Ham Sok Hon's Ssial Cosmopolitan Vision 1498564054, 9781498564052

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Ham Sok Hon’s Ssial Cosmopolitan Vision

Ham Sok Hon’s Ssial Cosmopolitan Vision Song-Chong Lee

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Quotes from selected works of Ham Sok Hon from Hyeonpil Chung’s, former executive director of the Ham Sok Hon Memorial Foundation (함석헌기념사업회), digital archive reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934288 ISBN: 978-1-4985-6405-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-4985-6406-9 (electronic) TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To my wife, Kristine Jihyun Park, and my children, Christian and Trinity

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Selected Works of Ham Sok Hon

xi

Introduction

1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Ham Sok Hon Background of Ham’s Philosophy and His Style of Writing Note on the Focus of Discussion and Selections of Ham’s Writings State of Nature In’gan, Ssial, and Saengmyeong (인간 human, 씨알 ssial, 생명 life) Ssial Philosophy for Cosmopolitanism Ham Sok Hon’s Ssial Philosophy as Derridean Singularity

5 11 21 25 49 81 139

Conclusion

155

Bibliography

159

Index

165

About the Author

173

vii

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my special thanks to Mr. Hyeonpil Chung, former executive director of the Ham Sok Hon Memorial Foundation (함석헌기념 사업회). Without his support, this book would not have been completed. Mr. Chung, a grandson of Ham, devoted almost a decade to put together Ham’s works in digital archives to update and expand the existing published collections and address some errors in them. He kindly allowed me to access his digital archives and helped me obtain the copyright permission for the large number of block quotes used in this book.

ix

Selected Works of Ham Sok Hon

-싸우는 평화주의자 (A Fighting Pacifist) -함석헌 자서전 (Autobiography) -뜻으로 본 세계 역사 (A World History from the Viewpoint of Meaning) -3천만 앞에 부르짖는다 (Crying Out to Thirty Million People) -인간혁명 (Human Revolution) -평화로운 새 세계로의 초대 (Invitation to the New World) -씨알에게 보내는 편지 2 (Letter to the Ssial 2) -생활철학 (Life Philosophy) -말씀 말 (Logos, the Words) -세계의 한 길 위에서 (On a Road of the World) -한민족과 평화 (One Nation and Peace) -생각하는 백성이라야 산다 (Only Those Who Think Survive) -새시대의 전망 (Prospect for A New Era) -뜻으로 본 한국역사 (Queen of Suffering: A Spiritual History of Korea) -씨알의 의미와 민중운동 (The Meaning of Ssial and the Minjung Movement) -오산 뜰의 현자 (The Wise Man in the Yard of Osan) -진실을 찾는 벗들에게 (To the Friends Seeking the Truth) -하늘 땅에 바른 숨 있어 (True Breath in Heaven and Earth) -끝나지 않은 강연 (Unended Lecture) -씨알의소리 (Voice of the People) -무엇이 참 문제냐 (What Is the Real Problem?)

xi

Introduction

This book is a collection of my personal works on Ham Sok Hon. Although my personal interest in Ham Sok Hon dates back to the early 1990s when I was first introduced in my college years to his seminal work, Queen of Suffering: A Spiritual History of Korea, it was in 2014, when I first presented my paper of his idea of global civility to the annual Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, that I began to study the ssial philosophy in earnest. Being a college student at a theological university in the early 1990s, I was very disappointed at the way that the role of the church for society was presented. Due to the university’s close evangelical affiliation and heavy emphasis on the conservative Christian agenda such as global missions, it was almost impossible to learn about a variety of perspectives on where the church could stand in history and what the church could do for social progress. To quench my intellectual and spiritual thirst on the larger function and duty of religion, I was deeply involved in student activism. As the president of the student body, leading a yearlong campus protest on various issues, I arguably became the most radical student on campus, with liberal theology and progressive ethics. However, my thought was never sophisticated. In addition to the evangelical theology and missiology offered by my undergraduate institution, I personally explored and enjoyed secular writings covering wide-ranging themes such as Marxism, phenomenology, existentialism, and liberation theology. Unfortunately, I found no sense of order and harmony in my understanding of those brilliant thoughts to find a good place for my faith and theology in the universal effort to deal with various challenges of life. However, when introduced to Ham’s philosophy through a history class, I was fascinated by his creativity and, technically speaking, hermeneutics in 1

2

Introduction

making biblical narratives relevant to the secular history of Korea. In his storytelling of the Bible, the Jews were the people of the Chosŏn Dynasty, the persecution of the Jews the suffering of the minjung, the crossing of the Red Sea the awakening of the Korean people, and the Promised Land the new nation of Korea and the bright future of humanity. For Ham, the metaphysical, including spiritual insights and narratives and theological symbolism, is in sync with the physical, including historical and socio-political conditions and contexts. They complement and intercommunicate with each other. Instinct, intellect, and faith are brilliantly integrated and synchronized particularly in his ssial philosophy. Although Ham’s ssial philosophy is not something analytical and logical, his ideas were insightful, inspiring, and creative in illuminating the fundamental problems of life, particularly problems of politics and community. What made me more interested in Ham was the cosmopolitan vision that the ssial philosophy contains. While other theological efforts intended for social transformation are often politically or spiritually too radical, Ham’s ssial philosophy took a deeper and higher ground. He believed that a good community comes from a good sense of personal identity and belonging. The notion of ssial offered a better grounding than secular alternatives based primarily on utilitarian objectives. He focused on the universal experiences of the common people rather than the theories of elite intellectuals in diagnosing political problems and envisioning a future direction of the community of humanity. It was an earlier attempt than the Minjung Theology (민중 신학). His effort to translate the suffering of the powerless into a creative historical force is noteworthy. He believed that the true community should be established bottom-up. People with the ssial consciousness, which transcends political, economic, and other social interests and biases, should take the lead in shaping public opinion and influencing policy makers. I thought that his people-centered philosophy was worthy to be revisited particularly in the chaotic world of the twenty-first century, which is full of impossibly difficult problems: political polarization, post-truth, newly emerging isolationism and nationalism, global terrorism, refugee crisis, unappreciated women’s rights, trade wars, etc. Ham’s ssial philosophy would offer a way to think beyond the conventional cognitive, moral, and political frameworks and boundaries in imagining a possibility of the community of humanity. Put in a larger intellectual history of the world, Ham’s ssial philosophy is, of course, not completely new. It is more syncretic and harmonizing, attempting conversation between Western and Eastern thoughts. Thus, my objective is to offer a conversation to place Ham’s thought in a larger spectrum of existing ideas, particularly ideas of cosmopolitanism. My discussion proceeds with the following order. For those who have no background knowledge of Ham Sok Hon, chapter 1 presents a brief biographical sketch. This chapter focuses specifically on Ham’s life as an acti-

Introduction

3

vist and the evolution of his philosophy. It shows how actively he engaged in the task of bridging the gap between religion and politics and how he was intellectually and spiritually transformed from a nationalist/traditional Christian to a cosmopolitan/pluralist Christian. In chapter 2, I give a short methodological note. In addition to a brief discussion of the confluence of Eastern and Western thoughts, this chapter clarifies the main objective of Ham’s philosophy and highlights his distinctive style of writing. He talked, taught, and wrote as an inmunhakcha (인문학자, thinker of the humanities). His instruments to change the world included historical writing, political commentaries, literary imagination with poetry, and political activism. Ham wanted to cultivate the character of ssial in the public mind, which he later believed would envision segyejuŭijŏk shimsŏng and yŏngsŏng (세계주의적 심성과 영성, cosmopolitan heart and spirituality). His approach as inmunhakcha had a strong resemblance to the late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury Romanticism. This chapter invites, to help understand the philosophical foundation of Ham’s ssial philosophy, three Western thinkers: Novalis, Guyau, and Bergson. Chapter 3 gives a short review of literature and explains my research resources, particularly about how my block quotes are excerpted. Chapter 4 brings the issue of the state of nature to set the stage for the discussion of Ham’s notion of ssial as the foundation of the identity of the authentic political agent and the true community. A brief summary of the thoughts of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau is provided, followed by the possible responses that I think Ham would have made to them. I argue that the notion of ssial as the state of nature offers a better preparation for the construction of the political self and community, particularly the community of humanity. This chapter presents two similarities with and three differences from the above-mentioned contractarians. Chapter 5 clarifies further the concept of ssial to prepare for the full discussion of Ham’s cosmopolitan vision in the next chapter. The clarification is done through comparison and contrast with three other concepts, in’gan (인간, human), minjung (민중, the masses), and saengmyeong (생명, life). It shows that the concept of ssial is used in both metaphysical and historical and political contexts, while saengmyeong mostly remains metaphysical. This broader knowledge of Ham’s notion of ssial would help us better understand the philosophical background of Ham’s transnational vision of moral community. Chapter 6 is the discussion of Ham’s cosmopolitan vision. Giving a historical overview of cosmopolitan philosophy dated back to the Greek Civilization, this chapter attempts to extract the phrases and claims from Ham’s major works, which I believe have strong nuances, implications, and intentions for cosmopolitanism. In particular, Ham’s cosmopolitan vision is constructed upon two major groundings: philosophical and spiritual groundings. This chapter includes the stories of Ham’s actual experiment of ssial community through which to glimpse with what mindset he tried to build a community. Chapter 7 is an

4

Introduction

additional discussion of Ham’s intellectual and spiritual flexibility and openness toward the idea of political self and community. Compared with Derrida’s notion of singularity, ssial is understood as a virtue and character to be cultivated for cosmopolitanism. Since the idea of the cosmopolitan community is very ideal and elusive, the approaching attitude should be as creative and flexible as possible. Just as the Derridean singularity challenges “naturalness” and “generality” in coming up with a cosmopolitan model, whether conceptual or institutional, ssial demands a conscious effort to be willing to defy what is considered natural, legitimate, moral, and general. The spirit of ssial welcomes infinite possibilities in defining the self-identity and determining the future of the community. The juxtaposition of Ham’s ssial with Derrida’s singularity would not generate concrete policy ideas of how to establish a cosmopolitan community, but help reflect on our mindset of how such important virtues as hospitality and democracy can be practiced to embrace a cosmopolitan possibility.

Chapter One

Ham Sok Hon

Ham Sok Hon is one of the most influential thinkers and political activists of modern Korea. He was an educator, theologian, historian, poet, journalist, social critic, and political activist and advisor. His contributions to the intellectual and political communities can be found in major milestones of Korean history. As an educator, Ham fought the Japanese occupation and helped nurture nationalist spirit in the public mind. As a historian, he challenged the defeatist colonial view of history with a positive, spiritual interpretation of suffering. As a philosopher and political activist, he fought for democracy and human rights. Ham was a pioneer of social criticism, progressive theology, religious pluralism, political activism, the NGO movement, and pacifism of modern Korea. He posthumously received the National Foundation Medal (대한민국건국포장) in 2002 and was nominated two times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was buried in the Seoul National Cemetery (국립서울현충 원). 1 What makes Ham so special is that his entire life reflects his philosophy and teaching. There is no big discrepancy, as found in the life of many other historical figures, between what he said and what he did. He was a thinker and an activist. In particular, ssial philosophy is Ham’s greatest legacy, which had a great impact on various intellectual movements, including history, hermeneutics, liberation theology, the minjung movement, and the nonviolence movement. With ssial philosophy, he wanted to empower the Korean people, who had been always marginalized and oppressed in politics and history. For Ham, the dramatic experience of the have-nots such as poverty, exploitation, and contempt should not end up being simply a han (한, a feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered) or a chaotic political force. It should be the starting point and the firm grounding for the people’s awakening to the divine duty of universal justice. According to 5

6

Chapter 1

Ham, those who are enlightened of ssial as the true identity for the self and community cannot help but act as the author of history. Ham’s life perfectly demonstrates the historical transformation of the powerless into a creative force of history. Ham was born in Yongcheon, North Pyeongan Province on March 13, 1901. 2 He came from an intelligent family, not because his parents were the yangban class but because they valued education highly. His father was a self-educated doctor of Chinese medicine. It is known that his mother had a strong passion for learning. Ham attended Tŏgilsohakkyo (덕일소학교, Tŏgil Elementary School) but completed his elementary education from Yangsigongnipsohakgyo (양시공립소학교, Yangsi Public Elementary School) in 1916. Influenced and encouraged by his distant uncle, Ham Sŏkkyun (함석균), 3 during his years at P’yŏngyangbot’onggodŭnghakkyo (평양보통고등학교, P’yŏngyang General High School), Ham participated in the March 1st Movement, which would awaken his nationalist spirit for the first time. 4 Refusing the principal’s request for a written letter of apology for his participation, Ham left the school. Later, he went to Osan School and met many life teachers and mentors such as An Ch’angho (안창호), I Sŭnghun (이승훈), I Kwangsu (이광수), and Cho Mansik (조만식), who all were prominent nationalists at the time. However, it was Nam Kang I Sŭnghun and Tasŏk Yu Yŏngmo (다석 유영모) who had the greatest influence on Ham’s philosophy. Ham learned about national independence from I Sŭnghun. From Yu Yŏngmo, Ham learned about ancient Chinese classics and philosophers such as nochangkongmaeng (노장공맹, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius, and Mencius). Ham’s reading of H. G. Wells’s A Short History of the World expanded his notion of history and became a seed of his later cosmopolitan vision. 5 Studying in Japan for his college education, Ham experienced a remarkable intellectual growth and religious challenges. Attending the Tokyo School of Education in 1924, 6 Ham explored various academic subjects such as education, history, ethics, and physics and enjoyed the works of a variety of thinkers, including Bergson, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Tagore, and Niche. He was exposed to major philosophical questions of his time related to the dissonance between statism and cosmopolitanism, between the material and the spirit, and between the individual and the whole. His stay in Japan also brought a major turning point for his religious life based on the Presbyterian tradition. Ham was introduced to Uchimura Kanzo, a prominent Japanese author and theologian. Kanzo’s Nonchurch movement (무교회주의) was a great inspiration and a challenge at the same time. 7 He learned to think outside the box for his faith and theology and experienced a great example that showed the endless creativity to express and preserve Christian faith. Ham’s deep appreciation for the Nonchurch movement not only led him to be baptized by Kanzo, but also to organize a bible study meeting called

Ham Sok Hon

7

Chosŏnsŏngsŏyŏn’guhoe (조선성서연구회: Joseon Bible-Study Group) with like-minded Korean students such as Kim Kyosin (김교신), Song Tuyong (송두용), Chŏng Sanghun (정상훈), Yu Sŏktong (유석동), and Yang Insŏng (양인성). This study group became the foundation of the journal, Sŏngsŏjosŏn (성서조선: Bible Joseon), which Ham would later establish with Kim Kyosin. Sŏngsŏjosŏn was the instrument with which Ham would communicate his thoughts and theological ideas with the public in the early 1900s. After graduating the Tokyo School of Education in 1928, Ham came back to Korea and continued to teach history and geography in Osan School. As expected, his life as a teacher did not go smoothly. His challenging voice as a journalist and teacher was troubling to the Japanese authority. In the series of essays entitled Chosŏn History Seen through a Will (뜻으로 본 조선역사, 1934–1935), Ham tried to point out the distorted view of Korean history, which Colonial Japan intended to use to crush the Korean people’s confidence and stamp on their self-esteem. Ham claimed that the failure and misery that Korean people had suffered should be the source of positive energy, not only to save their national destiny but also to fight the injustice of the larger human community. This critical view and attitude made him ultimately quit his teaching job in 1937. 8 He could not accept the invasive education forced by the Japanese cultural assimilation policy (bunka seiji, 文 化政治), which promoted Japanese culture and language over the Koreans’. The socio-political, economic and cultural exploitation that Ham and his people had experienced confirmed his belief that to be free from the enslavement and injustice, people had to step into the arena of history. Like many other nationalist leaders, Ham wanted to awaken the people to their true identity as the author of history and their potential to deliver not only their lives but also other sufferers. In 1940, Ham tried to put his belief into practice. He served as the principal for Songsannongsahagwŏn (송산농사학원, Songsan Agriculture School), which Kim Tuhyŏk (김두혁) was running at the time. 9 He wanted to see his students grow and transform from the powerless minjung into the ssial, the enlightened masses. Inspired by Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram, Ham wanted to use the Songsan school as a training ground to reform the public consciousness. The students were engaged in the activities that could cultivate their character such as bible study, spiritual reflection, and manual labor. They were expected to appreciate earth and nature and the value of their physical labor, which made every human equal and humble, and to learn to have the ownership of their life activities and destiny. Unfortunately, Ham’s experiment of ssial community did not last long. It was stopped as he got detained with the false accusation of being involved in the Kyeuhoe (계우 회). 10 Ham’s confrontation with the Japanese colonial authority continued. He spent another year in prison for the Sŏngsŏ-josŏn incident that the preface

8

Chapter 1

of the volume 158 of the journal described the Koreans as “frogs frozen to death (얼어죽은 개구리),” implying the injustice of the Japanese colonial rule. As the historical context of Korea changed with independence, Ham’s perspectives also changed. The major change was his religious view. He started seeing the limit of the framework of Kanzo’s Nonchurch movement particularly for the Korean context. Ham wanted to see more engagement of religion with society. Kanzo’s silence about the historical responsibility for Japanese colonialism was also problematic. 11 After another imprisonment associated with the Shinŭiju-ban’gong-haksaeng-sagŏn (신의주반공학생사 건, Shinŭiju Anti-Communist Student Protest) by the Soviet Union and the North Korean Community Party in 1945, 12 Ham moved to South Korea and continued to share his thought through public lectures and journal writings such as his bible lecture in YMCA and his contribution to Sasang-gye (사상 계). 13 He emphasized the active, positive role of religion for society. According to Ham, religion, particularly Christianity, should not only help the spiritual life of Koreans but also offer a great worldview and ethics to benefit the whole society. He never thought about a direct intervention of religion in secular affairs but the character transformation of the people, which was based on a deep sense of brotherhood and a borderless notion of community. His development of ssial philosophy best represented those ideas. From the 1960s to ’70s, Ham became a leading figure in fighting for democracy and human rights. Post-war Korean politics suffered military coups, dictatorship, and misguided statism and patriotism. Unlike many other political activists, he did not want his philosophy to focus too much on the immediate concerns of his people and country. For Ham, the Korean problems were the medium to see the larger, fundamental problems of humanity. Like other activists, he wanted to fix the Korean problems. However, Ham wanted to do so always with a greater vision to help the community of humanity, which he often expressed as segyejuŭi (세계주의, cosmopolitanism). Ham’s cosmopolitan vision was an outcome partly of his involvement in Quakerism in the 1960s. Its emphasis on the pietism through the moral application of the power of inward life (속 생명) and inner light (속의 빛) and the non-doctrinal faith worked well with Ham’s egalitarian spirituality formed out of the religious syncretism and the Nonchurch movement. In particular, the theological humility and the pacifism of Quakerism shared a lot in common with Ham’s ssial philosophy. Just as Quakers believed, Ham believed that every human shares the divine identity, capability, and duty called ssial. It was the selfawakening to the true self as life/saengmyeong, which is supposed to coprosper with other lives without any discrimination for mutual care and love. This ssial philosophy pushed Ham hard to express and promote justice and human rights in various activities. He did not hesitate to be even involved in government works. He helped the National Development Project, which Chang Myŏn, the prime minister of the Second Republic, launched, serving

