Bringing Maruyama Masao and Karl Löwith into dialogue, this book explores how Japanese and European thought engage with modernity and nihilism and advances a cross-cultural framework for understanding political and philosophical crisis.

The Japanese political scientist Masao (1914-1996) engaged with the writings of the German philosopher Löwith (1897-1973), who was forced to flee to Japan because of his Jewish descent. Both thinkers, informed by distinct yet parallel intellectual traditions, confronted the erosion of individuality amid the twentieth century's technological, political, and spiritual transformations. In this comparative philosophical investigation, Flavia Baldari highlights often-overlooked dimensions of both thinkers: Maruyama's philosophical depth and Löwith's political insight.

The book constructs a cross-cultural conversation that is both historically grounded and relevant to our contemporary concerns. Through a critical and dialogical reading of their works and use of primary sources, it explores how different cultural traditions approached the crisis of modernity in the wake of totalitarianism and the second world war. It also excavates from these engagements the outlines of a “rational humanity”-a both ethical and political conception of the human being as self-reflective, historically conscious, and politically responsible.