad to Germany, studied under H.Rickert. The following years in Japan, he took Marxist philosophy from a standpoint as humanism at the beginning, then, approached Nishida philosophy that influenced much the thoughts in modern Japan. Miki developed the logic of conceptions that unify logos and pathos, though his work came to the end incompletely. He was arrested for against the Peace Preservation Law at the end of World War II, died in the prison just after the end of the war.