Don Baker
Don Baker first went to Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1971. He returned from Korea in 1974 and began working toward a doctorate in Korean History at the University of Washington. He has been teaching Korean history and religion at the University of British Columbia since 1987.
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One possible solution to the increasing selfish individualism we see in the world today can be found in Korea’s rich Confucian tradition. Confucian ethics is an ethics of interpersonal interactions. The traditional word for morality,人倫 illyun, literally means “appropriate interactions within the human community.” By “appropriate interactions,” Confucianism means those interactions which place the common good ahead of personal benefit. Moreover, Confucianism offers some practical advice on how to cultivate our ability to do just that.
As we see in the famous Four-Seven debate, Korean Confucians paid special attention to the role emotions play in determining how we interact with our fellow human beings. They warned us against letting certain emotions, such as anger, fear, and hatred, blind us to our obligations to our fellow human beings. They also pointed out that one way to make it more likely we can keep such emotions from leading us astray is to cultivate a different emotional orientation, one of respect, 敬 gyeong, for everyone we interact with. Korea’s Confucians also encouraged us to develop a strong sense of empathy, 恕 seo, so that we can see things from the perspective of the persons we are interacting with. Korea’s Confucian tradition teaches us to pay close attention to how our emotions influence our interactions so that we can engage in more harmonious, and more mutually beneficial, interactions. That is a lesson the modern world should heed.
In this short part, I focus on three different Korean approaches to answering those questions. All three approaches, those of Buddhists, those of Neo-Confucianism such as T'oegye and Yulgok, and those of Tasan Chŏng Yagyong assume that morality refers to interactions within the human community. They also assume that the key to overcoming human moral frailty lies in our mind. However, they disagree on how the mind leads us astray as well as what we can do to keep it from doing that.
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One possible solution to the increasing selfish individualism we see in the world today can be found in Korea’s rich Confucian tradition. Confucian ethics is an ethics of interpersonal interactions. The traditional word for morality,人倫 illyun, literally means “appropriate interactions within the human community.” By “appropriate interactions,” Confucianism means those interactions which place the common good ahead of personal benefit. Moreover, Confucianism offers some practical advice on how to cultivate our ability to do just that.
As we see in the famous Four-Seven debate, Korean Confucians paid special attention to the role emotions play in determining how we interact with our fellow human beings. They warned us against letting certain emotions, such as anger, fear, and hatred, blind us to our obligations to our fellow human beings. They also pointed out that one way to make it more likely we can keep such emotions from leading us astray is to cultivate a different emotional orientation, one of respect, 敬 gyeong, for everyone we interact with. Korea’s Confucians also encouraged us to develop a strong sense of empathy, 恕 seo, so that we can see things from the perspective of the persons we are interacting with. Korea’s Confucian tradition teaches us to pay close attention to how our emotions influence our interactions so that we can engage in more harmonious, and more mutually beneficial, interactions. That is a lesson the modern world should heed.
In this short part, I focus on three different Korean approaches to answering those questions. All three approaches, those of Buddhists, those of Neo-Confucianism such as T'oegye and Yulgok, and those of Tasan Chŏng Yagyong assume that morality refers to interactions within the human community. They also assume that the key to overcoming human moral frailty lies in our mind. However, they disagree on how the mind leads us astray as well as what we can do to keep it from doing that.