| This dissertation concerns the thought and practice of the Buddhist cleric, philosopher and reformer Kiyozawa Manshi (1863-1903). In opposition to previous scholarship which sees Kiyozawa as primarily a Buddhist modernizer, this dissertation seeks to take Kiyozawa out of the narrow confines of religious and Buddhist studies and to situate him within the concerns of late Meiji intellectual history. It argues that the goal of his theory (philosophy of religion) and practice (Spiritual Activism) is to locate a foundation for both individual autonomy and social harmony. Against what he sees as the false freedom offered by Fukuzawa Yukichi and the social program of civilization and enlightenment, Kiyozawa proposes a true autonomy grounded in submission to what he terms the Absolute Infinite.;Methodologically, this dissertation uses Marx's mature critical theory to understand the particular nature of Kiyozawa's understanding of autonomy as founded in submission. In Capital, Marx argues that what characterizes capitalism is the function of laboring activity as the primary means for acquiring the goods of others. As such, the general mediation of abstract labor comes to form what Marx terms a "social substance." Because of this, modern societies appear to have an essence which transcends its individual members yet which constitutes them at a fundamental level. This dissertation argues that it is this novel formation which allows Kiyozawa to re-interpret the traditional object of Shin devotion, Amida Buddha, as both a metaphysical substance and as society itself. For Kiyozawa, it is only through an identification with the self-movement of Amida qua Absolute Infinite that human freedom becomes possible. |