Ham Sok Hon

9

as a teacher of the moral education of the participants. When the May 16th military coup d’état broke out in 1961, Ham boldly stepped up to question the legitimacy of the new government. In his political editorial, entitled “How Can We View May 16?,” of the July volume of Sasang-gye, Ham criticized the rationale of the coup, contrasting it with the April 19 Revolution. While the latter was done through the will of the people following “the law of justice (정의의 법칙),” the former was done by the bullets. While the latter was done in broad daylight, the former was done in the middle of night. He said that the military coup was a failure because it was not done by the people. It touched no one’s heart. Ham also chastised the people for their silence and apathetic attitude toward the injustice. His visit to the United States in 1962 made him more outspoken against the military regime. He began to talk publicly about reestablishing a constitutionally legitimate democratic government through public lectures and journal writings, such as his essay, “Crying Out to Thirty Million People (삼천만 앞에 울음으로 울부짖 는다),” in Sasang-gye in 1963. He participated in a variety of pro-democracy movements, such as the Task Force for the Freedom of the Press (언론수호 대책위원회), the Pan-Citizens’ Committee to Fight Against the Three-Term Constitutional Reform (3선개헌반대투쟁위원회), and the People’s Committee to Protect Democracy (민주수호국민협의회). The most notable act as a social critic was his publication of Ssiarŭi Sori (씨알의 소리, Voice of the People) 14 in 1970. As the publisher and editor, Ham wrote numerous essays to criticize the injustice of the military government and educate the people about democracy. Until 1980 when Ssiarŭi Sori was forced to cease, it became a very important venue for many activists and writers from various social movements, including Chang Chunha (장준하), Anh Byung-Mu (안 병무), Kim Chaechun (김재준), and Kim Tongkil (김동길), to express their defiant political opinions. It was also the medium through which Ham articulated and developed his thought of ssial and communicated with the public. During the 1970s, Ham was deeply involved in political activism against the military regime. Serving as a co-chair of the People’s Committee to Restore Democracy (민주회복국민회의) with Yun Posun (윤보선) and Kim Daejung (김대중) in 1974, Ham fought for democracy with three major principles: non-violence, civil disobedience, and civic alliance. In particular, the March 1st Myeongdong Democracy Declaration in 1976 and the YWCA Fake Marriage Incident (YWCA 위장결혼사건) in 1979 caused political oppression against Ham. His pro-democracy activism continued during the Fifth Republic. In 1985, he served as an advisor for the People’s Movement Headquarter to Achieve Democracy (민주쟁취국민운동본부). As a new generation of political activists emerged in the late 1980s, Ham receded from the political scene. He passed away on February 4, 1989. As Moon Taekol (문대골), director of the Ham Sok Hon Memorial Foundation, noted at the meeting to commemorate the 30th anniversary of death, Ham

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Chapter 1

had lived, worked, and died as a simple, genuine ssial. There is no special name, profession, or social status that can label him. 15 His life showed how the powerless and the hopeless minjung can be empowered and transformed into a creative political and historical agent, how spirituality can shape and guide the ethical dimension and functions of reason and politics, and how the ssial-awakened minjung can be the leading force to envision and practice the community of humanity. NOTES 1. Tuyŏng Yu, “한신대, 함석헌 사상 특강 개최,” 뉴스앤조이, October 26, 2011, http:// www.newsnjoy.or.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=36115. 2. Sok Hon Ham, “물아래 올라와서,” Ham Sok Hon Chŏnjip 4 (Seoul: Hangilsa, 1985), 85–86. 3. Ham Sŏkkyun was the one that introduced Ham and his family to Christianity. See 이단 자가 되기까지, “함석헌자서전 (Biography of Ham Sok Hon, Biography hereafter),” Collection, 138–39. 4. Ibid., “하나님의 발길에 채어서 1,” 207–10. 5. Ibid., 213–14. See Biography, 149 and 157. 6. Sok Hon Ham, Voice of the People I, E-Book, Babose, 67. Accessed on May 2, 2017. Retrieved from http://ssialsori.net/. 7. Sok Hon Ham, “물아래 올라와서,” Ham Sok Hon Chŏnjip 4 (Seoul: Hangilsa, 1985), 217. See also 생각하는 백성이라야 산다 (Only Those Who Think Survive), Collection, 313 and Biography, 154. 8. See Byung-Mu Anh, “순수와 저항의 길: 씨알, 역사, 인간,” 함석헌 선생 팔순 기념 문집 (Seoul: Hangilsa, 1982), 18. 9. Chinsam Ch’oe, “함석헌 선생 곁에서 50년,” 씨알의 소리 103 (서울: 월간 씨알의소 리사, 1989). 181. 10. Kyeuhoe was the alumni association of the Tokyo University of Agriculture in (동경농 과대학) Korea during the Japanese colonial period. Kim Tuhyŏk, founder of Songsan Agriculture School, studying in Tokyo, was imprisoned for his independence movement. The Japanese authority accused Ham of being involved in it and detained him in the Taedong police station for a year. See Biography, 177. 11. Sok Hon Ham, 내가 아는 우치무라 간조 선생 (Uchimura Kanzo that I Know), 오산 뜰의 현자 (The Sage in the Garden of Osan), Collection, 349–50. Uchmura Kanzo hereafter. 12. Sok Hon Ham, “내가 겪은 신의주 학생사건,” Ham Sok Hon Chŏnjip 4 (Seoul: Hangilsa, 1985), 281–97. See 씨알의 의미와 민중운동, Collection 24, 7. 13. Sasang-gye is a monthly religious magazine established by Chang Chunha in 1954. It published various forms of writings covering very controversial issues such as political corruption by the military regime, national unification, and labor rights. Sasang-gye ceased its publication in 1970. 14. The original Korean word for people, which was used in this magazine, was ssial (씨 알). 15. Chŏnghun Cho, “씨알은 죽지않습니다,” 통일뉴스, February 4, 2019, accessed April 4, 2019, http://www.tongilnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=127728.

Chapter Two

Background of Ham’s Philosophy and His Style of Writing

Prior to the main chapters on Ham’s cosmopolitan vision, it seems important to give a brief overview of the general background of his philosophy and unique characteristics of his writings and his methodological approach. Although his writings cover wide-ranging socio-political issues, they should be distinguished from social-scientific writings. He approached social problems always as a humanist, literary scholar, historian, and religious person. His assessment of and solution to social problems were intended to cultivate a good personal character and a good sense of community through various practices of the humanities such as publishing journals of social criticism and writing poems, biblical exegesis, and historical essays. In sharing his philosophy and vision, Ham tried to utilize the feelings, stories, values, and wisdom that he personally believed were the most universal and powerful in generating good political minds and acts. Ham’s philosophy to find this natural, universal grounding for the virtuous person, people, and community came from his creative adoption and utilization of the two contrasting systems of thought: Western and Eastern worldviews. For Ham, the former was represented by Christian thoughts and the latter by Asian religious and philosophical thoughts. Inspired and influenced heavily by Yu Yŏngmo, one of the earliest Christian thinkers with syncretistic and pluralistic philosophy, Ham developed his theology so far as to break away from doctrinal and institutional boundaries. His Christian faith and thought, which might have not had distinctive characteristics from the mainstream at the time, began to transform gradually as exposed to Yu’s creative and critical interpretation of the bible and the church. In the 1920s when Yu started teaching at Osan School, his Christian thought was already very syncretistic and pluralistic, influenced in part by the Christian an11

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archism of Tolstoy. It was extremely flexible and dialogic to a variety of thought systems, intended to better interpret the biblical truth and apply it to the new historical reality. Ham confirmed the strong influence of Yu’s teaching on his intellectual and spiritual growth in The Wise Man in the Yard of Osan (오산 뜰의 현자). Ham recalled that Yu’s teaching introduced him to the then-incipient thought of saengmyeong (생명, life) and allowed him to have critical reflection on personal identity, social consciousness, and people as historical agent. Yu helped Ham get out of the box and set off a spiritual journey to find the true meaning of God and religion. 1 However, it was during Ham’s stay in Japan that his philosophy came to have distinctive characteristics. While studying at the Tokyo School of Education, Ham became acquainted with some Korean Christian students. In particular, his friendship with Kim Kyosin led to the bible studies meetings of Uchimura Kanzo. Kanzo’s philosophy of Nonchurch movement stimulated Ham’s intellectual and spiritual curiosity to reconfigure his traditional Christian understanding. Ham’s thought became more critical of the unquestioned external authority of biblical interpretation constructing orthodoxy and more open to modern intellectual inquiry, recognizing the importance of the functionality and historicity of Christianity. His idea of cultivating a virtuous person, people, and community began to shift from a one-dimensional understanding formulated by an established authority or tradition, to a pluralistic vision embracing a variety of religious and philosophical views. Ham expressed the change of his religious and philosophical paradigm, saying, “My approach to the scripture had changed due to the realization that the word of God is not something to be accepted unconditionally but something to be investigated.” 2 Kanzo’s creative and critical interpretation of the Bible made a great impact on Ham’s intellectual awakening. Not only did the Nonchurch movement and thought help Ham establish an authentic view of Christianity, breaking the ties to the traditional beliefs, but it also made him feel the necessity of broadening further his perspective, particularly to Eastern thoughts. He did mention how he became interested in bringing Eastern traditions into his intellectual and spiritual journey when talking about the influence of Uchimura Kanzo. 그래서 한 가지 생각이 되는 것은 동양 정신을 재음미하는 일입니다. 하 나님께서 동양에 수천 년 동안 길러 오신 심오한 정신문명을 요 수백 년 동안 기술 중심의 서양문명에 무릎 꿇 게 내버려 두신 것은 이유가 없지 않을 것입니다. 3 Therefore, one thing that I can think of is to reexamine the Eastern Mind. There should be a special reason why God has allowed thousands of years of the profound intellectual/spiritual civilization of the East to succumb to the recent hundreds of years of the technological civilization of the West.

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As Ham’s Christian philosophy became more open-minded through his encounter with Unchimura Kanzo and his exposure to modern Western literature and philosophy, Eastern thoughts deepened his understanding and interpretation of biblical narratives to find a good explanation of the suffering of the Korean people and a way out of a series of historical crises. Delving deeply into Eastern thoughts, Ham’s various Christian views, including anthropology, theology, and social justice, were revisited and remolded into a larger theme of cosmic unity: the unity in which the horizons of heaven and earth are merged, God and humans are interconnected, and love and justice edify each other. Ham’s embrace of Eastern thoughts in his Christian interpretation of the Bible and his ambition to empower the people to bring the society to the next stage of political civilization started in earnest particularly when he was imprisoned for the Bible Chosŏn Incident (성서조선사건) in 1943. Dipping into the Eastern classics, particularly Buddhist scriptures, including the Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtras, the Prajñāpāramit Sutras, the Lotus Sutra, the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, and the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, 4 Ham experienced a significant intellectual transformation. His thought of personal identity and God came to be reinterpreted by the typical Eastern metaphysical paradigm, which conceptually melts individual beings in the supreme reality. For instance, Ham was fascinated by Lao Tzu’s philosophy of wu-wei and Chuang Tzu’s mysticism. They helped liberate Ham’s historical views, theology, and political thought from the traditional assumptions and theoretical limits derived from the institutionalized authority and power, in nature, seeking structure and order and from being complacent about status quo. 5 He became more interested in the creative role of the people and the larger principle of social relations, which was expanded into something divine and teleological. In this new system, religion, ethics, politics, and philosophy were integrated into a single reality and goal that every human being is commissioned to fulfill. Inspired by a variety of Eastern thoughts such as the water metaphor in the Tao-Te-Ching and the Hindu philosophy of Atman, 6 Ham began to explore a historical possibility of the uniting force and principle, which can not only enlighten the individual to find one’s true self but also play a revolutionary role to fight the social evil and establish a caring and loving community of humanity. He expanded his Christian notion of human and community, which happened to be the optimal, contractarian grounding for the nation-state system, into a deeper metaphysical vision leading to a cosmopolitan philosophy. Eastern thoughts helped Ham crystalize all of his socio-political, religious, and philosophical thoughts into the idea of ssial. As implied in the water metaphor of the TaoTe-Ching, about which Ham was fascinated, and noted in the introduction of his translation of Bhagavad Gita, Ham’s ssial philosophy starts from a new understanding of being and life. It is a bottom-up project, both metaphysical

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and socio-political, which completes one’s self through internal enlightenment, and unites with surroundings and the divine in his ontology and moral practices. It is a project of the humble, not striving to appear on the fore and seeking power but working diligently on a low ground to benefit everyone and build a boundless community. Buddhist and the Neo-Confucian thoughts and other Korean indigenous philosophies also helped Ham’s effort to bind all human natural feelings, including moral impulses, scientific inquiry, and political activities under a single unified sublime force or principle. For instance, Ham’s emphasis on sanctity in political life reflects Ch’ŏninhabilsasang (천인합일사상, The Philosophy of the Union of God and Human) and Ch’ŏlligwan (The View of Heavenly Principle), which were taught by most of the major Asian religions. Ham’s statement below encapsulates an embrace of various Eastern metaphysics in his notion of personal identity and community. 그러면 “내(自我)가 곧 나라”요, “나(自我)를 본 자가 아버지(民族·世界· 하늘)를 본 것이다.” 그 나는 새삼스러이 있을 것도 아니요 없을 것도 아 니요, “보라, 여기 있다 저기 있다 할 것도 아니요”, “아브라함 있기 전부 터 있는 나”, 참 나, “천상천하유아독존(天上天下 唯我獨尊)”인 나다. 7 Therefore, “I am the Kingdom of Heaven.” “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” The I is neither newly-existent nor non-existent. “Behold, don’t say, Here it is, or There it is. The I, which is antecedent to Abraham, Ch’ŏnsangch’ŏnhayuadokchŏn (천상천하유아독존, 天上天下 唯我獨尊, I alone am the honored one in the heavens and on earth), is the true I.

Ham’s vision to cultivate the people to become the chun tzu that embraces all things in the universe was inspired by Wang Yangming (王陽明)’s interpretation of the Great Learning. The Great Man, which Ham internalized in his ssial philosophy, is the one that knows, follows, and fulfills the will of Heaven. 대인자(大人者) 흥천지합기덕(興天地合其德) 흥일월합기명(興日月合其 明) 흥귀신합기길흉(興鬼神合其吉凶 ) 큰 사람이란 하늘 땅으로 더불어 그 속알을 같이하며 해 달로 더불어 그 밝음을 같이하며 귀신으로 더불어 그 좋고 언짢음을 같이 한다. 8 The Great Man shares the kernel of heaven and earth and the brilliance of sun and moon and feels together pleasure and displeasure with spirits.

All of these Eastern thoughts played an important role to shape Ham’s humanities approach, which affected his style of writing. In particular, his strong belief that human and social problems should be interpreted and resolved by ttŭt (뜻, meaning) shows the connection. As articulated in his magnum opus, Queen of Suffering: A Spiritual History of Korea (뜻으로 본

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한국 역사), the history of humankind is more than the story of biological evolution. The knowledge about the humans as a physiological entity subject to the law of physics offers only a partial picture. To get a bigger picture of human problems, we should acknowledge the fact that the human beings are the being that is destined to seek the true self and community by ceaselessly creating, finding, and adjusting meanings for our surroundings. According to Ham, seeking the true self and community is the ontological goal of human existence and the divine duty. Human history is moving to that direction with the power of life, which is the divine will to live, grow, connect, and flourish. All human activities, including science, religion, and politics, are manifestations of the will of life. Although taking endless challenges of conflict, our intelligence, political consciousness, and spirituality grow to seek love, peace, and unity. The very capacity to interact with surroundings with ttŭt is the evidence. It presupposes an invisible but substantial, universal grounding on which all humans can get connected with each other as brothers and sisters beyond their boundaries: the grounding more fundamental for social community than the contractarians’ notion of the state of nature. Ham believed that the utilization of humanities would help effectively lay this universal grounding. For instance, poetry helps people hear their inner voice for the universal feelings and truth, through the creative play and symbolism of words. Dialogic skills foster the skills and the virtue to listen and compromise for better solutions. History reveals common patterns of human interactions and affairs so that people can gradually discover a universal moral foundation. Philosophy offers critical thinking to constantly examine our knowledge and get closer to the truth. Religion helps us express and perpetuate our feeling of transcendence with a variety of ideas and acts. The essence of these practices of humanities, which Ham believed was to draw the consciousness, feelings, wisdom, and values, that can be shared by all humanity. Ham’s ssial/saengmyeong philosophy and his cosmopolitan vision were articulated and communicated by his humanities writings. This distinctive value of the humanities approach is clearly found in Ham’s metaphor of saramdoem (사람됨, character/personality). He said, “The way the person’s saramdoem is manifested is not through a photo of how he appears but through an eye of a painter (그 사람의 사람됨을 나타내는 것은 뵈는 그대 로를 찍은 사진이 아니요 뚫어보는 화가의 눈이다).” 9 Ham tried to point out that the analytical methods of natural and social sciences are limited to fully understand the human life and the world. As a humanities thinker, Ham used different genres of writing. He wrote as a theologian, historian, poet, journalist, essayist, philosopher, political activist, and spiritual mentor. The most obvious characteristic of Ham’s writings particularly on human community was his romanticist approach. Just as Pauline explains the perspective of the German romanticists on the limit of the era of rationalism and enlightenment, Ham felt about his time such side

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effects as “social fragmentation, antagonistic egoism, irreligious one-dimensionality, crude positivism, ecclesiastical territorialism, and constant warfare” and at them same time felt the necessity of “quiet collection of the mind, the attentive consideration of the inner world.” 10 Like Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, 1772–1801), the principal figure of the German romanticism, Ham believed that a deeper level of conversation would be needed to better evaluate and solve human problems, particularly problems of human relations and community. As Ham’s philosophy and spirituality became mature, the overarching goal of his writings gradually came to shift from the concern about his nation and people to the community of humanity. In particular, to effectively identify and deal with the fundamental problems of human community, Ham tried to reconstruct the grounding of the self, its relations, and belonging. In doing that, Ham thought of a pre-reflective form of being, which precedes the rational and instinctive being. The state of the self preceding any other forms of the self’s consciousness about internal and external stimuli was the ssial. According to Ham, the awareness of ssial inspires and empowers people to leap over the limit of the general political expressions of love, the most sublime virtue, which humans can think of in building the human community. Just as Novalis focused on “love, emotional bonds, beauty, shared faith, and mutual trust,” 11 Ham tried to bring out the human capability able to transcend reason and animal instinct for survival to recover the true human identity and to show the direction for the human community. The power of love, which Novalis believed as “a kind of moral organ of perception, able to intuit the world as corresponding to moral needs,” 12 can be compared with the power of ssial. The ssial, which is Ham’s metaphysical understanding of the people as the political and historical agent, is believed to draw the power of life to ceaselessly live, grow, connect, and flourish. Therefore, Ham’s writings took the topics and approaches that reason and animal instinct could not cover. He engaged in a variety of humanities approaches, which he believed would help cultivate a good character, such as writing exegesis on ancient Chinese classics, poems, columns, historical essays, having conversation with leaders of various sectors of the society, and giving public lectures as an itinerary teacher. All of his efforts were intended to articulate and constantly develop the virtue that could ultimately help people envision and move toward the community of humanity. This humanities approach was further developed with his notion of saengmyeong (생명, life). His analysis and arguments of human problems, including community chaos, are very similar with that of Jean-Marie Guyau (1854–1888), a French philosopher and poet, who attempted a naturalist approach to morality. Like Novalis, Guyau argued that there is a dimension of our consciousness and will working behind and beyond reason and pure emotions. According to Ansell-Pearson, Guyau challenged Kant’s rational

