Roman stoics and Japanese samurai on the existentials of human being

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17072/2078-7898/2021-4-550-560

Roman stoics and Japanese samurai on the existentials of human being

Ekaterina V. Biricheva
Candidate of Philosophy,
Researcher of the Sector of History and Philosophy of ScienceInstitute for Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences,
16, S. Kowalevskaya st., Ekaterinburg, 620108, Russia;
e-mail: e.v.biricheva@mail.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1933-9955
ResearcherID: F-2980-2016

The article represents a comparative study of the positions of the ancient Stoics and medieval samurai on the question «how to be?» in the conditions of blurred landmarks. Such conditions may arise within diverse socio-cultural contexts and seem to be the features of the contemporary globalization. The experience of comprehending the issue of human self-realization at the turning points of history undoubtedly took place not only in the Western European tradition of the 1st-2nd centuries and in the East Asian tradition of the 16th-17th centuries. Nevertheless, the unite grounds of human being found in these seemingly disparate cultural and historical localities are again relevant today. The purpose of the article is to analyze the conditions of the conceptualization of these ideas by the Roman Stoics and Japanese samurai, and to demonstrate the similarities and differences in their interpretation of fate, freedom, death, struggle, reality, and time. Methodologically, the research is based on the material of the historical-philosophical and existential-hermeneutic analysis of the treatises of Lucius Annei Seneca, Marcus Aurelius Antonin, Yuzan Daidodzi, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, and Miyamoto Musashi. The main conceptual result may be given in the following idea. Under the conditions of pluralism and groundlessness, a disoriented person seeks for support in him-/herself and realizes the «courage to be» through the ultimate determination to accept reality in its entirety and paradoxicality, including death, unpredictability of fate, and uncertainty of the further development path. The practice of «inner struggle» and non-choice between opposite positions and values appears to provide an escape to the golden mean of «the own», which allows self-realization to the maximum extent possible and gaining of a reliable ground in one’s own way of being for genuine participation in the «fluid» reality by a free act. The study is novel not only in that it is the first to reveal similarity of the existential grounds of stoicism and bushido, but also in that it pays attention to the turning periods in history during which, regardless of cultural affiliation, similar life-meaning questions arise. The answers found appear to be essential for a contemporary person, who finds themselves in the same situation of groundlessness, pluralism, and ambiguity of the transformations taking place around.

Keywords: stoicism, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, samurai, bushido, struggle, death, fate, reality, crisis of grounds, way of being.

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Received: 11.05.2021. Accepted: 15.11.2021

For citation:

Biricheva E.V. [Roman stoics and Japanese samurai on the existentials of human being]. Vestnik Permskogo universiteta. Filosofia. Psihologia. Sociologia [Perm University Herald. Philosophy. Psychology. Sociology], 2021, issue 4, pp. 550–560 (in Russian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.17072/2078-7898/2021-4-550-560