January 16, 2019
Deceived by German Philosophy—As for the Japanese, the long-established educational system rooted in German philosophy had left them thoroughly immersed in “modernity”
I am republishing the chapter posted on September 4, 2018, under the title “Was This Not a Return to the Ancient Economy?”
The following is from an essay by Furuta Hiroshi, a professor at the University of Tsukuba’s graduate school, published on page 13 of this morning’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “There Is Neither ‘Progress’ nor ‘Inevitability’ in History.”
This is an essay that should be read not only by the Japanese people but by people throughout the world.
It was only after August four years ago that I first learned of the existence of this truly exceptional scholar, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Korea.
Until then, I had subscribed to and closely read the Asahi Shimbun for many years, and therefore knew nothing whatsoever about him.
The Asahi Shimbun’s biased reporting had indeed reached an extreme in deliberately excluding a scholar of such exceptional ability and erudition.
The Asahi Shimbun provided no information whatsoever about genuine scholars and journalists such as him and Takayama Masayuki.
Like identical slices of Kintarō candy, Asahi continued to feature scholars and so-called intellectuals who merely expressed a self-denigrating view of history and the anti-Japanese ideology arising from it—looking down on Japan with contempt—through pseudo-moralism and political correctness.
Subscribers were continually made to read commentaries that conformed to Asahi’s wishes.
Or they were continually made to read the “plausible-sounding lies” of those who “ply the trade of anti-Japanese prostitution at the Iwanami brothel.”
As one consequence, every Asahi Shimbun subscriber has had utterly groundless nonsense—for example, that one must not speak ill of South Korea—implanted even in the unconscious mind.
It is a manifest fact that Japan and the Japanese people continue to suffer enormous damage because the country they were dealing with was one of “bottomless evil” and “plausible-sounding lies.”
It is also a manifest fact that, even now, the Asahi Shimbun has not informed the world that its reporting was fabricated.
Emphasis in the text, apart from the headings, is mine.
In the 1970s, the French began making a fuss, declaring that “grand narratives” had ended and that modernity was over.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the British matter-of-factly said that modernity had ended.
The Germans defiantly maintained that what had ended in the 1990s was merely a minor modernity, that full-fledged modernity was only now beginning, and that, since they were doing it all over again, this was “reflexive modernization”; eventually, however, the whole matter became vague.
Americans are a special case: since they have neither an ancient nor a medieval period, they have no interest in modernity as a historical period.
For them, it is always the contemporary age.
Deceived by German Philosophy
As for the Japanese, the long-established educational system rooted in German philosophy had left them thoroughly immersed in “modernity.”
They believed that “history progresses.”
If we think about it calmly, such a thing cannot be true.
Did not the Inca, who emerged as an ancient empire in the fifteenth century, end up being destroyed in the sixteenth century by Pizarro, who had come from medieval Spain?
Antiquity and the Middle Ages coexisted at the same time, and one side came to an end while still in antiquity.
People who thought, “Oh dear, we’ve been deceived,” began saying that “history is jagged.”
Yes, they had been deceived—by Hegel and Marx.
The philosopher Hiromatsu Wataru said, “Hegel himself understood history as unfolding through the age of God the Father, the age of God the Son, and then the age of God the Holy Spirit; in his own mind, might he not have regarded himself as a prophet of the age of God the Holy Spirit?” (Itsuki Hiroyuki and Hiromatsu Wataru, Can Philosophy Do Anything?).
Marx was even more artful: he encouraged revolutionaries by telling them that history progresses in stages and that socialism and communism would ultimately arrive, so they should work hard with confidence.
As a result, revolutions occurred in several countries, socialist systems were established, and despotic rule and systems of status hierarchy brought misery to many people.
To begin with, are not despotic rule and status hierarchies characteristics of antiquity?
Then came the “collectivization of agriculture,” through which the state directly exploited the peasants, making matters disastrous.
Was this not a return to the ancient economy?
To be continued.