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foundation of morality and community. He claimed that our performance of duty for the sake of duty is a pure tautology and a vicious cycle. 13 It means that the notion of absolute obligation and absolute sanction, including the notion of Kant’s categorical imperatives, cannot be a stable foundation of morality to generate good human interaction and community because no matter how genuine the person’s moral will is, there is still pressure from the external. He rather argued that there is “within us a primitive, impersonal impulse to obey that is prior to philosophical reasoning on goodness.” 14 It is not the rational understanding and acceptance of obligation but the sentiment of obligation that makes morality possible. Heavily influenced by the Epicurean hedonism, Guyau emphasized the principle and power of life that naturally lead the human beings to moral decision. He explained the conscious moral act, which the humans perform every day, as the byproduct of habit and evolution: Guyau holds that consciousness embraces a restricted portion of life and action; acts of consciousness have their origins in dumb instincts and reflex movements. Thus, the “constant end of action must primarily have been a constant cause of more or less unconscious movements. In reality, the ends are but habitual motive causes become conscious of themselves. 15

Therefore, for Guyau, the most commonly accepted groundings of morality and community in his time, such as duty and happiness, were not of the most primitive and irreducible principle. While duty presumes an external pressure and authority, happiness presupposes an advanced development of an intelligent being. He wanted to place our morality and community on the more fundamental foundation, which is the principle/power of life, which he also characterized as a “psycho-mechanical power.” 16 Ansell-Pearson said, “For Guyau the cause operating within us before any attraction of pleasure is life. Pleasure is but the consequence of an instinctive effort to maintain and enlarge life.” 17 “Tendency to persist in life is construed as the necessary law of life.” 18 It means that the power to drive, sustain, and prosper our moral relations and community is not intellectual enlightenment or successful translation of animal instincts into political reality but the will to live seeking creation, growth, and fecundity. The power of life as the internal principle of all existence precedes reason, instincts, and emotions. Since the will to live emerges as the individual’s natural, spontaneous desire, its ensuing moral acts and community are authentic. According to Guyau, one’s passionate execution of the will to live does not degenerate into egotism or communal chaos. Like other biological entities, the will to live takes the evolutionary process. It is internally natural and authentic and externally expansive and communal. It evolves from the individual to the communal and from egotism to altruism. Guyau said:

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Chapter 2 Thus, the expenditure for other which social life demands is not . . . a loss for the individual; it is a desirable enlargement, and even a necessity. Man wishes to become a social and moral being; he remains constantly agitated by that idea. The delicate cells of his mind and his heart aspire to live and to develop in the same way as those “homunculi” of which M. Renan somewhere speaks, every one of us feels in himself a kind of pushing of moral life, like that of the physical sap. Life is fecundity, and, reciprocally, fecundity is abundance of life; that is true existence. 19

Therefore, the consciousness of life is the internal principle and power to make the humans ceaselessly grow and connect with other lives by expanding their sense of belonging and territories. He said: We want to multiply ourselves by communion of thoughts and sentiments” 20 We cannot mutilate ourselves, and pure egoism would be meaningless, an impossibility. In the same way that the ego is considered an illusion by contemporary psychology, that there is no personality, that we are composed of an infinite number of beings and tiny consciousnesses, in the same way we might say that egoist pleasure is an illusion: my pleasure does not exist without the pleasure of others. . . . My pleasure, in order to lose nothing of its intensity, must maintain all of its extension. 21

Ham’s philosophy would agree to Guyau’s point on the necessity to discover a deeper grounding or source of morality and community, which is selfmoving and self-governing. His notion of saengmyeong (생명, life) is also a primitive and pre-reflective stage of consciousness indispensable to establish a universal morality and community. However, Ham’s philosophy embraces the language of spirituality, because for Ham religion is a critical part of life activities. While Guayu’s notion of life is biological and impersonal, rejecting any room for supernatural principle for morality, Ham treats religiosity and spirituality equally with politics and science. According to Ham, the constructive force that creates moral feelings and builds meaningful structures of society is not the material actualization of the organic entity’s full ontological potential but the logos of God, the agape, which permeates in all the universe in different colors, patterns, shapes, and forms of life. In addition, Ham’s life does not take the evolutionary process to increase the probability of survival and happiness but simply reveals evolutionary phenomena because of the natural effort to express its inner unity with and moral responsibility for the whole. Ham’s humanities approach also resonates the philosophy of Henri-Louis Bergson (1859–1941), another French philosopher, who tried to discover human capabilities beyond rationalism. Like Guyau, Bergson found the source of morality and our imagination of the universal community not in reason but nature. Characterized as biologism and naturalism, his philosophy, as Ansell-Pearson points out, sought “the essence of obligation in some-

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thing different from the requirement of reason.” 22 For Bergson, the desire to envision moral relations and community is encoded in the bodily dimension and expressed and sophisticated through various institutionalizations of habits. Although reason can be the instrument to analyze and interpret the logical relations between the habits that can be called moral, it is not the source of morality. Morality is a form of an aspiration or an impetus, which culminates in the human species as “a system of habits, which bears a resemblance more or less to instinct.” 23 This naturalist understanding rejects the type of morality established by social pressure, whether it takes the form of consensus or collective intelligence. Impersonal moral rules that are forced or accepted for an interest of a limited scale of community are always vulnerable to division and conflict. Like Guyau, Bergson talked about “the generative effort of life, generative principle of the human species,” 24 which controls our moral feelings and acts. It is a supra-social element encoded within the DNA of our social behaviors. The human beings are wired to create morality and constantly reformulate it for a new environment. The overall tone of Ham’s ssial/saengmyeong philosophy reflects Bergson’s point on the naturalness and spontaneity of morality and his criticism of the blind faith in reason and science. They both share the cosmopolitan vision, which gives all human beings equal dignity and capabilities and recognizes a genetically engrained telos to constantly expand their belonging. However, Ham would disagree with Bergson’s attempt to place the origin of morality in the bodily dimension. Bergson articulates, “Let us then give to the word biology the very wide meaning it should have, and will perhaps have one day, and let us say in conclusion that all morality, be it pressure or aspiration, is in essence biological.” 25 The idea of ssial/sangemyeong as the grounding of morality and community is something beyond the body and the intellect. It is the metaphysical principle and force that runs the entire universe. It manifests in the physical reality in myriad forms such as nature, life, art, and politics. Our imagination and desire to establish good meaningful relationship with others with compassion and love and to build the community of humanity are the outcome of the awakening to the truth of ssial/saengmyeong. Thus, Ham not only welcomed religious narratives and spiritual insights to deal with human problems but also prioritized the metaphysical conversation over any other explanation. As explained in the sections of the state of nature and cosmopolitan vision, the fundamental principle that makes morality possible includes the cosmic spirit to live, grow, connect, and flourish, along with the reinforcement of certain habits, intellectual growth, and willpower. Since this humanities approach is very obvious in all of Ham’s writings, he himself often felt the lack of concrete plans for political problems, which can be executed by new ideas of policy, governance, and institutional and organizational models. Leaving the concrete strategies for political and community problems with experts, Ham focused his writings on cultivating the

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character of the people by discovering, creating, and reinterpreting the narratives of humanity, which can enlarge the horizon of their emotion, intellect, and spirituality to feel the universal belonging and brotherhood. He loved to draw ideas, meanings, and values out of the factuality of human affairs and nature and communicate them with people in literary formats such as historical commentary, critical essay, poem, exegetical writing, etc. Therefore, my discussion of Ham’s philosophy, particularly cosmopolitan vision, focuses specifically on his philosophical conversations rather than policy ideas, which can be expected for social scientists and politicians. NOTES 1. 내가 아는 우치무라 간조 선생 (Uchimura Kanzo That I Know), Collection, 347. 2. Ibid. “그저 하나님의 말씀이라면서 무조건 받아들일 것이 아니라 연구해야 하는 것임을 알고 성경에 대한 태도가 달라지기 시작했던 것입니다.” 3. Ibid., 353. 4. Susanna Kim, “A Study on God of Ham Sok Hon,” MA thesis, Hanshin University, 2012, 38. 5. Ibid, 40. 6. Sung-Soo Kim, “Ham Seok Heon and the Philosophy of Loa Tzu,” 이화여자대학교 한 국문화연구원 (Korean Culture Research Institute), 2001 (2001): 21–35, 25. 7. Sok Hon Ham, 인간혁명 (Human Revolution), “생활철학” (Life Philosophy), Collection, 46. 8. Sok Hon Ham, Autobiography (함석헌 자서전), Collection, 185. 9. Sok Hon Ham, 뜻으로 본 한국 역사 (Queen of Suffering: A Spiritual History of Korea, hereafter Spiritual History of Korea), Collection, 349–50. 10. Pauline Kleingeld, “Romantic Cosmopolitanism: Novalis’s ‘Christianity or Europe,’” Journal of the History of Philosophy 46, no. 2 (2008): 273–74, doi:10.1353/hph.0.0005. 11. Ibid., 269. 12. Jerrold E. Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 379. 13. Keith Ansell-Pearson, “Morality and the Philosophy of Life in Guyau and Bergson,” Continental Philosophy Review 47, no. 1 (2014): 59–85, 62. 14. Ibid., 63. 15. Ibid. 16. Jean-Marie Guyau, A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction, trans. Gertrude Kapteyn (London: Watts & Co., 1898), 117, quoted in Keith Ansell-Pearson, “Morality and the Philosophy of Life,” in Guyau and Bergson, Continental Philosophy Review 47, no. 1 (2014): 59–85, 63. 17. Keith Ansell-Pearson, 63. 18. Ibid. 19. Guyau, 101, quoted in Ansell-Pearson, 63. 20. Guyau, 98, quoted in Ansell-Pearson, 66. 21. Jean-Marie Guyau, La Morale D’Epicure (Paris: Librairie Germer Baillière, 1878), 283, quoted in Ansell-Pearson, 68. 22. Ansell-Pearson, 73. 23. Henry Bergson, Oeuvres (Paris: PUF, 1959), 1021, and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. Ashley Audra & C. Brereton with the assistance of W. Horsfall Carter (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 55, quoted in Ansell-Pearson, 74. 24. Ansell-Pearson, 75. 25. Bergson (1977), 101, quoted in Ansell-Pearson, 78.

Chapter Three

Note on the Focus of Discussion and Selections of Ham’s Writings

A considerable amount of research on Ham Sok Hon has already been conducted in Korea. Some of the major biographical works include Kim YongJoon (김용준)’s My View of Ham Sok Hon (내가 본 함석헌), 1 Kim Samŭng (김삼웅)’s Biography of Ham Sok Hon as an Activist (저항인 함석헌 평 전), 2 Kim Sung-Soo (김성수)’s Biography of Ham Sok Hon (함석헌 평전), 3 and I Ch’isŏk (이지석)’s Ssial, a Biography of Ham Sok Hon (씨알 함석헌 평전). 4 Ham’s political thought has been investigated for various themes. Lee Jung Bae (이정배)’s Ham Sok Hon and His Political Criticism (함석헌 의 뜻으로 본 한국 역사 속에 나타난 ‘민족’ 개념의 신학적 고찰: 신채호 의 ‘민족사관’과 안중근의 ‘동양평화론’의 지평에서) 5 explored Ham’s theological notion of nation. Park Jae-Soon (박재순) attempted a meaningful discussion about ssial philosophy as a foundation of minjung theology. The connection between these thought systems has been extensively studied by many scholars. For example, Lee Sangrok (이상록) tried to juxtapose Ham’s consciousness of minjung with democracy. 6 Jung Ji-Seok’s Ham Sok Hon’s Philosophy of Minjung and Minjung Theology (함석헌의 민중사상과 민중 신학) focused on his minjung-peace theory and anti-statism. 7 Notable works particularly on Ham’s philosophy and religious thoughts include Park JaeSun (박재순)’s Ham Sok Hon’s Philosophy and Thought (함석헌의 철학과 사상), 8 Kim Kyoung Jae (김경재)’s Ham Sok Hon, a Great Thinker of the Nation (민족의 큰 사상가 함석헌 선생), and Kim Dei Seek (김대식)’s The World of Ham Sok Hon’s Philosophy and Religion: Resistance to the World without Thought (함석헌의 철학과 종교 세계: 생각 없는 세계에 대한 저 항) 9 and On Ham’s Philosophy of Life (함석헌의 생철학적 징후들). 10 Lee Ho Jae (이호재)’s articulation of “newness” from Ham’s religious thoughts shows a variety of applications of his creative and critical thinking in moving 21

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our political and spiritual civilization forward. 11 There are numerous theses and dissertations in Korea on Ham’s ssial philosophy and its theological and political implications. This book focuses specifically on Ham’s ideas that can be considered to have contributed to his cosmopolitan vision on which no research has been done in English except for some discussions, in Korean, on Ham’s resistance to statism (국가주의), interposed in different themes. Therefore, I believe that this book would be the first of its kind on Ham’s cosmopolitanism. Most of my research materials are primary sources. Two major collections of Ham’s writings have been published in Korea: (1) Ham Sok Hon, Chŏnjip (함석헌 전집, hereafter Chŏnjip) 12 and (2) Ham Sok Hon Chŏjakchip (함석 헌 저작집, hereafter Chŏjakchip). 13 Both collections were published by Hangilsa (한길사). There is another collection entitled The Collected Works of Ham Sok Hon, available in the digital archive, 바보새 함석헌: 동서를 아 우른 생명평화사상 (hereafter, Collection, http://ssialsori.net/). This collection was created and maintained by Chung Hyeonpil (정현필), former executive director of the Ham Sok Hon Memorial Foundation (함석헌기념사업 회) and one of Ham’s grandsons. Most citations of Ham Sok Hon in this book come from Collection and Voice of the People (씨알의 소리 통권 EBook, hereafter Voice), both of which are archived in the same website. Although Collection has not been published yet, I believe that it is the most updated compilation of Ham’s writings, which addresses the errors of Chŏnjip and Chŏjakchip and includes new materials. I personally had the permission to access all the archived documents, which are available in PDF format. In particular, each of the in-text citations from Collection will include subtitles (Meaning, e.g.), in this book, to indicate the actual location and the page numbers. Although Ham’s autobiography and some volumes of Voice of the People are not part of the collection, they are still archived in the same website. Voice of the People is archived as both individual versions and collected volumes. The in-text citations from the former will be represented by Voice and the latter by Voice-Collection. There are a few citations of Ham’s works quoted from Chŏnjip and Chŏjakchip and from secondary sources. NOTES 1. Yong-Joon Kim, 내가 본 함석헌 (My View of Ham Sok Hon) (Seoul: Acanet, 2006). 2. Kim Samŭng, 저항인 함석헌 평전 (Biography of Ham Sok Hon as an Activist) (Seoul: Hyeonamsa, 2013). 3. Sung-Soo Kim, 함석헌 평전 (Biography of Ham Sok Hon) (Seoul: 삼인, 2011). 4. Ch’isŏk I (이치석), 씨알 함석헌 평전 (Ssial, a Biography of Ham Sok Hon) (Seoul: 시 대의 창, 2005).

Note on the Focus of Discussion and Selections of Ham’s Writings

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5. Jung Bae Lee, “함석헌의 뜻으로 본 한국 역사 속에 나타난 ‘민족’ 개념의 신학적 고 찰: 신채호의 ‘민족사관’과 안중근의 ‘동양평화론’의 지평에서 (Ham Sok Hon and His Political Criticism),” Theology and the World 55 (2006): 162–92. 6. Sangrok Lee, “Ham Seok-hon’s Perspective on the People and the Discourse of Democracy,” The Review of Korean History 97 (2010): 147–90. 7. Ji-Seok Jung, “Ham Sok Hon’s Philosophy of Minjung and Minjung Theology (함석헌 의 민중사상과 민중신학),” Theological Thought 134 (2006): 101–33. 8. Jae-Soon Park, 함석헌의 철학과 사상 (Ham Sok Hon’s Philosophy and Thought) (Seoul: HanulMPlus, 2012). 9. Dei Seek, Kim, 함석헌의 철학과 종교세계 (The World of Ham Sok Hon’s Philosophy and Religion: Resistance to the World without Thought) (Seoul: 모시는 사람들, 2012). 10. Dei Seek, Kim, 함석헌의 생철학적 징후들 (On Ham’s Philosophy of Life)(Seoul: 모 시는 사람들, 2014). 11. Ho Jae Lee, “A Study on ‘Newness’ in Ham Seok-heon’s Religious Thoughts and Possibility of Korea Religious Spirituality,” Studies in Religion 77, no. 2 (2018): 129–57. 12. Sok Hon Ham, 함석헌 전집 (Ham Sok Hon Chŏnjip, hereafter Chŏnjip)(Seoul: Hangilsa, 1984). 13. Sok Hon Ham, 함석헌 저작집 (Ham Sok Hon Chŏjakchip, hereafter Chŏjakchip) (Seoul: Hangilsa, 2009).

Chapter Four

State of Nature

One of my initial motivations for this chapter was to find a possible place of Ham Sok Hon’s philosophy of ssial in a larger discussion of Western political philosophy. However, due to his immense contribution, as a prolific writer, to the broad intellectual history of Korea, and his ubiquitous presence in discussions on wide-ranging issues, from history and literature to theology and politics, it was a daunting task to find a good place to start. Therefore, I tried to identify the pivotal point in which Ham’s sisal philosophy, most of whose parts are seemingly metaphysical, becomes a concrete roadmap to deal with actual political problems and in which it becomes relevant to some of the major concerns of Western political philosophy. The topic that I have finally come down to is the state of nature, which has long been used, according to Hukuyama, 1 as a means or a metaphor, by many political theorists and ethicists, particularly, contractarians, to understand what the mindset of the humans toward social relations and political authority was like, particularly before the existence of civil society, and how they should be. This hypothetical device offers a discursive arena in which political theorists showcase their analysis of human nature and relations, to promote a certain form of government. I think that what Ham intended with ssial philosophy in his political context fits in nicely with the general objectives of the discussion of the state of nature and that it becomes a good foundation of his cosmopolitan vision. Just as the discussions of classic contractarian thinkers did, Ham’s argument for the active, political role of the people through the paradigm of ssial reveals his broad descriptive generalizations and certain foundational normative claims on human nature and relations and it suggests a vision for a particular political community and a power to realize it.

