‘Western Learning’, religious plurality, and the epistemic place of 'religion' in early-modern Korea (18th to early 20th centuries)

Abstract

This paper investigates the history and pre-history of the Korean adaptation of the Western concept of 'religion' through three case studies. Based on the assumption that Koreans were not just the object of Western expansion but subjects in an 'entangled' history, it attempts to demonstrate that the intellectual challenges posed to Korean literati by their exposure to 'Western Learning' and other Others had prompted the emergence of both generic and differentiated notions of religion well before the so-called 'opening of Korea' at the end of the 19th century. Examples culled from the writings of two 18th and 19th-century Korean scholars show both the forces at work to create such notions and the limits of their potential to alter the Confucian epistemic framework within which these scholars operated. A look at an early 20th-century representative of 'religionized' Confucianism serves to highlight the persistent incompatibilities of Confucianism with differentiated religion.