IN THE SHADOW of the twenty-nine storey InterContinental in Seoul’s affluent southeast lies the temple of Bongeunsa, the centre for the training of Zen Buddhist monks in South Korea. The oldest building in this temple complex was constructed in 1856, though the temple itself was founded in 794, rebuilt in 1498, and renewed periodically ever since. The past matters in Korea and it is impossible to understand the mindset of its people without it. Similarly, the InterContinental is typical of modern Korea – it boasts that it is ‘attuned to the lifestyle of the new millennium’, with state-of-theart communications and technology in every room; an appropriate setting, then, for the 22nd World Congress of Philosophy.
‘The new era demands a new philosophy, a new grammar of thinking,’ said Lee Myung-hyun, president of its Korean organising committee, as he opened the quinquennial event last summer, adding that he hoped the first gathering of the congress in Asia would ‘open up a new way of thinking that helps to surmount today’s crises’.
His words were echoed by Lee Jang-moo, president of Seoul National University, who said that ‘we expect philosophy to teach us not only ways of adapting ourselves to the vicissitudes of the human condition but also the direction in which to steer the human destiny’.
In a way that would surprise many philosophers in Britain and America, it seems that people in the East still look to philosophers to provide leadership and guidance, both intellectual and moral. Then again, since most western philosophers pay little attention to their counterparts in other countries, let alone other continents, the contrast passes them by.
There was a curious asymmetry to the respect shown for other traditions. European and American philosophers would never be heard questioning the inherent value of eastern and African philosophical traditions, but it was not at all unusual to hear western philosophy being blamed for all the ills of the world.
Leading American philosopher Ernie Lepore, who taught summer school in China for the past two years, went to a session of the East Asian Countries Philosophical Associations to catch up with old friends. ‘There were a couple of hundred philosophers and they were predominantly from Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China. There were eight presentations, and they were aggressively anti-western. It was really fascinating sitting there, them basically saying, “Don’t you characters tell us how to do philosophy. We’ve been doing that for too long.”’
‘Western logic’ was a regular whipping boy, blamed for imposing an excessively rigid, polarising way of thinking on philosophy. An Algerian philosopher went so far as to get up and say that the Asian countries should stand together with the Africans and South Americans to reject western philosophers, who had destroyed their philosophies, cultures and religions.
In many parts of the world, it’s not only that religions and philosophy are more mixed, there is more fluidity between religions, too. ‘India has very ancient and varied philosophical traditions,’ the Jainist philosopher S.R. Bhatt told me. ‘We have Vedic, Buddhist and Jain traditions, and all these traditions co-existed and there has been intense mutual exchange of ideas among these traditions.’ Pluralism is therefore much more deeply ingrained in the philosophy of the subcontinent.
But when the Jain Vishva Bharati society applied to join the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP) at its general assembly in Seoul, it was rejected. ‘There was a feeling it was too religious,’ said FISP president William McBride. However, ‘There are no hard and fast rules. For example we recently readmitted the North Korean Association of Social Scientists. Of course, they subscribe to the official ideology of North Korea, Juche. A better example which everyone is familiar with is from the Communist era; in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union there was an official ideology, but there were lots of good philosophers around who found ways of dealing with it.’
However, like many global bodies that have traditionally been dominated by western members, the FISP is not sure how far its internationalism requires it to go down the road of pluralism. Its default position is to be as open as possible, which for all its advantages, does not guarantee quality or appeal. When I looked in on one session on ‘The Death of Philosophy’, it seemed to be performing rather than discussing its theme, with two panellists and four people in the audience.
Communication was a problem, with eight official languages for the congress – English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Full translation was available only in the main auditorium; people struggled to understand each other in fractured versions of English.
In the south of the Korean peninsula, there is a great deal of experience of official philosophies, foreign influence and radical pluralism. One of the central questions for Korean philosophy today is what is the right relationship to both its past and the wider world. It might have been more straightforward if it weren’t for the intervention of Japan. South Korean philosopher and ethicist Yersu Kim, of Kyung Hee University, explained how in the nineteenth century Japan chose a path of westernisation, which Korea denounced as ‘a betrayal of the ecumenical Confucian cultural order and declared [Japan] a virtual pariah’. But Japan came to dominate the region, which led to a period of direct colonial rule from 1910 until the end of the Second World War.