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To make my case, I will first give a brief overview (1) of the concept of the state of nature, in the following sections, by reviewing the various usages of the major social contract theorists including Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. It will be followed by short critiques (2) that I think Ham would have offered to each theorist. Setting the stage with the discussion of the state of nature, I will not get into too much detail of the argument, of each thinker, which can draw broader and more complex technical themes such as justice, civil disobedience, and God, but focus on the aspect that provides each thinker’s underlying principles regarding human relations and community. My brief critical response, to contractarians, inspired by the general tone and the overall direction, of Ham’s philosophy, will lead to a whole new chapter exploring his concept of ssial (3). I believe that his conceptual device is compatible with the state of nature. I will draw specifically three themes from Ham’s philosophy that seem to play the same function as the state of nature, in shaping his ideas of political relations and community. The three themes discussed include: in-gan-ron (인간론, theory of humans/human nature), ssial (씨알, seed) and saengmyeong (생명, life). These three concepts can be interchangeable, generally referring to the same ontological entity, human beings. However, they can mean different things in different contexts. In-gan-ron is the most basic understanding and argument of human nature that I have found in Ham’s major works. The understanding of this term does not usually include a consideration of a particular political and historical context. It is Ham’s general view of humans: humans subject to natural drives. In the meantime, ssial and saengmyeong are more closely related to each other than they are to the concept of in-gan. They are context-specific terms, to mean something. While the ssial is a term for the people in the consideration of a particular political context and vision, saengmyeong is a term, which highlights the ontologically expansive nature of the people, having more metaphysical nuances and connotations. The latter two concepts were formulated by Ham’s detailed explanation of in-gan, which he developed into the notion of the ipchejeok (입체적, stereoscopic) being. By expounding these three concepts, I will argue that Ham’s philosophy of ssial identifies a new layer of the state of nature, which can present new motives for political relations, from a higher ground, and envisage a larger political community, which is a cosmopolitan community. STATE OF NATURE The state of nature is a hypothetical situation through which, human nature and relations in a pre-political and prehistoric era is pondered upon and characterized, and eventually an ideal form of government is proposed. Palmeri understood this conceptual device as an outcome of our conjectural

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history. 2 It is a derivative of the larger discussion, of natural law, dated all the way back to Greek philosophy. According to Chernilo, natural law is a philosophy of universalism presupposing that “all human beings are equally equipped biologically, but seeking to justify this unity of the species beyond its physiological constitution.” 3 It assumes that all individuals share common natural tendency and deserve universal rights and treatment. The discussion of the state of nature is based on this very notion of universality. All three contractarians selected here for comparison with Ham’s philosophy, regardless of their different political visions, presuppose their own set of universal characteristics of human nature and present different views of “the native normative endowment” 4 from which they proceed their political analysis and arguments. It seems almost impossible, without being based on a universalistic orientation, to claim any systematic understanding particularly of the concept of fairness or justice, which is the backbone of ideal community. Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle indeed argued that political community should be built on a good understanding of man’s permanent nature, which is universal, and not what was ephemeral and changing. Under this purview of the natural law tradition, the discussion of the state of nature allows humans to be put and assessed in the same category of being with universal ontological drives and capabilities, to justify a particular style of sovereignty. Hobbes did it for absolute monarchism, while Locke and Rousseau did it for representative government and dictatorship guided by the general will respectively. In the following discussion, I will point out key points of, and offer a critique to, each contractarian. I will focus specifically on the source of the motive, which each thinker believes engages people in a political relation and a contract. It means that the discussion of the form of government is not part of my focus. The contractarians’ sources of motive will be compared and contrasted with what Ham suggests with his notion of ssial as a state of nature. My overview and critique of the contractarians in this section is intended simply to set the stage for the following comprehensive discussion of Ham’s ssial philosophy, so it will be brief. Thomas Hobbes Sharing the common tone of Machiavelli’s political realism and the natural law tradition, 5 Hobbes expands his political thought into a larger discussion, including anthropological and ethical concerns. Particularly at the outset of his analysis of human relations and political community, Hobbes speaks in a very Machiavellian voice on human relations. Just as Machiavelli says, humans are “ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit,” 6 Hobbes says, “life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” 7 Their evaluations of political relations as natural phenomena are

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almost identical. However, politics, for Hobbes, is not just a human activity or a skill only to increase the probability of survival, as Machiavelli argues. It also functions to explain the epistemological and ethical dimension of why human beings ought to enter a contractarian relation and accept the justification of a sovereign or a common power. Differing from Machiavelli, who believes that our moral structures are, according to Boucher, “purely conventional and reflect the existential needs of human beings living in communities, and they are the result of natural necessity, not natural law,” 8 Hobbes believes a natural law, which operates for our egoistic desire, including the desire of survival and success, but becomes a moral precept, when it necessarily co-arises and interconnects with the interests of other people. Hobbes indeed made a deontological statement in Leviathan, saying “It is his duty, not to make void that voluntary act of his own.” 9 Therefore, entering a contract with fellow humans and working together with them to establish a monarchy are not just an isolated tactic for the individual’s survival but the foundation or structure of a morality as a system. Although agreeing with Hobbes’ points about the egoistic aspect of human nature, Ham would say that his analysis of human nature particularly for the understanding of the telos of politics is not comprehensive enough. It is too defensive. It is defensive because his political philosophy necessarily puts others in the position of competitor or enemy. Read 10 characterizes this as an obvious zero-sum understanding. For Hobbes, the state of nature is bellum omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all). Since disagreement is inherent in human conditions, the way people perceive each other is always solipsistic, and the desire for self-preservation is often escalated into a preempted attack, we all live in the fear of violent death. To make it sound even more defensive, the purpose and value of reason is also in its utility and efficacy for self-preservation. The rational process determining our appetite and aversion is subjective. Thus, there is no objective but subjective political reality, which is chaotic from the view of the individual. Boucher said, “Our ideas, feeling, and judgements are necessarily self-referential,” because “our knowledge of the world, and attitudes towards it and towards other people, consist entirely in the internal processing of ‘apparitions’ from those external motions.” 11 There is no elaborate argument for the use of reason for doing something altruistic. Churnilo adds to this by saying, “While in the state of nature reason is nothing but an individual ability to take advantage of what is good to me and to preempt potentially harmful courses of events. . . .” 12 Similarly, Hobbes’s explanation of quarrel and war does not take due consideration of causes of self-sacrifice. According to Leviathan, we quarrel over competition, diffidence, and glory. 13 According to the Elements of Law, we wage war due to the absence of coercive authority, competition for the same good, and ubiquitous egoism. Even the motive for the establishment of a political community is defensive because it is like building a fortress to

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protect oneself from everyone else, whether to contain an expansion of a powerful neighbor or to keep the balance of power. Therefore, in Hobbes’s view, there is no serious discussion of empathy, which is indeed factual and historical in human life. Since Ham was a devoted Christian in the entire life, though his theological stance changed over time, and his intellectual life was shaped out of Christian narratives, he would understand the concerns of Hobbes’s political realism. Human beings may have a selfish gene or it is unavoidable to act defensively in some situations. However, Ham’s understanding of the state of nature through the view of the ssial, which will be discussed in a separate section later, would not agree with his pessimistic anthropology and defensive use of reason and freedom. As already stated, for Hobbes, other human beings are always a potential threat, according to Churnilo, that could infringe on our “autonomous spheres of action.” 14 Reason and freedom are simply tools to express our natural drive of self-preservation and selfaggrandizement. Political community, no matter how spruced up, is a necessary evil to defend our self-interests. Ham would argue that this dichotomic stance taking others as, political partners at best, and enemy to be contained at worst, does not represent the full picture of human nature and relations, because Hobbes’s state of nature is, in fact, not a genuine state of nature. Considering Aristotle’s claim that human beings are in nature political or Aaron’s claim that there is “little support for the theory of free men entering into a compact and so creating a political group,” 15 Hobbes’s state of nature can be considered already a semi-political state into which the natural, blank state of consciousness toward the other, whatever that may be, is degenerated, and every individual is pushed, for a defensive mode. The true state of nature, which Ham would argue, must be rather a stage of consciousness, existing before the Hobbes’s pre-civil man emerges, in which a defense mechanism does not even take its place in our mind and attitude. According to Ham, having a tactical or strategical thought of others as a competitor or an enemy, assuming that it is at least not of an animalistic instinct, presupposes a territorial mindset putting others into a process of rational calculation and ourselves into a defensive position. Put differently, calculative and strategic thinking implies the presence of a formula to cognitively process to gain, control, expand, and preserve power, which is already political, if the term, politics, is understood, by Harold Lasswell’s definition, as an activity over power and status (Politics: Who gets what, when, how, 1960). 16 Thus, the primitive man, who is extremely defensive in Hobbes’s state of nature, can be neither a pre-political man nor a pre-historic man, because, Ham would argue that the desire, and the rational calculation, for power, only for privatized survival and security, premise separation between individual humans, particularly in a deep ontological sense of self and community, and confirm the presence of a categorically territorial and political

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mindset toward each other, whether in a geographic sense or in their general consciousness. I mean a territoriality and a sense of community, formed by the dichotomic notion between I and thou, friend/family and enemy, the beneficial and the harmful, etc. It is also because history is created at the very moment when a person begins to perceive, touch, interact with, and give meanings to, the world and other humans. I think that Ham’s philosophy of ssial discussed later would offer a more fundamental state of nature, a state before the Hobbesian defense mechanism even kicks in. John Locke Locke’s political philosophy discussed in his two Treatises of Government presents a qualitative leap from the solipsistic person to the virtuous person. Although his state of nature lacked an absolute or arbitrary power, 17 as in Hobbes’s state of nature, it does not assume a priori that humans were in a hostile, war-like state with each other. 18 The Lockean sate of nature, according to Kim, was governed “by a moral law, discoverable by reason or revelation, which forbids individuals from harming each other in their life, liberty, or possession.” 19 It was a perfect state in which human persons maximally enjoyed their liberty without any fear of interference of others. Locke argues that humans in the state of nature are free and equal, as exemplified by the American frontier and Soldania. They are “in a state of liberty, not a state of license,” 20 to do whatever they want to do, “without asking leave, or depending the will of any other man.” 21 They are also “in a state of perfect equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another.” 22 Self-preservation is a universal right and duty. These two characteristics are interlocked by the law of nature, which “obliges everyone” under the guidance of reason. 23 However, as human relations and community became expanded and complicated through a gradual change of the mode of economy, increased population, and expanded greed and ambition, primitive family communities run primarily by the form of patriarchal monarchy lost grip on its power to keep order and solidarity. This change naturally demanded a more sophisticated and powerful political authority, which was a common wealth for Locke, not because of the absence of trust or moral law but because of the inconveniences from the situation of everyone being the judge in his/her own case. 24 Human beings came to give up their “executive power of the law of nature,” 25 as the conflict of interests and the transgression of others became out of control and as they experienced the inefficacy of their traditional community. They entered into a contract to best secure their three natural rights: life, liberty, and property. The contract leads to a collective rationality and then a political community to which the executive power of the individual is voluntarily transferred.

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Although Ham would be more sympathetic to Locke’s description of the state of nature than Hobbes’s, because of his more theological recognition of reason and human nature, he would still say that Locke’s theory, at least, of the state of nature, not of the contract, presents little difference from Hobbes’s. His state of nature, as is Hobbes’s, is not a genuine state of nature. It is ambiguous. According to Ashcraft, “Lock is really Hobbes in disguise.” 26 Locke based his theory on natural law that allows all humans inalienable rights and justifies their ensuing duties. However, his idealistic portrayal of the natural condition is abandoned in the discussion of practical issues of political relation. Our reason, natural compassion or familial feeling for others, and solidarity could not simply hold up against an expansion of the community. Even in the contract situation, freedom and equality do not seem universal because his state of nature premises a presence of economic power and status. According to Mills’s racial reading of the contract situation, the pre-historic person is concerned about the safety of private property. The contract is meant to “secure and legitimate the privileging of those individuals designated as white/persons and the exploitation of those individuals designated as nonwhite/subpersons.” 27 It means that the individual entering into a contract with fellow humans, in the state of nature, is technically not in a default state of politics. The person is already politically minded and territorially bound. It is political in that he enters into a contractual community for the concern about power and status. It is territorial in that his motive for political relation and community is formed, as in Hobbes’s case, by a distancing mode toward others. Thus, Ham would say that our rational approach, inspired and motivated solely by the natural law of right and duty, 28 would not bring a good understanding of the original condition of politics. Nor can it help solve the politics of demonization that our global community is suffering now. In addition, it does not overcome the accusation of being inconsistent in explaining the fundamental motive for human community. Locke’s general view of the world and human life is not as secular and egoistic as Hobbes’s because he believes that the purpose of life is to both glorify God and secure self-preservation and that the full realization of personal capacities is a divine duty. 29 He definitely saw a profound value of life and reason. However, when it comes to dealing with rights and duties in everyday political relations, Locke becomes very conscious of securing, balancing, and maximizing the interests of the individuals. It seems that the individual’s decision of, and commitment to, the contract is intended mainly to secure or increase personal eudaimonia, including wealth and reputation. As Boucher notes, it is “the prospect of benefit (for Locke)” that represents the motivation for contract. 30 Similarly, Kim argues that Locke “keeps the Hobbesian narcissist dormant within the liberal man under vigilant check by virtue of self-mastery and by

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desire of reputation.” 31 He continues, “Locke’s great concern was with statecraft rather than soulcraft.” 32 Of course, Locke would explain this inconsistency as a gradual transition from the state of nature to the state of war driven by the brutes relying upon the principle of force. For Locke, the state of war is not the state of nature. It is a new stage caused by aggressors, and it sets a Hobbesian state of nature in which the innocent person, following the natural law, and the transgressor, are at war. The problem is, however, that his multi-layered notion of the state of nature cannot explain ethically gray areas where the distinction between the innocent person and the aggressor is ambiguous. Conflict over the ownership of a land in which multiple persons claim they have invested the labour of their body and the work of their hands, can be an example, assumed that each one is telling the truth. What if some plant oaks, some pick up acorns, and others build a house in the same land. There is no clear demarcation between the state of nature and the state of war because of the ambiguity of the idea of aggressor particularly in highly subjective views of individuals. I think that the inconsistency or confusion is caused by Locke’s abandonment or weak use of metaphysics, in his political discourse because we see the sudden collapse or absence of Locke’s sublime metaphysics on reason and the cultivation of civility, at the very political moment when the individual feels the necessity to enter a contract. This collapse makes the innocent person, who still follows the law of nature, morally inconsistent. Kim characterized this Lockean person in moral ambiguity, as “the village worthy,” borrowing a famous quote of Confucius, 33 whose inner self and public persona are polarized. The innocent person of the law of nature, according to Kim’s criticism, seems “a person who is loved by everyone in his village as to his apparent virtue, but, who, in reality, is the thief of virtue.” 34 The Lockean person believes that he has a divine calling for his life, but he neglects or abandons it at a conflict of interests. On this inconsistency between Locke’s metaphysics and political theory, Ham would point out a problem of the type of community that he envisioned. In Ham’s view, the contractual community is a society, which operates with rule and norms to maximize or sustain personal liberty and fairness. However, in this model, even the individual, who is harmful, in thought, to others, yet strategic in hiding his evil to manipulate them, can still manage to enter a contract to be part of a community. The model is successful in explaining what happens in political arena, but not logical enough to explain why people from the state of nature are necessarily degenerated into the state of war. Nor is it informative of what our politics and its direction ought to be. Ham would argue that Locke should have not abandoned his metaphysics in shaping his idea of politics and envisioning the ideal political community. If Lock had, he must have ended up with a very different picture. As Ham would have done with his ssial philosophy, Locke would have envisioned a community

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more of virtue, character, and emotional connection because the default setting of our political engagement should be laid on a higher ground than economics and civis-engineering (science of cultivating law-abiding-citizens). We need to be serious about answering such metaphysical questions, as, who we are, how we connect with each other, and how we form a sense of community, in both physical and non-physical domains of politics. We need to use those answers to understand and solve political problems. Ham would have argued that this metaphysical pondering should occur prior to our contractual and economic assessment for others. Bringing larger discussions of anthropology, psychology, and theology, this approach sheds light particularly on the emotional and philosophical aspect, which is substantial in politics. Differing from Locke, he tried to keep consistency between his theory of human nature and politics and believed that his metaphysical take on politics had a significant, practical value. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Rousseau’s state of nature takes a step further than Locke did in idealizing the state of nature. In his earlier Discourses, the life of the pre-historic person was “individualistic in the extreme.” 35 As in the Lockean state of nature, the natural man was free, autonomous, equal and naturally virtuous. Two fundamental capacities, self-preservation and compassion, were positive sources of life as long as individuals lived solitarily for themselves. In Emile, Rousseau said, “He is the unit, the whole, dependent only on himself and on his like.” 36 For a possible conflict over differences in individual capacities, Churnilo says that they did not “pose insurmountable problems.” 37 Boucher characterizes this natural man as the noble sage. He was “an isolated, relatively content, innocent, and sympathetic being” driven by amour de soi (self-love), not amour propre (selfish love). 38 Therefore, what broke the equilibrium and tranquility of the state of nature was not the human nature but the establishment of society. Rousseau says, “With the rise of fully fledged social relations,” the primitive person began to “develop all kinds of negative drive and traits: jealousy, envy, competition, deceit, vice, vanity, contempt.” 39 These unnatural feelings and drives came ironically from the shadow of the abovementioned human capacities, which are originally good for the natural, isolated life. They became a necessary evil, as we got to connect with an expanded number of people, for the division of labor and cooperation attempted to respond to the desire of perfectibility. According to Boucher, it was society that “destroyed natural liberty and legitimized the acts of usurpation by which property had been acquired and inequality instituted, condemning the whole of the human race to labour, servitude and misery.” 40 Therefore, the motivation for contract and the purpose of our political community are to approximate our life to the state of nature. This return, or

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approximation, to the natural state is attempted by, establishing, and transferring our rights to, the general will, which is an impersonal sovereign. It means that different individual political wills are dissolved into the will of a political organism. Odgers characterizes it as “the manifestation of the mind of the new community.” 41 The general will is, however, not the will of majority but a new will emanating from the community, as a living organism, to which individual persons voluntarily transfer their rights and through which they constantly experience public autonomy, not private autonomy. Ham would have agreed with Rousseau more than any other contractarian. In particular, Rousseau’s reservation, as a romanticist, about the role of reason in explaining the primitive human relations, goes well with Ham’s criticism against the claim that politics should be dealt with mainly in the realm of social science. In Rousseau’s argument, the aspect of the state of nature to which we have to pay attention, to better understand the working principles of politics and the formation of civil society, is not the rational and moral dimension but the dimension that precedes them. It is nature. Nature’s fundamental characteristics are self-preservation and compassion. Following our nature, we must act in ways that “both preserve our individual lives and work to preserve the lives of others.” 42 Rousseau believed that it was pity, prior to all reflection, that balanced and controlled the excesses of selfpreservation. Ham would agree that there is a more fundamental source, than reason, to, make sense of, and direct, our political behavior and relation. For Ham, it is the consciousness of ssial preceding reason. The ssial resembles the nature of Rousseau. Ham said, “Rousseau discussed nature. The ssial is nothing more than nature.” 43 He recognized the problem of society and civilization that has drifted us away from nature. The ssial is the primordial, universal feeling of life that every human person shares. It is compatible with Rousseau’s nature in the sense that it, arises in, and mirrors, every living organism. It is the inner drive of the person, as a living being, to grow, expand, and connect, with other fellow humans, surroundings, and even God. It is a mysterious power that some might define as a desire for transcendence. Not only does this power or drive encourage us to find a sense of belonging with and from each other but it also engages us in a deep inner reflection, on the original source of our life, which would lead to a spiritual cultivation and its transformation into a civic virtue in practical political contexts. However, what Ham would disagree with Rousseau would be his implementation, reduction, or particularization process of the general will, into an institutional body. According to Rousseau, the general will is a living organism in which individual wills are expressed. It may conflict with the wills of some individuals, but not lose their loyalty because, once established through contract, it does not represent private interests but the common interests. 44 The problem is, as Rousseau himself recognizes, a possibility of factionalism. “When factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense

