The 8th Special Lecture (2022. 10. 19.)
- 유교문화연구소
- Hit322
- 2023-10-05
Topic: The Meaning of Academic Debate and Politics in the King Jeongjo period - Regarding the Problem of Confucian Meritocracy
Speaker: MinJung Baek(Department of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Korea)
Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2022, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Venue: Online ZOOM meeting
CCECC aims to capture aspects of Confucian meritocracy through the study of scholarly debates in the King Jeongjo period, and to examine the Confucian nature of meritocratic discourse in contemporary Korean society.
According to Dr. Baek, in the case of the King Jeongjo period, the Confucian elite justified their political authority on the basis of their intellectual understanding of the scriptures and the moral superiority they derived from it. Because morality is at the root of Confucian meritocracy, some modern researchers have referred to Confucian meritocracy as ‘Moral Aristocracy’ or ‘Aristocracy of Virtue’. However, the fact that the key to aristocracy is morality, not office or wealth, suggests that their foundation is not solid. This is because judgments about how good someone's morals are abstract and can break down at any time. Also, individuals at the bottom of the hierarchy have an innate sense of morality, so there is a logic of moral equality as well as moral hierarchy, and the tension between the two contributes to the dynamism of Confucian democracy.