"What" Should We Criticize? : An Actualization of the "Critique of Religion"(<Special Issue>Criticism of Religion)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an actualization of the "Critique of Religion." The critique has its own historical origin and character. First, we examine the text of Miki Kiyoshi (1897-1945) and reveal the significance of his critique of religion. His criticism was based on a careful and radical questioning of "modernity" in Japan. Second we explore a possibility of the heritage of "the Enlightenment." The critiques of religion by K. Marx and S. Freud were two main successors of the Enlightenment. Third, we point out a problem of "national (or civil) religion" as a focus of the contemporary critique of religion. As "a religion of daily life" (Marx), it has a kind of natural character. Its critique, therefore, requires a rethinking on " (human) nature." Finally we urge the importance of a sense of "ambivalence" and two dimensions of "nature" and "nothingness," and we emphasize the dynamic process of nature and nothingness.