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of the great association, the will of each of the associations becomes general in relation to its members, while it remains particular in relation to the State.” 45 He warns, “There should be no partial society within the State.” 46 The question is how we can guarantee that everyone would set aside his or her private will. As Rousseau already noticed the problem in his discussion of the state of nature, we are in an unnatural state because, as Boucher points out, our new environment having been caused by “increased population, climate change, and a less plentiful food supply” has altered “the harmony in which individuals find themselves with nature.” 47 No matter, what system and how it, is implemented, as our history testifies, there is always partial association, group competition, and power struggle. For this problem of particularization, Ham would have questioned the foundation of the general will itself which he would say is too shallow. According to his ssial philosophy talking about the consciousness of life (saengmyeong), which not only precedes our awareness of political rights and ensuing duties but also draws a stronger power of empathy, than that of any other social element, to connect and co-prosper with others, the general will is formed out of an unreliable source of solidarity. On how to get and implement the general will, Rousseau says, “The engagement which bind to the social body are obligatory only because they are mutual; and their nature is such that in fulfilling them we cannot work for others without also working for ourselves.” 48 It is based on a contractual dimension, which premises a both Hobbesian and Lockean apprehension toward others. We enter into a contract and establish a community in order to secure our maximum liberty and profits. In contrast to our natural, voluntary, moral act, for the benefit of family, whose reward is not even speculated upon, our act on contract presupposes a business mindset. Others are embraced in a community as business partners, and every situation related to social relation turns us into an appraiser’s mode to calculate our benefit and, of course, the benefit of others, under the condition that it does not inflict a loss. This mindset assumes a boundary of otherness, on benefit, security, and the level of happiness. Put differently, the notion of liberty and equality that Rousseau utilized for his political vision came from the very concern about the distribution of resources and power. Therefore, Ham would single out, as the main problem, distance and conditionality nuanced in the concept of mutuality because, for something to be mutual, individuals, separately existing in both physical space and consciousness, and their notion of fairness or justice, anchored in, and launched from, their own interests, should be assumed. According to Ham’s ssial philosophy, what is more fundamental to create and sustain a natural, harmonious community is not to design perfect contract relations among individuals and keep a balance of power but to create a strong bond, which is formed through a perspectival, emotional, and relational transformation of the indi-

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vidual toward others and, through which individuals are able to cease their appraiser’s mode and live voluntarily and passionately for kongjon (공존, 共 存, co-existence), sangsaeng (상생, 相生, co-living), and kongyŏng (공영, co-prosperity, 共榮). Although this mode of life is not, of course, as realistic and practical as the contractual mode, it is not completely impossible or useless to talk about, either. We have found countless historical cases of people as political agents, transcending boundaries, ideologies, personal interests, and power, to embrace others and sometimes even enemy. Ham’s approach to human relations and community thus offers a groundwork dealing with emotional/spiritual connection and bond rather than instrumental resources and measures demanding political calculation. HAM’S NOTION OF SSIAL AS THE STATE OF NATURE Although Ham never wrote directly about the state of nature, many of his political writings did include serious conjecture and discussions on the original state of human nature and relations. For example, the argument of Ham’s magnum opus, Queen of Suffering: Spiritual History of Kore, that history should be interpreted by Tteut (뜻, meaning or will), is constructed on a particular understanding of the state of nature; so are his political commentaries and essays delivered in Voice of the People (씨알의 소리). In this section, I will compare and contrast his view with those of the aforementioned contractarians. There are similarities and differences. Similarities are in his utilization of the psychology of the pre-historic humans in understanding politics and in his notion of universality through the concept of ssial. Differences are in his normative understanding of political phenomena, the typology and scale of his envisioned political community, and the purpose and function of politics. A more comprehensive discussion on ssial will be followed in the next chapters as I explore Ham’s cosmopolitan vision. Two Similarities Ssial as Psychological Ground Ham’s use of ssial is similar with aforementioned contractarians’ use of the state of nature. One similarity is the use of ssial as a psychological ground, to explain the fundamental nature of human beings and their natural, perception of, and engagement with, each other, and to conjecture preconditions of political community and conceive an ideal direction for it. Just as contractarians thought of the original source of political desire through the paradigm of a social context existing before the establishment of any civil society, Ham evaluated, and came up with solutions to, political problems of his time, and suggested an ideal community, by proposing a hypothetical state of con-

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sciousness. For example, the Hobbesian egoist seeking the best conditions for his survival led to an absolute monarchy. The Lockean collaborator trying to maximize liberty for his eudaimonia led to a constitutional democracy. The Rousseauian natural man compromising with other fellow humans to return to the natural state led to a system ruled by the general will. Their analyses of political phenomena and solutions came all from their particular philosophy of human potential, natural inclination, and perception of others; whether they were conscious of or not, their analyses centered around an original, psychological state of the prehistoric human from which they could infer the default state of politics and political relations; the default state here means the preset condition, in which humans remain ‘original’ and ‘natural’ in responding to political situations. Ham made a similar attempt with his ssial philosophy. Identifying all humans as the ssial, Ham created his own concept of the state of nature. Just as contractarians did, Ham premised a default state, in all of his writings, in which all people are placed as equal, authentic, and autonomous, and, from which he could develop his own idea of just relations and community. He thought that through the paradigm of ssial, individual humans come to find their true identity, capability, and sense of belonging, and they could respond to the divine imperative for life. Ssial as Universality and Naturalness The other similarity is the recognition of universality or naturalness. All contractarian arguments discussed above are in line with the natural law tradition because they believed in, in one way or another, “an eternal and divine law, the equality of man, and a sense of unity pervading mankind” 49 According to the traditional natural law theory, human beings were considered equal in the universe as a whole. In the meantime, the equality, on which the modern natural law theory, including the contractarian arguments, focused, was based on individual rights. Although their focuses were different, the notion of universality was a significant part of their political analysis and claims of human behavior, relations, and community. All contractarians proposed their theories with a set of assumptions about rational and emotional faculties, which they characterized as natural and universal. Ham’s political philosophy also developed out of universality, which is conspicuous particularly in his metaphysics. In setting the stage of his hermeneutical reading of the world history and politics, Ham highlights the universal force present in all living things. This force has various names in his writings, such as hon (혼, 魂, spirit/ghost), ssial (씨알, seed), and saengmyeiong (생명, life). No matter what it is called, this fundamental force was the anchor of all of his philosophical and political commentaries and claims. Ham’s frequent conversion and elevation of the political to the metaphysical is found in his statement,

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Chapter 4 나라는 산집이어야 합니다. 자라는 집이어야 합니다. 생명의 집입니 다 . . . 제가 곧 법이요 규칙이어야 합니다. 그 밖에 딴 법이 있을 수 없읍니 다 . . . 재목은 죽은 것이므로 사개를 물리고 못질을 하여 하나로 얽지만 나라는 그렇게는 못합니다. 50 The nation should be a living house (산 집). It should be a growing house (자 라는 집). It is the house of life (생명의 집) . . . the nation is the rules and laws in itself. There should not be any law other than the nation (as a living organism). . . . Dead wooden boards can be made into dovetail joints, and they are (mechanically) assembled and nailed together to form (a house). However, the nation cannot be built in such a way.

By the nation here Ham does not simply mean an enlarged entity of an institutional community. Nor is it a legal entity built and sustained solely by contractual relations. It is a living organism whose foundation is laid, in a more profound dimension, and by a more fundamental force. This special ground or force is something that every living organism shares. For example, in his World History from the Viewpoint of Meaning (뜻으로 본 세계역사), Ham stated: 만물은 하나님의 은총에서 나온다. 그러므로 만물은 ‘있어서 있는 자’로 서의 하나님의 표현이다. 저는 그 무한성을 ‘다(多)’에서 발표할 수밖에 없다. 생물의 복잡화는 제한 없는 것으로서 생육하고 번성하라는 하나님 의 명령에 의한 것이다. 51 It is the necessity of love that forced God to create the universe. . . . The universe came from the grace of God. Therefore, all things in the universe are the expression of God as who he is. He cannot help but pronounce his eternity with da (다, plurality). The complexification of living organism is limitless and caused by God’s command of prosperity and reproduction. However, da anticipates il (일, singularity). Wherever da is, il is present.

He believed that there is a unifying and universal, (1) stage of ontology (ssial), and (2) force (saengmyeong), in everything and every process of creation. Discussing with his contemporary theologians on the identity of the ssial, Ham made this point clear with the ancient Chinese philosophers’ effort to return to the blank state of human nature and status. In the Meaning of the Ssial and the Minjung Movement, Ham talked about a concept, which is seemingly compatible with yet actually goes beyond the state of nature. Ham expressed the state of nature with the Confucian notion of che (체, body/substance): 가령 실례를 든다면 장자 같은 사람, 노자 같은 사람은 그런 입장에 서 있 거든. 요순(堯舜)도 부정한단 말이예요. 요순을 가져다가 이 유사(有史)역 사에서는 굉장한 성군으로, 아주 이상적인 군주로 그걸 얘길하는데, 그것 도 벌써 잘못이 거기서 시작이라 그래. 그러니까 그때에도 동양식으로 체 (體)와 용(用)을 갈라 말한다면, 체가 더 중요한데, 체가 작용하는 거는 그

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역사적 단계에서 어떻게 하겠지 하지만, 그 근본 체를 말로 한다면 기독 교에서 마치 하나님의 모습대로라 하는 모양으로, 그런 생각을 한다면 씨 알이란 반드시 지배 피지배의, 참 씨알은 지배 피지배를 모르는 게 정말 씨알이지. 52 For instance, people like Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu took such a position. They rejected even (the sagehood of) Yao and Shun. Although Yao and Shun were traditionally understood as great sages and ideal monarchs, that is a part of the problem. When talking about the che (the body/substance) and the yong (the use/utilization/manifestation), the former is more important. Although the che functions/manifests in historical process, its fundamental essence is like a state of being the image of God. If that is so, the true ssial is the ssial that are oblivious of the dynamic of dominance and subordination.

In other words, politics and community are social manifestations or expressions of this deeper, universal aspect of our nature; it is a human phenomenon occurring in the process of the materialization of our metaphysical drives and characteristics. This metaphysicalization of politics is not of Ham’s invention. It has a long history. For Aristotle, it is the awareness of telos, and the practice of arête, that generate eudaimonia in our political life. For Augustine, it is the awareness of the civitas dei upon and within the civitas terrena that brings the true value of politics. For Aquinas, it is the inner law of grace that reinterprets the judicial laws of Moses. 53 For Locke, it was his Christian theism that grounds the notion of basic human equality. 54 All believed that the state demands a substantial amount of pre-or supra-political social cohesion. This pre-or supra-political social cohesion can be of the religious, according to Emil Durkheim, or of the media such as vernacular languages or images, according to Benedict Anderson. Responding to politicians believing that “the state works mainly by establishing and operating laws (정치가들은 매양 법으로 나라가 되고),” Ham argued that it was the ssial that could make a real connection and change in society. The powerful and the powerless (ssial) were the same when they were at the bottom (그 사 람이나 우리나 바닥에 있을 때는 마찬가지인데). 55 The bottom hear does not mean the bottom of the social hierarchy but the most natural state of consciousness, which is the state of ssial. The concept of ssial is thus as universal as the rational faculty and natural inclination of humans. It is more fundamental and essential in shaping our political consciousness and community. Three Differences Along with the similarities, Hams’s notion of ssial generates some different outcomes concerning his political vision. While the contractarian thought of the state of nature is mainly descriptive, Ham’s state of nature, which is the state of ssial, is normative and prescriptive. It means that his discussion of

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political relation and community is more than what we experience and what we want to experience. It is also about what we ought to be and do. The level of this oughtness is more than political and ethical. He wanted to shed light on our ontological potential and capability to be actualized. He urged us to see the hidden force and principle behind political phenomena. For Ham, the state of ssial, as the natural, original state of human consciousness, intention, and directionality, is not something that is already in place but something to be laboriously sought, activated and cultivated. It will open our eyes, and lead us, to a divine law, which could bring true persuasion, rejuvenation, and reconciliation. It is the law of our heart, not the law of reason. The state of ssial not only exposes us to the default state of existence but also illuminates an ideal direction and empowers us to run toward it. Therefore, the society, which most politicians believe works with law and policy, according to Ham, is like “the voice of a carpenter (목수의 소리), who builds a dead house to sell it.” 56 The solidarity and inspiration derived from rational calculation and contract is too shallow and weak. Ham said, “It is foolish to think of solving political problems like untying a knot. It is like untying the heart (매듭을 풀 어서 풀자는 사람은 어리석은 사람이다. 거기 매인 마음을 푸는 것이 푸 는 것이다).” 57 No matter how persuasive and profitable a policy and a diplomatic agreement for a system, may look, if not following the law of the heart, it will not work. The Korean people’s unceasing enmity of, and distrust in, Japan, is a case in point. It shows that a relationship can start with a contract. However, it is far from what it can maximally be and what it is ought to be. A good, meaningful relationship cannot be sustained simply by an agreement. It demands an exchange of hearts between parties. Over the Korean people’s persistent demand of, the acknowledgement of the sexual slavery against comfort women during the World War II, and the apology for the war crime, the Japanese government has long argued that it indeed has already apologized. Japan did apologize in its agreement with the Korean administration of Park Geun-Hye (박근혜) in 2015 that was supposed to finally and irreversibly settle the dispute. The Japanese government admitted its military involvement in procuring comfort women for its soldiers, and signed an agreement to establish a fund of about 9 million dollars to recompense the 46 South Korean comfort women alive. However, the agreement has not made the Korean people feel better. The Park administration did not consult with the comfort women for the agreement and, according to Ryall, it “failed to do more to wring an apology out of Tokyo.” 58 Most Korean activist groups for comfort women opposed the deal; protestors took to the street, putting up another comfort woman statue in the Japanese consulate in Pusan. A Buddhist monk set himself on fire to protest the unacceptable agreement. Although the agreement does include the two crucial elements for reconciliation, acknowledgement and indemnity, it was

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missing the more fundamental element, which is veracity and sincerity. Frequent blunt rants thrown by high ranking government officials and top party members have diluted the alleged intention of the agreement, reconciliation. Sakurada Yoshitaka, a member of the ruling LDP, enraged the Koreans earlier in January with his statement that “the comfort women were prostitutes by occupation and that people have been heavily misled by propaganda work treating them as if they were victims.” 59 Takashi Shinozuka, Consul General in Atlanta, denied the coercive nature of the recruitment. 60 When political leaders of both countries made the deal, following the due process of international law, they put themselves in a contractarian state of nature in which they attempted a utilitarian analysis of the situation and a rational calculation for a remedy. They, however, missed the law of the heart and mind: the law of ssial that should precede and underlie every logical and common sense: the law that commands us to respect the dignity of all lives: the law that commands us to treat people as ends: the law that unleashes the power of the powerless and the voice of the voiceless, to build a moral relation and community. It is the divine law and principle into which the state of ssial ushers us, to have true empathy toward the most vulnerable. This law will be discussed in the separate section on the ssial. Another difference is the type of community. The mode of the community that the contractarians envisioned with their analysis of human nature and relations was primarily geographical and political. Their community was based on, and operates with, concerns about material conditions particularly in a defensive mindset. However, the community that Ham was envisioning with his ssial philosophy was a community of consciousness and value. It did not demand a territory or a contract. Nor did it require an official membership. It is a community, which, is formed, and remain, in our collective consciousness, but has a substantial power to impact our life. The contractarian vision of community was a natural response to the demand of their time. People from the 17th century onward have been, indeed, going through, in their consciousness, the boundary-drawing stage in establishing their identity, ensuring their security, and getting their sense of community. However, people of the 21st century are experiencing a backlash of the traditional sense of community. The territorial sense of community has, without a doubt, brought them a feeling of security at first but accompanied the shadow of wariness about others and surroundings. The drawn boundary in the political arena not only clarifies and enhances the identity of the members but also labels, stigmatizes, or demonizes people outside the boundary, as nam (남, the other). The Korean word, nam, is a person to whom we are indifferent at best and against whom we keep guard at worst. It makes sense because the nam does not share one’s identity, which is formed primarily out of boundaries: boundaries of shared profits, shared political objectives and shared space and genealogy, etc.