‘Suddenly confronted by the vitality of the West,’ said Kim, ‘Koreans blamed their own political, social and philosophical tradition for the stagnation, ineffectiveness, poverty and injustice of their own society. Many associated the ignoble demise of the Choson Kingdom with a Confucian tradition rendered defunct, as some intellectuals thought, by its empty formalism, regressive world view and political factionalism.’
Indigenous philosophical traditions were almost totally erased. ‘In the time of Japanese colonialism,’ said Samuel Lee, president of the Korean Philosophical Association, ‘we did not have a chance to develop our Asian or Korean traditional philosophy. It was suppressed and they brought mostly western philosophy and Japanese thought. Since 1910 all the universities were occupied by Japanese professors. Traditional philosophy was not regarded as philosophy, just oriental thought and religious thought, which is not very scientific, rational or logical.’
Western philosophy in general means German philosophy in particular. Kim Hyung-chul, professor of philosophy at Yonsei University, said: ‘In the age of Japanese colonialism in Korea, people said that philosophy means Dekanshō – that is, Descartes, Kant and Schopenhauer. They thought that was the essence of philosophy.’
Yersu Kim said, ‘In what must be one of the great discontinuities or detours in the history of civilisations, the circumstances of civilisational transformation contributed to the fact that, for many decades in the twentieth century, philosophy was simply equated with western philosophy in East Asian countries, including Korea.’
The detour did not end when colonial rule did. ‘Even now, one out of four Korean PhDs in western philosophy majors on one philosopher – Kant,’ said Kim Hyung-chul.
Gradually, traditional philosophy began to be taken more seriously in South Korea. ‘Since the 1960s and 1970s people’s nationalism has been awakened,’ said Lee, ‘and with the development of democratic consciousness they have started to learn our traditional philosophy again, with the methodology and logical perspectives they have learned from western philosophy also. Quite substantial research and study have been done by our Korean philosophers. Now we can claim that we have our Korean philosophy and develop systematic theories of our own philosophy.’
South Korea has a deeply syncretic religious and philosophical tradition. Four traditions have deep and intertwined roots in the country. The trio of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism is usually mentioned, all of which were established during the Three Kingdoms era of 57BCE to 668CE, when the peninsula was divided into Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. But there is also a probably even older shamanistic tradition, which is still very much alive. These traditions do not exist in parallel, but intermix and inform each other. You can see evidence of this syncretic approach at Inwangsan, a hillside temple complex on the fringes of Seoul’s city centre, where shamanistic shrines sit side by side with Buddhist statues.
Not that the past is in much evidence when you travel around the South Korea today. Devastated by the 1950–53 Korean War, as recently as the late 1950s it was one of the poorest countries in Asia. But since the early sixties, it has consistently been one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Its capital, Seoul, is an ultra-modern metropolis, ranked as somewhere between the second and seventh largest city in the world, depending on which measure you use.
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Kim Hyung-chul estimates that, on average, the ratio of western to oriental philosophy courses in Korean universities is still about 7:3. There is a lot of debate in Korea about whether this is right.
Kim also believes that many in his country ‘have a sense that philosophy is something away from reality, and the more we keep the distance between our theory and reality, the more we can get closer to the real reality, like Plato.’ This belief led to a real culture shock when he spent time at Bowling Green State University in the United States. ‘I was a Master’s student and I was totally shocked to see philosophy had something to do with the real world and philosophers were trying to give some kind of professional advice to practitioners in the field.’
He argues that such a view of philosophy was, and still is, counter to that of most philosophers in Korea. This is a pity, because of the urgent need for good business ethics in Korea. ‘The oriental countries like Korea, China and Japan, despite the scale of their economies, have a very low level of concern about bribery and corruption relative to western countries.’ The evidence for this comes from Transparency International’s global corruption perception index, which currently has South Korea ranked forty-third in the world – behind Botswana, Barbados, Slovenia and Uruguay.
