How did Miki Kiyoshi’s Marxian Existentialism Persist?

Abstract Miki Kiyoshi1 seems to be a contradiction of his time: from a Marxist critical philosopher to wartime “cooperativist.” The literature has depicted Miki as either a Marxist theorist or a wartime collaborator, raising the question: how did Miki Kiyoshi evolve his earlier view of anthropological Marxism in his latter works, such as The Logic of Imagination and The Philosophy of Technology ? In these works, Miki developed a view of the self as both socially embedded and technologically formative. This paper argues that beneath the apparent rupture in Miki’s latter thought runs a consistent concern. By tracing his concepts of “basic experience,” the “independence of individual consciousness,” and “limitless poverty” ( 限りない窮迫 ; kagirinai kyūhaku ), this paper wrestles with how Miki reformulated his Marxian thought into an existential anthropology.