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Ham’s writings criticize this superficial understanding of community. A boundary established by cohabitation, contract, or coercion can create a sense of community particularly when members’ identity, realm of interaction, and expansive desire, are confined to a limited physical space. It becomes problematic, however, when people’s consciousness, and level of, and desire for, interaction, go beyond the physical boundary, which is a salient phenomenon of the highly wired, smart community of the 21st century. We care about more than our survival. We care about more than our country. We care about more than our species. We do not know, however, how to make sense of this transcendent, transnational, trans-species concerns and desires in the traditional sense of community inherited from the evolution of our material civilization. Ham’s notion of ssial effectively responds to this new demand; his response is more persuasive than that of contractarians particularly when the notion of community demands more non-physical and non-geographical elements. The true sense of community is more of idea than of residency or physical proximity. The transportation and digital revolution is accelerating, more than ever, the liberation of our sense of community from the geographical and institutional confinements. This idea is confirmed by the comprehensive definition, by McMillan & Chavis, that “sense of community is a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that member’s needs will be met through their commitment to be together.” 61 They argue that the sense of community is formed by four elements: membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. All of these elements go beyond a physical connection and boundary. Membership is “the feeling of belonging or of sharing a sense of personal relatedness.” Influence is a power to “make a difference to a group.” Integration and fulfillment of needs refers to the feeling felt when one’s needs are met by other members. Shared emotional connection occurs when members share common space, time, memories, and experiences. Physical proximity and institutional boundary are necessary but not sufficient for those elements. Ham would argue that the starting point of the place where all of the four elements are existent in a maximal degree would be the state of ssial rather than the state of nature. The state of nature in which we are normally in either a Lockean defensive mode or a Hobbesian preemptive strike mode would be able to offer the rational basis of the community meeting our physical needs, but it would not be able to explain the intangible process through which we come to have a shared identity, values, and even consciousness, with other members, in creating and prospering a community. The contractarian state of nature sets a mode of competition or race and offers only strategies geared to obtain maximized political benefits and maintain the status-quo. It does not contain

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any genuine intention and capability to deal with a larger and deeper sense of community existing in our thought, feeling, belief, and passion. Ham’s state of ssial is, however, a psychological and spiritual state, which produces a particular quality of consciousness. It is Ham’s notion of the state of nature in which our, perception of, and attitude toward, others and the world, and our motivation for a community, start. While the contractarian state of nature presents equality and reason for communal life by placing rational humans in the political game of fairness, Ham’s state of ssial does it by placing humans in a metaphysical state in which political mind has not been generated yet. He asks us to return to the original state of human consciousness, which is the consciousness of hana (하나, one or unity). The consciousness of hana is not a political consciousness. It is not a mental state either fostered only by hermitic religiosity. It is the primordial feeling of life and its ubiquity. It is the awareness that every life is divine and the divine purpose is in every life. 62 It is the awareness in which separated, distanced individuality in our understanding of others is dissolved and, instead, individuality mirroring and embracing, within itself, the whole, takes lead. The state of ssial reminds people of their divine, universal origin. Every human is a ssial before he or she is artificially categorized and labeled. We are connected and communicated in a deeper level: the level of consciousness. Therefore, the community that Ham envisioned through the paradigm of ssial is the chŏnch’ejŏk community (전체적 공동체, the community of the whole). The chŏnch’ejŏk community is possible only through the transformation of our awareness: the awareness of our divine, universal origin. Ham said, “Chŏnch’e (전체, the whole) is another name of God.” It is the true foundation of the individual and the true source of every living being. It is the community whose individuals’ life lines are connected with God. On the other hand, danche (단체, organizational community), which Ham wanted to distinguish from chŏnch’e, is a community that the contractarians might have envisioned. It is the community constituted by individuals seeking right and liberty. These contractarian individuals cannot help but, eventually, be divisive because their basis of liberty and right necessarily leads them to draw a boundary. Whether intended or unintended, the expressions of my right and my liberty contain a nuance to position others as a potential competitor or threat. This foundation is not strong. The community can last only as long as the individuals’ right and liberty, which are often highly subjective, are guaranteed. Chaos always lurks behind the scene. Ham argues that the community built in the state of ssial is strong because it is rooted and fostered within our consciousness and sense of self. He believes that to live as an individual is to live in a c hŏnch’e (the whole). The c hŏnch’e can be a family, a nation, heaven, or God. He said, “Where is c hŏnch’e? It is within us. The country is neither on the land nor in the air. It is within us. The country is the min. 63 The

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min is I.” 64 Ham strongly believed that the community anchored in the deep layer of our consciousness would not easily drifted into a division and a chaos. This mode of community rooted in consciousness and the heart and mind is naturally at odds with nationalism, statism, and its ensuing feeling of chauvinism. It offers a rationale for a larger human community: cosmopolitan community. Since the solidarity from the state of ssial comes from strong emotional connection and shared belief, our community does not have to be confined by a territory. Our desire and goal, whether political, economic, or ethical, do not have to be pursued only by a community of geography and contract because we live in another layer of the world, called cyberspace, in which thoughts are effectively shared via SMS, money electronically transferred, and political expressions instantly delivered through computer networks such as cyber-protest. We travel faster than ever before, continuing to innovate our transportation technologies. This highly wired and interconnected world is making the traditional mode of community outdated. Thinking globally is, not any more, a philosopher’s imagined dream. We do think and act globally on many issues such as human rights, democracy, global poverty, terrorism, and environment. Ham’s notion of ssial addresses the underestimated element of community, which is the element of emotion, consciousness, and belief. It also provides a foundation for larger non-institutional cosmopolitan community. The last difference is their thoughts on the purpose of politics derived from the conceptual device of the state of nature. For the contractarians, politics is a human activity to check, control, and dominate power to secure right and liberty. For Ham, politics is a manifestation or expression of our transcendent nature, which is the feeling, desire, and capacity to be able to think and go beyond the existing limit. It is linked directly to our spirituality. This transcendent nature is an expression by our ontological drive unfolded into two different dimensions: horizontal and vertical. The vertical dimension is the dimension in which our transcendent nature becomes deepened and transformed into a spiritual understanding and desire because, according to Ham, humans are “not the being that creeps over the ground but ascends to heaven.” 65 In the meantime, the horizontal dimension is the dimension in which we are prompted to enter and expand our social relations. Ham said: 정치적 이상은 평이다. 정은 정야라. 정政은 바르게 하자는 것이요, 치治 는 본래 어떤 물의 이름이다. 물은 평해지잔 것, 다스림은 평하게 함이다. 천하를 다스린다는 것은 넓은 천하에 아무 들쑥날쑥, 우불꾸불 없이 고르 고 단순하게 하는 것이다. 66 The ideal of politics (jeongchi, 정치, 政治) is to level things (pyeong, 평, 平). Jeong (政)as in jeong ya (정야, 正也) is to make things even and right. Chi (치, 治) refers to the name of a water. Water is meant to be even. (Likewise)

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To rule is to make things even. To rule the world is to level and simplify things so that they are not bumpy and jagged.

Therefore, politics is intended to rule the horizon; the horizon of every day human affairs in the physical dimension. Put differently, it is intended to establish justice and fairness in our life. These two dimensions are proportional to each other. With this nature, Ham called humans ipchejeok in’gan (입체적 인간, stereoscopic humans). Differing from animals, the human beings are adaptive and stereoscopic. In the World History from the Viewpoint of Meaning (뜻으로 본 세계역사), Ham talked about how humans react differently than animals to the environment. He said that animals like bees react mechanically to the environment, driven by instinct while human beings act stereoscopically. 67 We humans beings have multiple dimensions. As our spirituality becomes mature, our political relation and community becomes deepened and enlarged respectively. Spirituality here means the capability to be able to think of the ultimate source, power, purpose, and destination of life and the capability to place oneself in the highest possible ontological state in which the separated, distanced individual identity is transformed. Ham said, “History is to climb up the stairs of eternity (역사는 영원의 층계를 올라가는 것이다).” 68 Thus, the quality of spirituality is a barometer to assess our political capability and maturity. For example, if our spirituality is formed out of the belief in a god or a spirit of the small little village that we live in, our political imagination and the size of our community cannot be more than parochial. Polytheistic totemism was not just a consequence of the social structure and the economic mode of the ancient tribal society but rather a cause to reinforce and perpetuate the parochial social system. The ancient Jewish polytheism, which sustained the tribal society prior to the establishment of the monotheistic faith of the Mosaic period, is a good example. So is the pre-Islamic society of jahiliyya, which was based on blood-ties and clans. Ham believed that politics out of the state of ssial would reflect the quality of our spirituality and rewrite the narrative of humanity. It will ultimately break the traditional sense of community and inspire us to, hold on to, and continue to fight for, the hope of global community. Kim Kyoung Jae finds the origin of the stereoscopic humans in Yu Yŏngmo’s philosophy and argues that Ham inherited and further developed his thought. 유영모에서 인간의 자기실현은 철저히 수직적 방향에로의 정신적 초연 (超然)과 역사적 존재로부터의 초탈(超脫)을 통해서 ‘얼나’로서 자기를 완전 실현하는데 두었다. 함석헌은 유영모에게서 유교적 인간형의 자기 완성으로서의 상향적 초월정신을 전수받으면서도, 역사학도로서 기초훈 련을 받을 때 얻은 지구사, 문명흥망사, 생물진화사를 철저하게 훈련받은 자로서, 인간존재의 수평적 차원 곧 ‘역사적 · 문화적· 정치사회적 존재 자’로서 ‘씨알’의 본질을 더 많이 강조하게 되었다. 69

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Chapter 4 To Yu Yŏngmo, the self-realization of the human is thoroughly on the spiritual transcendence in vertical direction and on the ontological fulfillment as the spirit-self (얼나) through the transcendence from the historical self. While inheriting from Yu Yŏngmo the idea of the upward, transcendent spirit as the self-realization of the Confucian humanity, Ham Sok Hon, as a historian, who had been trained thoroughly by the history of earth, the rise and fall of civilizations, and biological evolution, emphasized more the essence of the ssial as the historical, cultural, and politico-social being.

Ham said on the stereoscopic relationship between politics and religion as follows: 그것은 정신과 육체의 관계, 종교와 정치와의 관계는 평면적으로 나란히 있는 것이 아니요 계단적으로 입체적으로 혹은 유기적으로 되어 있는 것 이기 때문에 아무 충돌이 없을 뿐 아니라 도리어 산 통일을 가져 둘이다 살게 된다. 비유하면 나무의 뿌리와 줄기와 같다. 잘못은 늘 그것을 평면 에 놓고 서로 다투려 하는데서 나온다. 70 Since the relationship between the mind/spirit and the body and between religion and politics is not two-dimensional but stereoscopic, like in steps, and organic, there is no conflict but coexistence. Figuratively speaking, they are like roots and stalks. The problem begins when they are placed in the same dimension and jostle with each other.

Ham tried to put politics back to the original nature. Politics is not a human activity to utilize power only to render our environment beneficial to our interests and security but to express institutionally our potential to think and act beyond the egotistic self and community and connect peacefully with anyone within and without our boundary. NOTES 1. Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman times to the French Revolution (London: Profile, 2012), 26. 2. Frank Palmeri, State of Nature, Stages of Society: Enlightenment Conjectural History and Modern Social Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 3. Daniel Chernilo, The Natural Law Foundations of Modern Social Theory, A Quest for Universalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 4. 4. William A. Edmundson, “Politics in a State of Nature,” Ratio Juris 26, no. 2 (2013): 149–86, 150. 5. David Boucher and P. J. Kelly, Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 192. 6. The Prince, XVII, 96, quoted in Boucher and Kelly, 177. 7. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Penguin Classics, 1981), 186. 8. Boucher and Kelly, 172. 9. See Leviathan, chapter 14, Of the First and Second Natural Laws and of Contracts. “Renouncing a right . . .” in Daniel Kolak, The Longman Library of Primary Sources in Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2016). 10. James H. Read, “Thomas Hobbes: Power in the State of Nature, Power in Civil Society,” Polity 23, no. 4 (1991): 505–25, doi:10.2307/3235060.

State of Nature

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11. Boucher and Kelly, 197. 12. Chernilo, 99. 13. Leviathan (1981), Ch. 13, 185. 14. Chernilo, 20. 15. Richard Aaron, John Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 273. 16. Harold Dwight, Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: Meridian Books, 1960). 17. John Locke, Ian Shapiro, and John Dunn, Two Treatises of Government, and; A Letter Concerning Toleration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 103. Second Treaties hereafter. 18. Richard Ashcraft, “Locke’s State of Nature: Historical Fact or Moral Fiction?” American Political Science Review 62, no. 3 (1968): 898–915, 905, doi:10.2307/1953439. 19. Sungmoon Kim, “Self-Transformation and Civil Society: Lockean vs. Confucian,” ed. Jon D. Carlson and Russell Arben Fox, The State of Nature in Comparative Poltical Thought: Western and Non-Western Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 11. 20. Second Treaties, 102. 21. Second Treatise, 101. 22. Ibid. 23. Second Treaties, 136. 24. Second Treatise, quoted in Boucher and Kelly (2005), 210. 25. Second Treatise, 105. 26. Ashcraft, 901. 27. Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 31. 28. “Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature.” Second Treaties of Government, 2. 19. 29. Geraint Parry, John Locke, VIII (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), 42. 30. Boucher and Kelly, 211. 31. Sungmoon Kim, “Self-Transformation and Civil Society: Lockean vs. Confucian,” in The State of Nature in Contemporary Political Thought, ed. Jon D. Carlson and Russell Arben Fox, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 25. 32. Kim (2014), 22. 33. Mencius, 7B:37, quoted in Sungmoon Kim, 24. “The only people who pass my house by without causing me regret are perhaps the village worthy. . . . The village worth is the enemy of virtue . . . I dislike what is specious. I dislike weeds for fear they might be confused with the rice plant; I dislike flattery for fear it might be confused with what is right; I dislike glibness for fear it might be confused with the truthful; I dislike the music of Zheng for fear it might be confused with vermilion; I dislike the village worthy for fear he might be confused with the virtuous.” 34. Kim (2014), 24. 35. W. Blake Odgers, “A Defense of Rousseau’s Theory of the Social Contract,” Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation 16, no. 2 (1916): 322–32, 325. 36. Rousseau and Jean-Jacques, “Emile,” Gutenberg, December 3, 2017, accessed July 12, 2019, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5427/pg5427-images.html. 37. Chernilo, 111. 38. David Boucher & Paul Kelly, 270. 39. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, In the Social Contract and Discourses (London: Everyman, 1993), 59. 40. Boucher and Kelly, 271. 41. Blake Odgers, “A Defense of Rousseau’s Theory of the Social Contract,” Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation 16, no. 2 (1916): 322–32, 328. 42. Christopher Peckover, “Realizing the Natural Self: Rousseau and the Current System of Education,” Philosophical Studies in Education 43, (2012): 84–94, 86. 43. Sok Hon Ham, “씨알의 의미와 민중운동” (The Meaning of Ssial and the Minjung Movement, hearafter the Meaning of Ssial), Collection, 140. “루소가 자연이라 그랬는데 씨 알이란 다른거 아니고 자연이지요.” “문명은 결국은 자연에서 멀어가자는 방향이고 (참

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문명이 그럴리 없겠지만) 그러니까 지금은 사랑믜 큰 잘못이 자연을 잊어버리고 자연에 반항한건데, 그게 근본의 절대적인 의지라 할까 그게 곧 자연인데, 자연속에 있는건데 노 자도 그 사상이고, 인도의 힌두이즘도 그 사상이고. . . .” 44. Rousseau, the Social Contract, Chapter III, Whether the General Will is Fallible. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Boucher & Kelly, 269. 48. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles Edwyn Vaughan, The Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 44. “Les engagemens qui nous lient au corps social ne sont obligatoires que parce qu’ils sont mutuels, et leur nature est telle qu’en les remplissant on ne peut travailler pour autruisans travailler aussi pour soi.” 49. E. Troeltsch, “The Ideas of Natural Law and Humanity,” in Gierke, O., Natural Law and the Theory of Society: 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), quoted in Chernilo, 80. 50. Sok Hon Ham, “씨알의 소리 통권 6” (Voice of the People, hereafter Voice), Collection, 9. 51. Sok Hon Ham, “뜻으로 본 세계 역사” (A World History from the Viewpoint of Meaning, hereafter World History), Collection, 95. 52. “씨알의 의미와 민중운동 (The Meaning of Ssial and the Minjung Movement),” Collection, 268. 53. Douglas Kries, “Thomas Aquinas and the Politics of Moses,” The Review of Politics 52, no. 1 (1990): 85–87, doi:10.1017/s0034670500048282. 54. Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke and Equality: Christian Foundations of Locke’s Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 55. Voice 6, 353. 56. Ibid., 9. 57. Sok Hon Ham, “새 시대의 전망” (Prospect of a New Era), Collection, 73. 58. Deutsche Welle, “Is the Japan-South Korea ‘Comfort Women’ Deal Falling Apart?: DW: 09.01.2017,” DW.COM, accessed July 12, 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-japansouth-korea-comfort-women-deal-falling-apart/a-37062056. 59. Scott Snyder, “The Japan-Korea Comfort Women Deal: This Is Only The Beginning,” Forbes, February 2, 2016, accessed July 12, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottasnyder/ 2016/02/01/the-japan-korea-comfort-women-deal-this-is-only-the-beginning/#7a9a48c81386. 60. Dyana Bagby, “Japan Consul General’s ‘Comfort Women’ Comments Trigger International Criticism,” Reporter Newspapers, June 28, 2017, accessed July 12, 2019, http://www. reporternewspapers.net/2017/06/27/japan-consul-generals-comfort-women-comments-triggerinternational-criticism/. 61. David W. Mcmillan and David M. Chavis, “Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory,” Journal of Community Psychology 14, no. 1 (1986): 9, doi:10.1002/15206629(198601)14:13.0.co;2-i. 62. Kyoung Jae Kim, “함석헌의 씨알 사상에서 탈국가주의적 평화 공동체,” Ssialsori.net, accessed July 12, 2019, http://ssialsori.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=0402&wr_id=87& page=2. 63. 민, 民, people. 64. Sok Hon Ham, Chŏjakchip 2, 49. “그 전체는 실제로는 어디 있느냐 하면 내게 곧 자 아에 있다. 나라는 땅에 있지 않고, 허공에 있지 않고, 내게 있다. 나라는 민이요, 민은 나 다.” 65. Sok Hon Ham, “새 시대의 전망” (Prospect of a New Era, hereafter New Era), Collection, 82. “지면에서 뻗어나간 인간이 아니요, 위로, 하늘로 올라가잔 인간이다.” 66. Ibid. 67. World History, 125. 68. Spiritual History of Korea, 70. 69. Kyoung Jae Kim, “함석헌의 씨알 사상에서 탈국가주의적 평화 공동체,” Ssialsori.net, accessed July 12, 2019, http://ssialsori.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=0402&wr_id=87& page=2 . 70. 생각하는 백성이라야 산다 (Only Those Who Think Survive), Collection, 181.

