Intellectuals and the state : the resilience and decline of Neo-Confucianism as state ideology in Joseon Korea

• Main Author: Song, Sun Kwan
• Published: SOAS, University of London 2014
• Subjects: 181
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.665069

This dissertation attempts to revaluate the role of Neo-Confucianism in the historical development of the Joseon dynasty, in particular in relation to the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. Japanese imperialist historians wanted to justify their colonization by emphasizing the backwardness of Joseon Neo-Confucianism, and Korean nationalist historians wanted to refute Japanese imperialist historiography by finding the seed of modernity in the late Joseon intellectual trends they labelled as Silhak, 'Practical Learning', a school of thought they argued developed in opposition to stagnant and conservative Neo-Confucianism. Despite their different agendas both groups based their research on the assumption that what Korea needed at the time was to 'modernize'. Recent research on Joseon intellectual history has attempted to move beyond the teleological question of Korean modernization, but it has largely been limited to late eighteenth century trends and certain schools of thought. This study, however, situates these intellectual developments in the longer term historical development of the dynasty, and by focusing on how Neo-Confucian intellectuals reacted to a series of dynastic challenges and formulated further Neo-Confucian ideology to overcome them. This provides a more comprehensive understanding of both the role played by Neo-Confucianism as state ideology throughout the dynasty and the reasons for why this intellectual discourse lost much of its momentum in the early nineteenth century.