The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 1 (Fall, 1998) of the APA Newsletters

Philosophy in Korea is surely different from Korean philosophy. But the demarcation is not always as simple and clear as it may first appear. Is philosophy in America different from American philosophy? If we consider "American philosophy" as referring to a strain of thought or tradition molded in a particular period, or with particular philosophical tendencies like Ancient Greek Philosophy, German Idealism, and contemporary French philosophy, then the answer would be "yes." This becomes particularly apparent when one contrasts "classical" American philosophy, in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and William James, with other versions of philosophy done by American philosophers. The answer would be hard to put positively, however, if we mean by American philosophy the entirety of intellectual activities in the disciplinary arena called ‘philosophy’, in the particular geographical space of America. And with the answer being "no," we face another question, that of nationality in philosophy.

It is sometimes very tricky to pose a question of the following sort, ‘what does nationality have to do with philosophy?’, especially when you take the ideal of philosophy to be universal, an ideal for every individual to share who engages in philosophizing. What is the point in specifying ‘American’ philosophy or philosophy ‘in America’, when we consider questions of a genuinely philosophical nature? Are we not presupposing that philosophy is or should be different from nation to nation? How does this presupposition come to terms with the general idea that philosophy is an act by which one manifests one’s intellectual curiosity about the surrounding world and oneself, regardless of one’s nation, race, or gender?

The question becomes even trickier in a country where its own intellectual history has been tangled with various foreign traditions. In the very early stage of its history, Korea has developed its own culture by synthesizing these foreign elements coming from China to produce its own distinctive thinkers. During the last dynasty, Yi-dynasty, that lasted over 500 years, Confucianism (in Neo-Confucian tradition) was proclaimed as a state ideology. Everything in the culture was accommodated in accordance with Confucian philosophy and values. Disagreement in philosophical positions often related to political struggles leading up to a point where philosophy became a matter of life and death. Philosophy in this tradition was not something that comes about exclusively out of intellectual curiosity and transcendental reflection, but rather something that comes from one’s heart and is lived out like religion. That is, it was not a mere profession as it is in the contemporary world. There were various institutions, small and large, public and private, where students read major Confucian texts, and, on many occasions, prepared for the government examination to become literatti officials. The examination consisted of writing and a test of the applicants’ knowledge of Confucian texts.

When western thought in the German idealist and the Marxist traditions was first introduced in the early 20th century, the foreign elements in its content and form were so enormous that they could not be readily incorporated into the existing system of thought. Western thought was radically different in its views on nature and our relation with it. There came the division of eastern and western philosophies that we have in Korea today. With the prosperities of western science and the western world, western philosophy appealed to many Korean intellectuals who strove to understand the philosophical grounds of the happenings in the new modern world suddenly opened to them. Some became Marxist, some Kantian, some Hegelian, some Heideggerian, some Husserlian, some Existentialist, some Platonist, some Analytic philosophers, some postmodernist, some feminist. The growing interest, and the growing number of specialties, in western philosophy that constitute the majority of disciplinary offerings and discussions in most philosophy departments in Korea contribute to the deepening chasm between eastern and western philosophies in the country.

With these divergent areas of philosophical discussions, philosophy in Korea appears strikingly similar, only smaller in its scale, to philosophy in America where there are dynamic discussions of various traditions. In many universities, philosophy is a core course. Even when it is not, it usually draws a large body of students. It is offered not only under the name of an introduction to philosophy, but also under the names of logic, ethics and modern society, art and ideas, classics in eastern and western thoughts, and so on. Because of the indigenous tradition that has put much emphasis on moral and intellectual pursuit, philosophy at the introductory level is popular among students and laymen. For a major in philosophy, more specialized philosophy courses are available in such areas as ancient Greek philosophy, western Medieval philosophy, Kant and Hegel, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, social philosophy, Korean philosophical thoughts, Chinese philosophy, Buddhism, the philosopy of religion, existentialism, phenomenology, contemporary French philosophy. Similar courses, though more specialized, are also available at the graduate level. Usually five to ten graduate courses are offered in a semester in most universities.

But there is something about the philosophical scene in Korea that discomfits me. This discomfiture concerns the fact that Korean philosophers are, more often than not, merely the consumers of philosophy nurtured in other cultures. But is there something wrong with this? Isn’t it a commonplace of modern lives that we consume products from somewhere else everyday and people all over the world use more or less the same products such as computers, televisions, refrigerators, and so on? Why should not philosophy be like science, technology, or industrial goods —the general scenes of which look alike everywhere? I do not have a clear-cut answer to these questions. I suspect, however, that philosophy cannot be abstracted in a pure form from the context of human reality and from the past history where every culture has struggled to make its own way. Philosophy is ineluctably related to how people in a culture have lived, how they have communicated with each other, what values they have cherished, what they have thought about themselves and about the world, to wit, their Weltanschauungen. Philosophy is not a ready-made product that can be exported or imported, and consumed, but an on-going activity of the human intellect, an activity generated from the innermost part of a culture. More and more Korean philosophers are becoming aware of the peculiar situation they are in, and of the unique relation of philosophy and a given culture. Korean philosophers trained in either eastern or western traditions are making deliberate attempts to communicate with one another and to develop common grounds and agenda to work on. The attempts often fail. Yet, they are better than the alternative where, by staying within the narrow boundaries of specialties based on foreign traditions, no attempt is made to understand and cooperate with specialties derived from indigenous ones.