Chapter Five

In’gan, Ssial, and Saengmyeong (인 인간 human, 씨알 ssial, 생명 life)

While the contractarians’ notions of the state of nature deal mainly with our rational assessment of the physical conditions regarding securing power, Ham’s notion emphasizes more deontological aspects of the issue. There is a higher force, principle, or law behind the scene, which brings us to the political arena and engages us in various social relations. According to Ham, the hidden principle is not simply about material conditions or psychological factors. It is the metaphysical truth manifesting in both the microcosmic and macrocosmic dimensions of life. To identify further this fundamental drive for politics in Ham’s literature, it is necessary to investigate his thoughts about the human as the political agent. The human understood in Ham’s political discussion need to be dealt with particularly by three different focuses: in’gan, ssial, and saengmyeong. While in’gan was used when referred primarily to the human as a species distinctive from animals, ssial and saengmyeong were used interchangeably when referred to the enlightened human. All of these concepts are important to understand what Ham thought about the cognitive and emotional grounding of the human’s primordial political acts because, whenever talking about politics, Ham would frequently bring out the question of human nature. With the theory of in’gan, Ham highlights the ontologically multidimensional aspects of the human as a species. With the theory of ssial, Ham found the fundamental, moral ground of human dignity, interaction, and community particularly in socio-political and historical contexts and narratives. With the theory of saengmyeong, Ham emphasizes the metaphysical significance of life in understanding the human. In the understanding of saengmyeong, the human is more than a biological and sociological entity. Even the distinctive identity as a species becomes irrelevant. All living beings and even the 49

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surrounding nature and the universe itself are considered as a single significant whole. Ham would use this concept particularly when he thought it would be more appropriate to interpret human affairs in the metaphysical language than in the ordinary language. IN’GANNON (인간론, ANTHOPOLOGY) In both Queen of Suffering: Spiritual History of Korea and the World History from the Viewpoint of Meaning (뜻으로 본 한국 역사 and 뜻으로 본 세계 역사), Ham talks about in’gan to explain the foundation of civilization and its evolutionary process. According to Ham, the in’gan has multidimensional capabilities, which other species do not have. In addition to the biological drives and the physical capabilities, the in’gan has the capability of reason and supra-reason. It means that the humans have not only a higher level of problem-solving skills than other species but also the transcendent ability to deepen, control, and grow the utility of reason. Human reasoning goes beyond the animalistic cognitive calculation or processing. It starts from the basic instrumental reasoning assessing and judging the sensory phenomena yet develops into axiological functioning in engaging in complex human relations and affairs. The humans do not just react to the environment but take creative processes to better adapt to and go beyond the environment. Ham characterizes the in’gan as the three-dimensional being (삼층적 구조 를 지닌 존재). Three dimensions refer to the saengmulchŏk (생물적, biological), in’ganjŏk (인간적, human), and ch’oin’ganjŏk (초인간적, supra-human) capabilities. With these dimensional capabilities, the humans evolve ceaselessly. With the saengmulchŏk capabilities, including nature (본성), animal instinct (동물적 감각), egotistic urge (이기적 충동), the humans have survived various challenges from nature. With the in’ganjŏk capabilities, the humans actively utilize reason to build civilized human relations and the state. With the ch’oin’ganjŏk capabilities, the humans grow into the spiritual being (정신적 인간). 1 These capabilities also represent three different epochs. While the first epoch dominated by the biological life was the time when animal instinct struggled with reason, the second epoch is the time when reason conflicts with reason. The last epoch is the time when the supra-reason, spirituality, inspires and leads our civilization. With his in’gannon, Ham believed that the humans are an evolving being not in the Darwinian sense anchored in the principle of the survival of the fittest but in the Aristotelian sense that actuality, which is the ssial, the divine force, for Ham’s case, hidden behind the stories of civilizations, leads the manifestation process of potentiality. Ham called this growing nature chŏngshinhwaŭi charam (정신화의 자람, growth of spiritualization). It means that as our civilization changes and grows, our

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spirituality would grow as well to the level that takes the universe as a single significant whole. This growth will transform the character of our civilization from the individual, divisive, and selfish to the communal, collaborative, and altruistic. In particular, three different characteristics are noteworthy in Ham’s in’gannon as a preliminary or preparatory understanding of ssial and saengmyeong. All of these characteristics not only show the unique aspects of the humans but also make us anticipate the further ontological stage, the ssial. First, the in’gan are social beings. We have stronger impulse to connect to fellow humans than other species. This urge is not survival instinct. It is the natural feeling that the individual has to fulfill the perfection of ones’ being so that he or she can feel a higher sense of pleasure. Ham said, “사교는 사람 의 본성이다 (Socializing is human nature) “ and “물체 사이에도 인력이 있는 것같이 인격 사이에도 서로 끄는 힘이 있다 (Just as there is gravitation between objects, there is gravitation between characters).” 2 Ham finds this gravitation in a different desire from the biological. The encounter between individual humans produced p’ungsok (풍속, custom) and yeŭi (예의, etiquette) through which they interact with each other intelligently, constructively, and meaningfully. Not only does this encounter yield positive outcomes but also create tension, jealousy, hatred, pride, and conflict. 3 It is this paradoxical dynamic that builds the advanced way of living, which is the civilization. Second, the in’gan are hermeneutical and historical beings. Differing from animals, the humans can see more than what the world can offer for their biological urge and survival. To their eyes, the nature and the world are not a mechanical entity run only by the law of physics. The humans have the ability to see the enduring, unmovable, and unchangeable things in the constantly evolving and transforming world and to discover new meanings of the old. In other words, they observe and utilize the world for their physical necessities. They also interpret and reflect on it for the different kind of search: the inner search for ontological fulfillment. This point on this historical aspect of in’gan can be found in Ham’s criticism of the inordinately secular interpretation of history. 다음 우리의 말하는 역사는 정신적, 해석적인 역사다. 역사는 그 서술의 주안점을 사실 위에 두느냐 또는 그 사실을 해석하는 설명 위에 두느냐 하는 데 따라 기술과 해석의 두 가지 역사가 있을 수 있다. 사실에 충실하 려 하는 사가는 인류의 생활에 대할 때 자연과 학자가 그 연구의 대상에 대하는 것과 같은 태도로써 한다. 저는 그것을 하나의 현상의 계열로 알 고 그 사이에 들어 있는 인과의 관계를 밝히려 한다. 이 역사서술의 방법 은 사실 자연과학의 발달에 유발되었다 . . . 그러나 동시에 큰 죄를 범한 것이 있으니 곧 역사에서 뜻을 빼버린 것이다 . . . 과학적 방법은 원래 의 미 해석적이었던 역사에서 까지 그것을 빼앗아 버렸다. 그러나 그 때문에 인류가 얻은 것은 무엇이냐하면 오늘날에 보는듯한 정신적 혼란이다. 4

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Chapter 5 The history that I’m talking about is the spiritual, hermeneutical history. There can be two different types of history: the descriptive and the interpretative history, depending on whether it is focused on facts or explanation about them. The descriptive historian approaches to the human affairs in the way that the natural scientists do to their research subjects. Taking them as a phenomenon, he tries to discover the causality. This descriptive approach to history, in fact, derived from the development of natural science . . . however, there is a sin that this approach has committed, which is to remove ttŭt (뜻, meaning). . . . Scientific methodology has eliminated it (ttŭt) from history, which is originally interpretative (meaning-drawing). Therefore, the consequence that we are facing is spiritual chaos (정신적 혼란), as we can see.

The spiritual chaos refers here to the situation that the humans do not fully take advantage of what the world can offer because of the lack of the understanding and acknowledgement of our meaning-making and hermeneutical nature. The in’gan do experience the world as the seamless chain of the causality of physical phenomena. However, they do not remain simply as recipient or hearer. The in’gan engage actively in the constantly changing and moving world as interpreter and speaker. As the interpreter, the in’gan reread the seemingly accidental and chaotic chains of natural events in a constructive way. As the speaker, they create or discover meaningful narratives to makes sense of everything to place themselves in and connect themselves to a larger world. For those who miss this distinctive aspect of the in’gan, Ham used an interesting metaphor. He described them as a person starving in a food depot. As Bertrand Russell points out, the humans need the food for both mind and body. The world is full of food for the mind. The humans cannot see it because of their closed-mindedness or too materialistic view. Therefore, the humans are the being growing by writing, understanding, internalizing, and actualizing history. They are from and within history. According to Ham, Jesus’ self-identification with the word of God can be the representative example for this special nature. Jesus believed that his words, deeds, and life were not from his physical self but from the one that had sent him. The sender was God and history. 예수는 자기 말은 자기가 하는 것이 아니요, 자기를 보내신 이가 하는 것 이라고 하였다. 그 보내신 이란 보통 말로 하면 역사요, 종교적인 말로 하 면 하나님이다. 하나님의 아들이라. 5 Jesus said that his words were spoken not by himself but by the one that had sent him. In the ordinary language, it means history. In the religious language, it is God, the Son of God.

The in’gan understanding themselves as historical beings view the world and all human affairs in a meaningful storytelling. They see the story unfolded

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and find the right place for their life. Since the story has been being written yet not completed, the in’gan find themselves as an active writer for the story to be unfolded. The story to be told is not just a series of events that the in’gan will experience but the divine principle coupled with moral imperatives. Those who can read the world as and in history should be able to hear the moral calling contained in various human narratives. The third, the in’gan is the spiritual being. The humans are subject to evolution. However, the power that leads the evolution is God, the divine. It means that we, humans, came from the divine, and are destined to return to God. That is where our history is moving toward. Ham said: 지음을 받은 만물이 세상에 있는 한 그는 어두움이다. 그러므로 생명은 땅에 있으면서도 땅에서 떠나려 애쓰지 않으면 안 된다. 두개의 영이 가 슴에 들어 있어 싸우는 것은 괴테만이 아니요, 만물이다. As long as remaining only in this world, he (all creation) is the darkness. Therefore, while living on earth, saengmyeong (생명, life) must try to leave it. The struggle between these two spirits is not only in the life of Goethe but also all creation. 저는 저의 이성 이상이다 저는 자신의 헐떡이는 심장 바닥에는 무슨 괴물 이 엎디어 있는지를 모르는 것이다. 6 He (in’gan) is more than reason. He is not aware of what monster is crouching on the bottom of his racing heart.

History is a series of narratives talking about humans returning to the original source of life. It points to the divine source and destination. History is written as the in’gan, the spiritual being, contact or collide with the natural world. It is like sparks flying up. What is more important about this historical nature is the opportunity for the in’gan to realize their limits. We find ourselves weak, contradictory, and sometimes evil. However, it is not the dead-end. The limits that we experience in history allow us to look above. Ham said, “Wherever life is, there is contradiction. Wherever contradiction is, there is an altar.” 7 It means that where we face our limits can we see our divine potential. They are not only obstacles but also catalysts to leap from who we are to who we can be and who we ought to be. THE SSIAL (씨알) The term, ssial, was coined by Yu Young-Mo, who was Ham’s most significant mentor, after the Korean War, at a public lecture in YWCA. He was expounding a maxim of the Great Learning (大學之道在明明德在親(新)民 在止於至善). 8 This term came from his translation of ch’inmin (친민, 親民) with native Korean words, ssial ŏboem (씨알어뵘). 9 The tumultuous histori-

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cal experiences, particularly the Japanese colonialism, made Yu revisit the general Korean terms for the people and the masses such as min and paeksŏng and conclude that they would not be suitable to his philosophical argument for people as an active agent for social change and political liberation. 10 The concept of min premises a permanent, hierarchical or patron-client relationship between the ruler and the ruled, perpetuating the masses’ defeatism. Its Chinese compound word, mincho, was too weak a term to deliver the meaning of chŏhangŭisik (저항의식, the consciousness of resistance). 11 The concept of paeksŏng suffered the similar problems. It was used primarily in the context of feudalism in which people are, in contrast to Ham’s later concept of chŭkchajŏk minjung (즉자적 민중, 卽自的, people in-themselves), 12 incapable of influencing or transforming their environment and society. Yu believed that the Korean word, ssial, would represent better the creative, historic role of the masses than other common words of Chinese origin. Ham inherited Yu’s philosophy of ssial and used it more consistently and critically in his literature. Kim Kyoung Jae praised Ham’s full-scale utilization of the term as a historic event, which the minjung came to have their own name for the first time. 13 Although the ssial can be understood and utilized in a variety of philosophical and political subjects, this section will focus specifically on its potential as a metaphysical ground of cosmopolitanism. The mission statement on the back of the early issues of Ham’s iconic literary magazine, Voice of the People (씨알의 소리) contains the five key points of his ssial philosophy. 우리의 내세우는 것 1. 씨알의 소리는 순수하게 씨알 자신의 힘으로 하는 자기 교육의 기 구입니다. 2. 씨알은 하나의 세계를 믿고 그 실현을 위해 세계의 모든 씨알과 손을 잡기를 힘씁니다. 3. 씨알의 소리는 어떤 종교, 종파에도 속해 있지 않습니다. 4. 씨알을 소리는 어떤 정치 세력과도 관계가 없읍니다. 5. 씨알은 어떤 형태의 권력 숭배도 반대합니다. 6. 씨알은 스스로가 역사의 주체인 것을 믿고, 그 자람과 활동을 방 해하는 모든 악과 싸우는 것을 제 사명으로 압니다. 7. 씨알의 소리는 같이 살기 운동을 펴 나가려고 힘씁니다. 8. 씨알은 비폭력을 그 사상과 행동의 원리로 삼습니다. 14 1. Voice of the People (씨알의 소리) is the ssial’s genuine and selfcreating educational instrument.

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2. The ssial believe in one world and try to cooperate with all other ssials around the world to realize it. 3. Voice of the People is not affiliated with any religion and denomination. 4. Voice of the People is not associated with any political power. 5. The ssial resist any type of power worship. 6. The ssial believe in themselves as historical actor and are called to fight all evils hampering their growth and activities. 7. Voice of the People promotes the movement to live together. 8. Non-violence is the principle of the thoughts and acts of the ssial. First, as discussed in the previous chapter on the state of nature, the ssial is the most basic ontological unit for Ham. Just as implied in the character, 민 (people, 民), the ssial represents the uncontaminated, original state of being. The Chinese word, min, consists of two composing characters: female (계집 녀, 女) and mother (어미모, 母). Ham interpreted it as the bare human (맨사 람) to which nothing unnatural has been added. The ssial is the person as it originally is. It is “그저 어머니가 낳은 사람 (a simple person born of a mother).” 15 This concept reflects better what Ham was trying to articulate for the authentic role of the people in history than other similar words. For instance, while kungmin (국민, citizens) premises statism, inmin (인민, people) brings the feeling of communism. 16 The ssial, in contrast, represents the original ontological state of the humans. Ham considered the ssial as a word, which had not been contaminated by “the existing ideology and thoughts (현 존하는 이념과 사상).” 17 He said, “The ssial is the bottom and the end…is deeper than the root (뿌리).” 18 It is the most natural human. Ham articulates it as follows: 민중이 뭐냐? 씨알이 뭐냐? 곧 나다. 나대로 있는 사람이다. 모든 옷을 벗 은 사람, 곧 알 사람이다. 알은 실(實), 참이다. 임금도, 대통령도, 장관도, 학자도, 목사도, 신부도, 군인도, 관리도, 문사도, 장사꾼도, 죄수도, 다 알 은 아니다. 실재는 아니다. 19 What is the minjung? What is the ssial? It is myself. It is the self as I originally am: the person who has taken off all the clothes, so called, the person of al (알, seed). Al is the seed and the truth. The king, president, minister, scholar, pastor, priest, soldier, official, writer, businessman, prisoner, and all are not the seed nor the substance.

The ssial refers to the natural state in which all humans considered equal. It is the first conceptual label that we can think of in defining ourselves. The idea of seed nuanced in the ssial levels out different expressions and manifestations of life. Bumps on the surface of human narratives such as different levels of power and status are flattened to retrieve the original, divine nature.

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Not only does this notion of seed point to the common origin of our lives but it also makes us envision the same, sublime destination: the destination in which we all humans are united in empathy to each other and passion for the larger ontological fulfillment. In other words, the goal of universal belonging is implied in the ssial as the fundamental ontological unit. The concept of ssial is the device that Ham created by translating, into the language of minjung, his internalized experience of the farmer in which the metaphysical notion of harmony stands out the most. 참 농사꾼은 굶어 죽어도 ｢종지갓은 베고 죽는다｣고 우리 마을에선 표본 적인 농부였던 우리 할아버지 한데 들었습니다. 농사는 나만이 하는 농사 입니까? 밥은 나만이 먹는 밥입니까? 천하 사람이 영원히 먹을 밥입니 다. 20 I heard from my grandfather, an exemplary farmer in my village, that if one is a true farmer, he would still cut a bundle of leaf mustard even at the moment he dies. Am I the only one that farms? Am I the only one that eats the meal? It is the meal that all humans will eat.

Second, according to Ham, the nature of ssial is something that has been lost. It has been forgotten and contaminated. Therefore, Ham’s ssial philosophy is a project to recover this lost nature. It is intended to find divinity in life so that we can have a stronger empathy to other humans and connect to them in as large a community as possible. Since Ham was a Christian trained with biblical studies, his diagnosis of the ontological defilement came from the Christian understanding of original sin. He personally found the biblical narrative of Adam and Eve very effective in articulating the fundamental problem of life. As Pope John Paul II elucidates on the theological significance of original nakedness, the first sin snatched the original identity and the most important ontological capability away from us. In Genesis 3:10, Adam was afraid and hid himself from God. Not only was Adam ashamed of his natural body and identity but also afraid of the immanent consequences of his challenge to God: consequences of pride and greed. His new thoughts and feelings about himself and his partner altered the true meaning and purpose of life and contradicted even God’s assessment that “it was very good.” 21 As Pope Paul II notes, we lost the image of God and the divine right of “participating in the divine vision of the world and of his own humanity.” 22 The original state with the naked body represents the state of being innocent and free from sin. It means that the human beings represented by Adam and Eve are united in one flesh. 23 At the very moment when Adam and Even sinned, they tried to cover themselves, which means distancing themselves from each other. They became two separate bodies by becoming more defensive and protective for himself/herself than sharing vulnerability from their nakedness to be more intimate to each other. We were driven out of the Garden

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of Eden. We started building our own garden of Eden. We started building civilization and writing our own story. We lost the original nature, which is the ssial in Ham’s language. Ham thought that the humans at the time of Genesis knew that the divine will was running within themselves. As the humans wandered off from the Garden of Eden run by the law of saengmyeong (생명, life), their ssial nature began to be wrapped with animalistic instinct and impulses seeking mainly survival. Ham believed that life with these basic instincts was not seriously harmful. It was the moment when the ssial nature became constrained by social institutions seeking power and dominance that the humans become potential threat to each other. 그래도 그 민중이라고 하는 걸로 있을 때에는 자연적으로 하는 본능 충동 의 간단한 탈밖에 쓰는 것 없으니까 비교적 좀 쉬운데, 그 놈이 이제 개인 으로 재주나 좀 있다든지 힘깨나 있다든지 권력깨나 있다든지 하는 놈, 그런게 이제 올라와서 그게 나와가지고 원시적인 사회에 제도라는 게 생 긴단 말이야. primitive society에 고게 고대로 있는 건데, primitive society 에 있어서도 순수한 씨알의 모습을 알기는 어렵지만 그래도 비교적 오염 이 덜 되고 있는데, 고놈 중에 그 자연적으로 처음엔 부족에 있는 장로라 고 하는 사람들이 대표를 해가지고 할 때에는 느티나무 밑에 동네 사람들 모아놓고 자, 우리 어떻게 하자느냐, 그럴 때 얼마나 그대로 순수하게 됐 냐？ 그런데 그놈이 재주 있고 권력 있던 놈들이 의식적으로 해가지고 벌 써 요럭하면 된다하는 생각에 무엇을 만들기 시작을 하면서 고게 발달해 서 국가라는 게 되는데, 그렇게 해놓으면 벌써 많이 잃어버리고 말거든. 24 To live as the minjung is relatively less defective because the mask that we (as minjung) wear (the disguise that blocks the ssial nature) is the only natural instinct and impulse. The problem is when the primitive society emerges with some individuals (consciously) taking advantage of their talents, (physical) strengths, and (political) power. The primitive society is of the ancient world. Although it is not easy to find the ssial nature even in the primitive society, the humans were relatively less contaminated. Elders of tribal groups would discuss their village affairs under a zelkova tree. In general, they would do it with pure motives. However, when they began to create things with the conscious thought that they could manipulate their situations (the way they wanted), the state emerged. Then, we could not help but lose a lot of things.

Therefore, the lost aspect of the human being is our capability to understand our divine origin and to be able to get along with all that God created. According to Ham, the ssial is something to be awaken, recovered, or activated. Ham would bring a variety philosophical concepts to explain the ssial as the lost nature. 루소의 사상 얘기를 하니까 그것과 관련이 되는 얘기를 한다면 이제 이 자연이란 말 써야 될꺼야요.루소가 자연이라 그랬는데 씨알이란 다른 거 아니고 자연이지요. 문명은 결국은 자연에서 멀어가자는 방향이고 (참 문 명이그럴리가 없겠지만) 그러니까 지금은 사람의 큰 잘못이 자연을 잊어

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Chapter 5 버리고 자연에 반항하고 하는 건데, 그게 근본의 절대적인 의지라 할까 그게 곧 자연인데, 자연 속에 있는 건데, 노자도 그 사상이고 인도의 힌두 이즘도. . . . 25 When it comes to the thought of Rousseau, we have to talk about nature. Like Rousseau’s notion of nature, the ssial is none other than nature. The civilization moves farther away from nature (if the true civilization, it would not do so). In other words, the human’s biggest problem was to forget and resist nature. The fundamental, absolute will is nature, something in nature such as in the thoughts of Lao Tzu and Hinduism. . . .

