Abstract

The first comparative study of the Japanese philosopher, Kuki Schuzo, and the Ukrainian-born existential thinker, Lev Shestov, an influential precursor of French existentialism. The article discusses Kuki Schuzo's essay, The Structure of the Iki, and his contribution to the Decades de Pontigny in 1928 with an essay on time, which ends with a reference to the myth of Sisyphus. The reference to Sisyphus (as a polemical response to Hegel's philosophy of history) was initially introduced in the French intellectual circles of the time in the preface to Shestov's book, Potestas Clavium.