The Materialist Conception of History and Contemporary Consciousness

What makes a philosophy the expression of its age? In four connected essays, Miki Kiyoshi asks how Marxism arises from lived experience and how ideas change when the conditions of human existence change. His argument moves from everyday language and philosophical anthropology to proletarian experience, materialism, and the relation between theory and revolutionary practice. The volume includes the essay "Marxism and Materialism", which is also available on its own in Hidden Japan.

Miki then confronts pragmatism and Georges Sorel’s syndicalism before returning to the differences between Hegel and Marx. At issue is how to understand the present: as the completed result of the past, or as a process opening toward the future. Along the way, he engages Feuerbach, Dilthey, Heidegger, Aristotle, Pascal, and other thinkers without reducing Marxism to a formula.

Published as a book in 1928, this work offers a sustained encounter between European philosophy and Japanese Marxist thought. Miki Kiyoshi (1889–1945) was a Japanese philosopher whose writings explored history, experience, and human existence. This edition includes the complete preface, all four essays, and their extensive author notes. AI-assisted translation.