‘Korean companies are seriously trying to reform their own internal decision-making procedures in order to meet global standards, and at the same time they are increasing the amount spent on corporate social responsibility. But people at the business schools have more interest in business ethics than professional academic philosophers do. The problem is that they are not philosophers; they are not trained in critical thinking.’
So why don’t Korean philosophers show more interest in business ethics?
‘Applied ethics, especially business ethics, is shunned by many Korean philosophers because they think, following the tradition of oriental philosophy, that business activity is the lowest activity among human beings,’ says Kim. ‘Business activity is something to pursue for your self-interest. To even talk about business ethics is to give some kind of immunisation or pardon to those unforgivable activities. We should keep business activity totally away from our academic concerns, because it’s not debatable at all: it’s unethical, period.’
But if this is so much part of the mindset, why is South Korea so dynamic in business?
‘It is a contradiction,’ says Kim Hyung-chul. ‘People know that Korea does not have many natural resources. We don’t have much land, we don’t have many mineral deposits under the ground, so all we can do is to utilise human resources. Fundamentally, the Korean people’s mindset is still heavily influenced by Confucianism. They think that what we are doing is for the sake of our survival, but it is not regarded as the goal for our life. We do it because we can’t afford to do otherwise, that’s all. I think that kind of mentality is very strong even among Korean philosophers. Philosophy is all about the high goals, like purifying your soul.’
Whether Kim’s view is right or not, it is impossible for a passing outsider to say. But the issues he raises indicate the extent to which Korea’s philosophers and people are very much influenced by their long and complicated intellectual past. Dealing with that past in the right way is a challenge that many are rising to, and there are many different prescriptions on offer for how to do it. But one thing now all seem to agree on is that the days of ignoring that past are gone. That’s why Yersu Kim began his talk to the World Congress in the main session of Korean Philosophy by quoting a poem by Ham Seok-heon:
The day you forget your home
Is sadder and more painful
Than the day when your house is taken away.
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‘We have sweated a lot and learned a lot,’ said Lee Myung-jyun at the congress’s end, returning to the high ambition of the opening ceremony by claiming we had been ‘sowing seeds for a new philosophy for the coming civilisation’. McBride concluded by saying that ‘we have become irrevocably more global’, and it is surely fair to say that what that means, intellectually speaking, is not yet entirely clear.
Overall, there were not enough plenary speakers of the stature one would hope for a quinquennial showpiece conference, although the organisers had some bad luck in late cancellations from Simon Blackburn, Judith Butler and Jean-Luc Marion. ‘The truth is,’ said David Papineau, one of many prominent stay-at-home British philosophers, ‘that the organisation of the World Congress does not guarantee that the speakers are the leaders in their fields or even representative of them.’
The lack of a strong headline programme did not seem to matter for registrations. The congress had 2,093 participants, including 823 from the host country, 174 from the US, 166 from Russia, 134 from Japan and 126 from China. So why had they come? One important reason was that 1,875 of them spoke, of whom 1,278 gave papers accepted from open submissions, where the rejection rate was very low.
The first World Congress in Philosophy to be held in Asia will surely not be the last. There is without doubt a dynamism in the continent which contrasts strongly with the intellectual mood in Britain and America in particular, and much of Europe too. Mark Leonard’s book – What Does China Think? – reveals the astonishing extent to which think tanks and intellectuals in China are debating and experimenting. Meanwhile, in the West, people lament the drop in electoral participation and the lack of choice between leading parties all of which look alike. Yet they do not look outside their own borders for fresh stimulation.
In South Korea, and I suspect in other parts of Asia, there is more intellectual hunger. People want both to learn from the West and their own indigenous culture, and they will blend the two if necessary, in ways that perhaps cannot be foreseen. This is as true in the arts and commerce as it is in politics and philosophy.
Much has been written about the rise of the Asia region as an economic force. But surely it is only a matter of time before the West wakes up to see that it is not merely a producer of cheap electronic goods, but of culture and ideas.
