The Hakubi Project

14th

:Global Type
:Tenure-track Type

Short Introduction

My research specialises in the history of nineteenth-century British political thought, primarily on the democratic theory and liberalism of John Stuart Mill, a philosophical radical. Mill engaged with a wide range of issues concerning individual liberty and happiness. I have been analysing these subjects as questions related to political ideas such as representative government and democracy, as well as republicanism, which has its roots in classical antiquity. 

For the Hakubi Project, four philosophical radicals, including Mill, will be investigated through a historical perspective on their discourses on colonialism. It seeks to elucidate that the intellectual context constituting their arguments is related to the debate over how ancient Greece should be interpreted. Consequently, the project is also characterised as reception studies.

“Socrates, the Governing Philosopher” depicts the “motif” of my research topic. In the nineteenth-century, when Socrates, appreciated as a philosopher who kept a certain distance from politics, was also employed as a diverse metaphor for addressing political matters, this study explores the possibilities that classical antiquity, the long-distant past, could have furnished a discourse for rethinking the present.