| |
The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary
The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name. |
|
| |
Abstract: Korean Confucian Moral Self-Accomplishment and Postmodern Ethics. This paper analyzes the key concepts in Yi Hwang - Toegye’s ethics and suggests the relevance of the Korean thinker’s teachings for the postmodern ethics. Moral duty is a central process in Toegye’s moral teachings and a key element in this process is the assumed responsibility for the other (seo 恕). In Toegye’s moral teachings the responsibility for the other is expressed by practicing ritual reverence (gyeong 敬). This is also one of the very basic ways of achieving self-accomplishment and becoming what Confucius considers an ideal of moral cultivation: “inner sage, outer king”. In the postmodern ethical approaches of Emmanuel Lévinas or Zygmunt Bauman this would be translated into establishing an ethical basis for the human moral behaviour through an asymmetrical relationship between the self and the other, where the other comes before the self. The necessity of moral self-cultivation is enforced not only by the subjective and suggestive individual morality, but also by the concrete duty to social adequacy. The paper shows thus that the Korean Confucian ethics from the 16th century and the postmodern ethics of Lévinas and Bauman both recommend a spiritual methodology where the moral self-cultivation, whether through the practice of reverence (Toegye) or by applying the principles of proximity in human relations (Lévinas), is a necessary element in the definition of the human being. Keywords: Confucianism, postmodern ethics, moral duty, self-cultivation, moral responsibility.
|
|
