Language：Japanese   Publisher：The Society for Sociological Theory in Japan  

Munesuke Mita published the book "Kenji Miyazawa" in 1984. Many sociologists treat this book as an exception to the work of Mita because this book considers one literary man and his works and is not conventional sociology. The purpose of this paper is to locate "Kenji Miyazawa" in the overall perspective of Mita's sociological works. This work can be considered as bridging sociological thought and literary imagination. Mita thinks that Miyazawa's works represent a transformation of the "modern ego." Mita finds four forms of ontological motif in all of Miyazawa's works and Miyazawa's life; I: Embarrassment of Self, II: Fantasy of Burning Out, III: Feast of Existence, IV: Practice on the Ground. Mita extracts those moments of "turn" between the ontological forms and emphasizes the "turning" characteristic of Miyazawa.<br>Originally, Mita's attitude toward modernity was negative. He attempted to conceptualize ways to critique or relativize the modern world. However Mita "changed course" and his attitude toward modernity in the late nineties. Mita refers to the "changing" possibilities of modernity. Mita says that both contemporary and non-modern society have possibility to create freedom. And he planned a new vision of society, which combined both their possibilities. I suppose that Mita's "change of course" in the nineties originates in his consideration of Miyazawa's "change of course" in the eighties. In some parts of "Kenji Miyazawa", Mita connects Miyazawa's thought to Miyazawa's "rich" home environment. "Richness" sometimes limits Miyazawa's thought, but sometimes creates Miyazawa's fertile "change of course" feelings. I wish to consider why Mita's analysis of Miyazawa's "turn" was published in the eighties of Japan as the age of "fertility." Mita grasped the potential of "fertility" in the Japanese society of the eighties.

DOI： 10.34327/sstj.9.0_105

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：The Japan Sociological Society  

<p>Walter Benjamin used the term "dialectic" to describe his theoretical stance, arguing about "dialectics at a standstill" in <i>The Arcades Project</i>. Theodor W. Adorno, however, often criticized Benjamin for his lack of dialectical sense. As such, there is a crucial distinction between both thinkers' notion of the concept." This paper considers Benjamin's concept of dialectic in comparison with that of Adorno.<br>In his doctoral dissertation, <i>The Origin of German Tragic Drama</i>, Benjamin discusses the dialectical potential of the literary device "allegory." He states that, in contrast to static and systematic "symbols," fluidity and ambiguity are the characteristics of allegory. It is these characteristics of allegory that enable us to grasp antinomies or contradictions. According to Benjamin, these allegorical fragments constitute a tragic drama as an unarranged whole, and that a dialectical narrative requires allegorical thinking.<br>The subject of allegory continues to exist in <i>The Arcades Project</i>, Benjamin's later unfinished work. Like allegory, "commodity" has the characteristics of fluidity and ambiguity, but a capitalist society, which consists of commodities, is static and systematic, namely "identical." Benjamin reinterprets commodity as allegory and introduces unarranged elements into a modern "identical" society in order to criticize it. Diving deeply into the dreams of commodities, Benjamin seeks complex images in modern society.<br>Multiple elements are condensed into a single image, which is illustrated through Benjamin's "dialectics at a standstill," describing multiplicity and the simultaneous nature of image. On the other hand, Adorno's "negative dialectics" emphasize the dynamic and causal aspects of the concept. Within this paper, two directions for the development of dialectic are explored.</p>

DOI： 10.4057/jsr.66.313

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Language：English   Publisher：The Kantoh Sociological Society  

According to Adorno, &ldquo;identity thinking&rdquo; is the predominant mode of thinking in modern society. In this mode, the &ldquo;subject&rdquo; controls &ldquo;others&rdquo; through &ldquo;instrumental reason&rdquo;. Adorno claims that the modern form of violence derives from the subject's mastery over the &ldquo;object&rdquo;. Adorno defends the &ldquo;non-identity thinking&rdquo; and &ldquo;non-identifiable&rdquo; thing against &ldquo;identity thinking&rdquo;. From this perspective, Adorno criticizes &ldquo;positivism&rdquo; in which &ldquo;concepts&rdquo; retain control over &ldquo;objects.&rdquo; On the other hand, Adorno emphasizes that the &ldquo;concept&rdquo; has potentiality to grasp the essence of &ldquo;non-identifiable&rdquo; thing. There can be no thinking without conceptions. The purpose of this paper is to consider the dualism of Adorno's thesis on the &ldquo;concept&rdquo;. While the concept is the &ldquo;object&rdquo; of criticalness, it is also the &ldquo;medium&rdquo; of thinking in critical theory. I would analyze Adorno's argument about the &ldquo;concept&rdquo; and examine his ambiguous attitude toward &ldquo;modern reason&rdquo;.

DOI： 10.5690/kantoh.2010.12

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Language：Japanese  

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Publisher：The Japan Sociological Society  

The purpose of this paper is to consider the critical potentiality of Adorno's concept of "tradition". Adorno, a leading figure in critical social theory, is often criticized for his cultural elitism. Focusing on Adorno's notion of tradition, I will analyze the relation between the two aspects of his social thought&mdash;radical critique of society and cultural conservatism.<br>According to Adorno, "identity thinking" is the predominant mode of thinking in modern society. In this mode, the "subject" controls the "others" and reifies them through "instrumental reason". Adorno claims that the modern form of violence stems from this mastery of the subject and "reason" over the "object" and "experience". Thus, Adorno insists that the object as a form of "non-identity thinking" should have priority over the subject. In negative dialectics, Adorno terms this attitude "the priority of the object".<br>Adorno argues that tradition is a form of the concept of the object For the subject, the "past" is given and uncontrollable. "Subjective reason," which is confronted with the past through tradition, perceives its own limit and recovers the moment of reflection. Tradition is "non-identifiable" for the "identical reason".<br>Adorno distinguishes between tradition and "traditionalism". He states that the multiple and complex character of tradition is ignored in traditionalism. Therefore, the tradition advocated by traditionalism has already been simplified and reified by the identical reason. Adorno criticizes traditionalism as one form of "modernized reason".<br>In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno asserts that "All reification is a forgetting". From this viewpoint Adorno insists on the possibility of using the concept of tradition to criticize social "identity".

DOI： 10.4057/jsr.59.600

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Language：Japanese   Publisher：『現代社会理論研究』編集委員会事務局 ; 1991-2005  

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Total pages：xi, 270, 3p   Language：Japanese

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Total pages：398p   Language：Japanese

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Total pages：vi, 266, xvip   Language：Japanese

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