Maruyama Masao Quotes
Maruyama Masao was the most influential Japanese political philosopher of the postwar period and a long-time professor at the University of Tokyo. His Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan reconstructed the modern political consciousness already nascent in early modern Confucian and nativist thought, while his postwar essays, gathered in Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, anatomized the diffuse system of irresponsibility that had made wartime militarism possible. The quotes below are attributed to Maruyama Masao, organized by topic.
Maruyama Masao on Freedom
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Attributed to Maruyama Masao:
“We are still groping for the autonomous individual.”
Maruyama Masao on Politics
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Attributed to Maruyama Masao:
“The pathology of Japanese fascism was a system of irresponsibility, in which everyone obeyed and no one decided.”
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Attributed to Maruyama Masao:
“Democracy is a discipline; it is not a gift.”
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Attributed to Maruyama Masao:
“Modernity is the moment at which the subject discovers that it must legitimize the order in which it lives.”
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Attributed to Maruyama Masao:
“To be a citizen is to refuse to be merely a subject.”