Content area
Full text
Youn Sa-soon (ed.) and Sohn Yoo-taek (trans.). Korean Philosophy: Source and Interpretations. Korea University Press, 2015. 804 pages. 57,000 KRW. ISBN 978-89-7641-890-6
As a scholar of world religions, and as a student of the Korean language and culture, I was drawn to the book Korean Philosophy: Sources and Interpretations, edited by Youn Sa-soon and translated from Korean into English by Sohn Yoo-taek. Along with translator Yoon Hee-ki, the editor and translator of this volume later collaborated on Confucian Thought in Korea: A Study of the Cardinal Principles of Confucianism (Korea University Press, 2017). Youn Sa-soon, Professor Emeritus, worked in Korea University's Department of Philosophy and is a member of Korea's National Academy of Sciences. This book provides an entrance into Korea's unique philosophical world and seamlessly balances diversity while constantly adding competing new traditions of thought.
Korean Philosophy, which includes 39 contributors from universities and academies throughout Korea, provides readers with access to diverse analyses of leading Korean scholars. The tome is divided into five major parts focused on traditional, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucianist, and modern thought in Korea. Within each part, the editor and authors provide critical introductions that are followed by illustrative source texts from the Sino-Korean and Korean cannon translated into English. Toggling between the introductions of the experts and the source texts provides the reader with compelling evidence as well as an expansive encounter with Korean thought across two millennia.
Part 1 explores "Korean Traditional Thoughts," including the oldest Korean myths and traditions such as the invocation of Heaven, Shamanism, and Poongryudo, which is the chivalric code and educational philosophy of the Silla kingdom (57 BCE-935 CE). At 27 pages, this section is the shortest of the volume and the part that deserved more elaboration, especially since Korean Shamanism has persisted and thrived into the present. The philosophical dimensions of Shamanism's deities and rituals like the Gut ceremony deserved far more consideration.
In comparison, Part 2, "The Buddhist Thought of Korea," at 184 pages, is impressively complete. This part explores in detail the introduction of Buddhism into the Korean peninsula in the ancient kingdoms of Goguryeo (37 BCE-668 CE), of Baekje (18 BCE-660 CE), and of Silla (57 BCE-935 CE). The authors' make use of Sino-Korean historical sources like the Samguk Sagi...