This paper attempts to answer the question of what kind of critique is possible today that does not fall into the cynical smile and is able to produce a response to a world even capable of assimilating the most counter-cultural movements. The Greek cynical thinkers are taken here for their renunciation of serious reflection and their commitment to example as the only form of moral discourse: it is not so much saying as acting, it is not so much serious and rigorous reflection as mere living that is presented as the locus of the moralist proposal. The cynic falsifies the currency, transmutes values to such an extent that he loses language, but not life, which is a constant pilgrimage, without a fixed homeland, without concepts that endure and do not transform; it is such a pilgrimage through the world where the critical mode that can be useful to us today is presented.
Living aesthetics (生活美学) is a recently created term that arose in China as a response to the new lifestyles, and as an attempt to recover the aesthetic roots that characterized everyday in traditional Chinese culture. This article has to main aims: to contextualize and analyse the characteristics of this subdiscipline and to seek its precendent in Li Zehou’s practical aesthetics.
This paper proposes a comparison between writer Mishima Yukio’s ideas and Ivan Morris’ analyses on the Japanese tragic hero. The key concept of the Japanese heroic archetype is makoto or sincerity, present in references of Mishima like Ōshio Heihachirō. Likewise we can trace back the notion of makoto inside the essayistic and literary work of Mishima, with respect to the bond between theory and praxis. Henceforth, it is possible to evaluate the reactionary tendencies in the political implications of the Japanese hero and Mishima, with regard to the considerations of Hannah Arendt about freedom in public and private spheres. It is also necessary to note the presence of modern approaches in Mishima, essential to understand his life and work, but distant of the heroic ideal described by Morris, not without orientalist problems.
