From the publisher’s website: Toegye and Gobong Write Letters is a unique look into the lives of two prominent Confucius scholars. This special edition of their letters highlights their personal struggles as civil servants and scholars. Set in the backdrop of the Four Seven debate, the greatest philosophical debate in Korean neo-Confucianism, these poignant letters have … [Read More]
Booklist: Confucianism (page 3)
Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan
Representing an unprecedented collaboration among international scholars from Asia, Europe, and the United States, this volume rewrites the history of East Asia by rethinking the contentious relationship between Confucianism and women. The authors discuss the absence of women in the Confucian canonical tradition and examine the presence of women in politics, family, education, and art … [Read More]
Everlasting Empire
From the publisher’s website: Everlasting Empire (영원한 제국) is a Korean historical novel written as a murder mystery. The narrator frames the main story with his “discovery” of a 150-year-old manuscript. Because of problems verifying the authenticity of the manuscript, the narrator offers the book not as genuine history but as a story. This compelling … [Read More]
The Confucian Kingship in Korea: Yongjo and the Politics of Sagacity
From the publisher’s website: The Neo-Confucian kingship was based on the ideal of the sage king, an ordinary human being rendered supreme through his extraordinary virtue. The eighteenth-century Korean ruler Yôngjo, one of that country’s most illustrious yet most tragic rulers, is a fascinating example of the Neo-Confucian sage kingship. In this book, JaHyun Kim … [Read More]
Think No Evil: Korean Values in the Age of Globalization
In this investigation of the contemporary notion of evil, C. Fred Alford asks what we can learn about this concept, and about ourselves, by examining a society where it is unknown—where language contains no word that equates to the English term “evil.” Does such a society look upon human nature more benignly? Do its members … [Read More]
Culture and the State in Late Chosŏn Korea
From the publisher’s website: Investigating the late sixteenth through the nineteenth century, this work looks at the shifting boundaries between the Chosŏn state and the adherents of Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and popular religions. Seeking to define the meaning and constitutive elements of the hegemonic group and a particular marginalized community in this Confucian state, the … [Read More]
Confucianism and the Family
From the publisher’s website: An interdisciplinary exploration of the Confucian family in East Asia which includes historical, psychocultural, and gender studies perspectives. The family is central to societies that have been profoundly influenced by the Confucian, and later Neo-Confucian, mandate. This book examines the nature of family continuities and the internal family social and psychological … [Read More]
Chong Yagyong: Korea’s Challenge to Orthodox Neo-Confucianism
From the publisher’s website: Describes the historical background and philosophy of the reform-minded, eighteenth-century Korean thinker, Chong Yagyong. During the last decade, Chong Yagyong, also known as Tasan, the eighteenth-century Korean thinker who dared attack the hallowed orthodoxy of his dynasty, has become a household name in Korea. In this study, the first ever in … [Read More]
Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty
Seventeenth-century Korea was a country in crisis—successive invasions by Hideyoshi and the Manchus had rocked the Choson dynasty (1392-1910), which already was weakened by maladministration, internecine bureaucratic factionalism, unfair taxation, concentration of wealth, military problems, and other ills. Yu Hyongwon (1622–1673, pen name, Pan’gye), a recluse scholar, responded to this time of chaos and uncertainty … [Read More]
The Korean Neo-Confucianism of Yi T’Oegye and Yi Yulgok: A Reappraisal of the “Four-Seven Thesis” and Its Practical Implications For Self-Cultivation
From the publisher’s website: This comparative study of Yi T’oegye (1501-1570) and Yi Yulgok (1536-1584), Korea’s two most eminent Neo-Confucian thinkers, is a seminal work on the Four-Seven Debate, the most significant and controversial intellectual event in the Korean Confucian tradition. The Four-Seven thesis, a magnificent example of East Asian Confucian discourse at its best, … [Read More]
The Four-Seven Debate: An Annotated Translation of the Most Famous Controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian Thought
From the publisher’s website: This book is an annotated translation, with introduction and commentary, of the correspondence between Yi Hwang (T’oegye, 1500-1570) and Ki Taesung (Kobong, 1527-1572) and between Yi I (Yulgok, 1536-1584) and Song Hon (Ugye, 1535-1598), known as the Four-Seven Debate, the most famous philosophical controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian thought. The most complex … [Read More]
The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology
From the publisher’s website: Legislation to change Korean society along Confucian lines began at the founding of the Chosŏn dynasty in 1392 and had apparently achieved its purpose by the mid seventeenth century. Until this important new study, however, the nature of Koryŏ society, the stresses induced by the new legislation, and society’s resistance to … [Read More]
Korea – a religious history
This is an historical survey of all the religious traditions of Korea in relation to the socio-cultural trends of seven different periods of Korean history. The book includes a discussion of the history of the study of religion in Korea, a chronological description of Korean folk religion including shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, … [Read More]
To Become a Sage: The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning
From the publisher’s website: Yi Hwang (1501-1570), better known by his pen name T’oegye, is generally considered Korea’s preeminent Neo-Confucian scholar. The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning is his final masterpiece, a distillation of the learning and practice of a lifetime, and one of the most important works of Korean Neo-Confucianism. In it he crystallized the essence … [Read More]
Korean Women: View from the Inner Room
From the preface: This collection of articles presents an amazing variety of female roles and certainly belies the stereotype of the powerless and dependent Korean woman. Korean women, whether ideologically confined to the inner rooms or cast out to the periphery of society, created for themselves positions of influence radiating across the narrow ideological and … [Read More]