Within the character, al (알,ㅇ•ㄹ), itself is the deep metaphysical thought already contained. Ham said, “「ᄋ」과 「·」은 하늘인데,「ᄋ」는 겉에 뵈는 하늘이고 「·」은 속에 있는 하늘이라 그 말입니다.” 26 Both 「ᄋ」 and 「·」 are heaven. While 「ᄋ」 is the heaven that appears, 「·」 is the heaven within oneself. It means that the ssial implies the capability and duty to connect to the world in the physical world and to be in tune with the divine law running in consciousness and spirituality. Third, the ssial is Ham’s expression of character revolution. In redefining the masses, the mijung, Ham tried to come up with a more authentic, creative, and transformative concept than the ordinary words for people. According to Lee Ho Jae, the theoretical grounding of Ham’s redefinition of the people was closer to Zhui Xi than Wang Yang Ming particularly in his interpretation of Confucian texts. Lee drew key points for the understanding of Ham’s notion of ssial from his interpretation of Taehakchanggu (대학장 구, The Great Learning in Chapters and Verses). Lee points out that Ham drew the meaning and process of the character transformation of the ssial from 日新 作新民 其命維新, which is in the middle of the longer line, 탕지 반명왈 구일신 일일신 일신 강고 주수구방 기명유신 시고군자 무소불용 기극 (湯之盤銘曰 苟日新 日日新 日新 康誥 曰 作新民 曰 周雖舊邦 其命 維新 是故 君子 無所不用其極). Lee highlights the expanding process of the transformation, which has both metaphysical and sociological implications. He argues that Ham interpreted this line to explain three different stages of character revolution. The first transformation is to renew the self. The second is to renew the ssial. The third is to renew religion (첫째 나를 새롭게 함, 둘 째 씨알을 새롭게 함, 셋째 종교를 새롭게 함이다). 27 Thus, to become the ssial is for the people to take these profound stages of character development. As a result, the movement that the ssial leads is a spiritual movement (정신 운동), which can reshape the worldview and morality to positively impact the entire humanity. Ham called this character revolution sasangŭi kyerillajŏn (사상의 게릴라전, the guerilla warfare of thought). He meant that for the whole community to positively change, the character of the individual must change first. The character is built upon sasang, which means thoughts and beliefs. The institutional unity such as political alliance

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or loyalty, based primarily on members’ rational calculations of benefits, can easily collapse. However, the solidarity built by the individuals’ awakening is hard to be broken. Ham said: 내가 몇해 전에 사상의 게릴라전을 해야 된다 한 것은 이 때문입니다. 정 규군이 아무리 크고 강해도 유격대는 못 당합니다. 정규군은 큰 기계와 조직에 의존하기 때문에 한번 깨지면 혼란에 빠지지만 유격대는 기계보 다 하나 하나가 정신에 사는 사람이기 때문에 하나를 가지고 백도 천도 당할 수 있습니다. 28 That is why I claimed a few years ago that we had to execute the guerilla warfare of thought. No matter how strong, the regular army is not match for the guerillas. While the regular army is vulnerable to chaos if the large machines and organizations on which they depend go wrong, a single guerilla can cope with hundreds or thousands of enemies because each of them lives on spirit/thought rather than machines.

This is why Ham focused more on the education for the minjung than political movement. He believed that to cultivate the character of ssial in the public intelligence and spirituality should precede any political effort. The enlightenment movement represented by the heightened level of the awareness of and moral responsibility for civility and human rights through the ssial transformation would lay a strong foundation for sustainable democracy and stable, moral political community. Ham characterized this focus on the character transformation dramatically. He compared the ssial transformation with the act “to straighten up the spiritual backbone (정신적 등뼈를 일으켜 세우는 것)” and “lay the ground of people’s conscience (국민적 양심의 자 리를 세우는 것).” 29 To have the ssial consciousness is to develop forest (nurture/cultivate one’s character) as the goal rather than to build a house so that when asked later to provide wood, we can give it away unhesitently. Thus, Ham recommended for the minjung to come out to get rid of political thoughts if people wanted to save the country. 우선은 집 지을 생각은 하지말고 순전히 기르는 것을 목적으로 삼아야 이 다음 사람이 와서 재목을 구할 때에 서슴치 않고 내줄 수 있을 것입니다. 나라를 참 건지자는 생각 있거든 우선 정치적인 생각을 깨끗이 청산하고 나서야 한다는 말입니다. 30 We first have to aim at growing (trees) instead of thinking about building a house so that when someone later asks for lumber, we will not hesitate to give it away. It means that if you want to save the country, you have to set out with no political thought.

Although this ssial movement begins in the change of one’s internal self, it naturally draws the change of other surrounding selves because the ssial view

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and approach to others, even enemies, with the eye of love and empathy. Just as the light strikes through the darkness, the spiritual enlightenment of singularity that the ssial experience is powerful enough to dissolve their hostility toward and disarm the enemy. Their moral superiority in both the principle and the actual practice makes the enemy ashamed and draws its moral conscience from hibernation: “우리는 대적일수록 그를 도덕적 가능성이 있 는 인간으로 보고 그의 속에 있는 양심을 불러일으키도록 하자는 것입 니다.” 31 The ssial is the character revolution, which awakens the powerless to become a nation, a minjung, and ultimately a citizen of the world. One of the historical examples of the ssial revolution, which Ham would frequently use in his writings is the March First Movement. 32 3.1운동은 민족주의와 민주주의의 경계선에 섭니다. 그러므로 그 둘이 다 들어 있습니다. 3.1운동에 있어서 우리 씨알은 민족으로 깨면서 동시에 민중으로 깨기 시작했습니다. 33 The March First Movement stood between nationalism and democracy. Thus, it includes both values. With the March First Movement, our people awakened to not only a nation but also a minjung. 나는 민족주의는 아닙니다. 세계주의입니다. 하지만 아무리 세계라도 인 격 없는 역사, 문화는 없을 것입니다. 그리고 인격은 특정적이지 일반적 이 아닙니다. 세계의 일원이 되기 위해 나는 나여야 할 것입니다. 세계적 이 되면 변할 것입니다. 민족성도 달라지고 문화도 달라질 것입니다. 그 러나 달라질 때는 달라져도 그때 까지는 나의 서는 자리가 있어야 할 것 입니다. 34 I am not a nationalist but a cosmopolitan. However, although cosmopolitan, history and culture without character would not be possible. Character is not general but distinctive. To become a member of the world, I should be myself. Becoming cosmopolitan, I will change. National character and culture will change. But, I have to stand in my place until it is time to change.

The above-mentioned constitution of the ssial, which Ham wrote to spell out the objectives of his journal of social critique, Voice of the People, clarifies what he meant by the character revolution. In the publication of the first volume, Ham stated three constitutional points: 1) raising one’s voice, 2) the whole bigger than the sum of its parts, 3) intercommunication between the individual and the whole. The first point shows clearly why Ham launched the Voice of the People. He said that he wanted to help the people raise their voice. He wanted to let the people hear their voice through various writings of social critique. The hidden purpose of the first objective is to help all the minjung on earth hear the common voice, have their political will in tune with it, and become the spearhead in the historic battle for humanity. Thus, the ssial is to hear their voice first:

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사람이 제 소리를 내고 그것을 귀로 들으면 달라집니다. 나는 내 귀에 들 리는 내 소리를 내 소리로만 알고 70년을 살아 왔는데, 요새 와서야 녹음 기에 들어간 정말 내 목소리를 듣고 놀랐습니다. 씨알이 이날껏 자기네 지배자, 그 지배자에게 아첨하는 학자들의 입을 통해서만 제 소리를 들어 왔는데 그것이 왼통 협잡이란 말입니다. 그러기 때문에 직접 우리가 하고 우리가 들어보잔 말입니다. 큰 일이 일어납니다. 35 If the humans raise and hear their voice, they come to change. I know my voice for seventy years through the sounds through my ears (bone-conducted sound). Recently, I’ve been surprised by a recording of my voice (air-conducted sound). The ssial have heard their voice through the mouth of the rulers and the scholars flattering those rulers. This is a complete trickery. We ourselves need to raise and hear our voice. A great thing will happen. 모든 씨알이 낡은 제도와 사상에서 해방이 되어 용감히 제 소리를 내면 그것이 저절로 하나의 우렁찬 「어우름 노래(合唱)」가 됩니다. 금강산 일만이천 봉우리 속에 들어가 소리를 한번 외쳐 보십시오. 그러면 그 일 만이천봉이 곧 일시에 메아리를 쳐 울려 보낼 것 아닙니까? 그 소리를 들 으면 어떨 것 같습니까? 씨알의 소리도 그렇습니다. 씨알은 느끼는 것이 요 대답해 주는 것입니다. 소리는 소리를 부릅니다. 그러면 그때는 네 소 리만도 내 소리만도 아닌 전체의 소리가 납니다. 36 If raising courageously our voice by liberating ourselves from the obsolete systems and thoughts, we could hear a single harmonizing song. Voice your voice in the Ilmanich’ŏnbong (Twelve Thousand of Mountaintops) of Mt. Geumgang (금강산). Then, the Ilmanich’ŏnbong will echo your voice simultaneously. What would it feel like to hear the voice? The voice of the ssial would be similar. The ssial is to feel and to respond as well. A sound calls another sound. When it does so, my voice is not just my voice but the voice of the whole.

The second and third constitutional points of Voice of the People are mutually related. Ham argues that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts and the will of the ssial would reflect both the individual and the whole due to the instant communication through shared ideas and memories and empathy. Although the sociological identity of the ssial is humble, when they get and act together, irresistible power is unleashed as our history unequivocally witnesses. The voice of the ssial is not the voice of a social class but the voice of the whole that we all humanity would raise in one voice, the voice of saengmyeong (생명, life), which is the basic unit of the universal, cosmic community. 37 “전체는 부분의 모아논 것보다도 크다” 사람의 몸은 여러 부분이 하나로 하나 되어 산 것이지만，해부한 부분들을 다 모아 놓아도 산 사람은 아닙 니다. 산 사람은 해부 분석으로는알 수 없는, 크기도 무게도 없는 어떤 무 엇이 더 있어 되는 것 입니다. 개인이라 할 때 그것은 전체에서 떨어진 죽

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Chapter 5 은 부분입니다. 그 부분이 하나가 될 때는 어느 부분에서도 볼 수 없던 생 명이 일어납니다. 38 “The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.” Although the human body is made up of many different parts, a simple aggregate of those parts does not create a living person. The living person means to become something that cannot be known simply by anatomical analysis or a measure of the size and weight. The individual is a dead part separated from the whole. When these parts constitute the whole (하나), a life, which none of the parts possesses, will arise. “부분은 전체 안에, 전체는 부분 안에.” 이날까지 개인이 전체 없이도 있 는 줄, 전체가 개인을 떠나서도 있는 줄 알았던 것이 잘못입니다. 전체가 소리를 낼 때 개인으로서는 누구도 할 수 없었던 혁명이 이루어집니다. 그때에 소리가 개인들의 입에서 나와도 그 개인의 소리가 아닙니다. 그 개인을 통해 전체가 직접 외치는 것입니다. 39 “Parts are in the whole and the whole in the parts.” We have had a false belief until the present that parts can exist without the whole and the whole without the parts. When the whole raises its voice, a revolution, which no individual part can imagine, can happen. Even if the voice might come from the part, it is not the voice of the individual but the voice that the whole cries through the individual. 씨알이 제 소리를 하는 것은 우리 속에 계신 「그이」 곧 전체가 소리를 내게 하기 위해서 하는 것입니다. 씨알은 어느 씨알도 다 완전 한 것은 하 나도 없지만 믿음으로 전체를 부를 수 있습니다. 제 모자람을 스스로 알 면서도, 누구를 가르치잔 것도 아니요 누구에 추종하잔 것도 아니요 다만 전체의 음성을 듣고자 하는 겸손하게 열린 마음으로 전체를 우러러 보면 어느덧 제 속에서 제 소리는 아닌 소리가 나오는 것을 알게 될 것입니 다. 40 Making the ssial raise their voice is intended to make the whole, the One within us, raise its voice. Although none of the ssial is perfect, faith can draw the whole. It (to be or to become the ssial) is not to teach someone, knowing one’s incompleteness, nor to follow someone, but to know the fact that a different voice from its own can be heard when looking up at the whole with a humble and open mind to hear its voice.

The Fourth, the ssial represents the powerless. As Ham agreed with Han Wansang on his definition, the ssial are the one that suffers and is able to use the absence of power positively. As its etymology implies, the ssial is something that is trampled (밟히는 것). It generally refers to the people in the bottom of the social ladder. Ham accepts the general understanding of the ssial by his contemporary minjung theologians such as Suh Nam-dong (서남 동) and Anh Byeongmu (안병무). What is unique about the ssial is its distinction from the vulgar masses. They are the lowest in power. They are

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like the root and leaves of a tree or the feet of a body (씨알은 나무의 뿌리, 잎 같은 것이요, 몸의 발 같은 것입니다). 41 However, they are able to turn the powerlessness into a positive force. In defining the nature of the ssial, Ham agreed on Anh’s elevation of the status of the ssial into a creative force. Anh compared the ssial with the concept of ochlos understood in liberation theologians’ exegesis of the Book of the Mark. In contrast to other common words for the people in biblical texts such as laos and plethos, the ochlos represent a spirited people, who are humble because of their social experiences but very passionate about learning and change. Their powerlessness becomes a positive resource rather than an obstacle to liberating themselves from their plight. According to Anh, the term, ochlos, was used in the Book of Mark, when it had to represent a people with specific characteristics. The ochlos were usually the people, who were looked down upon. They were passionate to learn from Jesus. The powerful feared them. Anh notes these special characteristics as follows: 그럼 그는 무슨 의미로 썼나 하면 우선 이름이 없는 (nameless) 그러나 언 제나 예수를 무조건 환영하고 그에게 밀착되어 몰려다니는 것으로 성격 화했어요. 그리고 주목할 것은 이 오클로스를 갈릴리하고 직결시킨 점입 니다. 그의 활동의 무대며, 그곳의 민중이라는 것을 의식적으로 밝히고 있습니다…오클로스는 꼭 가르침의 대상이 돼 있어요. 언제나 가르친다 는, 또 그들이 가르침을 받으러 온다는 말이 압도적으로많아요 . . . 그 다 음에는 아주 주목되는 것이 지배층들이 예수를 죽일려고 하려다가, 혹은 세례요한을 멸시하는 표현을 하려다가도 오클로스가 두려워서 하지 못 했다 하는 것이 여러 차례 나옵니다. 그러니까 분명히 지배층과 오클로스 를 대립을 시켜 긴장관계에 세워 놓으므로 오클로스는 지배층에 대해 피 지배자 그들에게 억눌린 무리, 그러나 지배자에 대해서 언제나 대결할 저 력을 가진 민중으로 나타나고 있습니다. 42 The way how Mark used it (ochlos) was that they were nameless but always welcomed Jesus unconditionally and followed him closely in groups. What is also notable is that he associated the word closely with Galilee, which was the place of his ministry, and that they were the minjung of that place . . . the ochlos were always the subject of his teaching. It was a dominant message that Jesus always taught them and they always came to Jesus to learn…What is also noteworthy is that it is recorded several times that when the powerful attempted to kill Jesus and expressed disdainful words on John the Baptist, they were stopped by their fear of the ochlos. Therefore, the author recognized a strained relation by making the powerful confront the ochlos. He characterized the ochlos as oppressed by the powerful yet as the mijung with the potential to fight them anytime.

Here, the powerlessness represents the social status of the minjung and the suffering they experience. It is a common social status and also a common feeling. According to Ham, negative feelings from the powerless status such as a sense of disrespect, humiliation, deprivation, and mistreatment do not

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remain as frustration, bitterness, and hatred in the mind of the ssial. Nor do they remain only as a driving force of political justice, as shown in liberation theology. In the ssial philosophy, they become catalysts to better empathize and connect with other suffering people. They become the powerful resources to nurture the ssial’s emotional intelligence and translate those feelings into concrete historic acts so that they can take a step closer to their sublime metaphysical goal, chŏnch’erŭl irunŭn kŏt (전체를 이루는 것, building the whole). 씨알은 서로 「같이 우는(共鳴) 것」 「느껴 주는(感應)」것이기 때문입 니다. 잘 잘못을 따지지 않습니다. 그것은 구경꾼의 심정입니다. 씨알끼 리는 서로 맘성을 알아주고 마주 느껴 주는 것입니다. 잘 잘못을 몰라서 도 아니요, 잘해서 소용이 없다 해서 아닙니다. 그것을 다 압니다. 그러나 잘은 서로 따지고 평하는 데서 오는 것이 아니고 서로 열리고 고른 마음 으로 주고받는 데서야 오는 것임을 알기 때문입니다. 잘은 믿어줌에만 있 습니다. 43 “The ssial is to cry together and feel together. It is not judgmental. It is the heart of the beholder. The ssial can understand and feel each other. It is not that they do not know right and wrong. Nor do they believe that doing the right thing is useless. They know it all. They know that the right comes from being open-minded and interacting with each other with fair mind rather than judging and evaluating each other. The right is in our trust (in each other).” 여태껏 학대받은 계집종으로만 알았던 그가 그야말로 가시 면류관의 여 왕임을 알았다. 44 (Now we have realized that) the one that we know as maidservant having been oppressed is indeed the queen with the crown of thorns. 고난은 인생을 심화한다. 고난은 역사를 정화한다. 평면적이던 호호야好 好爺 45 도 이를 통하고 나면은 입체적인 신앙을 가지게 되고, 더럽던 압박 과 싸움의 역사도 눈물을 통하여 볼 때는 선으로 가는 힘씀 아닌 것이 없 다. 46 Suffering deepens life. Suffering purifies life. It allows even the one-dimensional old person with good character to have a stereoscopic faith. When viewed by tears, awful oppressions and even the history of struggle are nothing but efforts for good.

Lastly, the ssial is the political agent. They are political not in the sense of the liberation theology, which has a strong sense of the minjung’s active role for the structural and institutional change of the society. Differing from the common political objective of minjung sociologists and theologians, such as Han Wansang (한완상), Suh Nam-dong, and Anh Byeongmu, which envisioned a bottom-up political revolution, inspired by the Marxian paradigm of

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class struggle, Ham seemed to be ambivalent about the ssial’s political role. His political view was often misunderstood and criticized by the intellectual community of the minjung movement. For those who pursued an objective, institutional, historical role of the powerless in fighting injustice, his stance seemed too ambiguous and impractical and often too idealistic. Although his view of the ssial as the political agent seemed to have changed, depending on particular historical situations, its philosophical grounding itself never changed but took different stages for maturity because his consistent points, which endured numerous temptations from the cataclysmic history of his country, can be identified, particularly in the iconic writing of his ssial philosophy, Voice of the People (씨알의 소리), and the famous round-table talk with his contemporary political theologians, “The Role of Ssial and the Meaning of the Minjung Movement (씨알의 의미와 민중운동).” The politics that Ham believed, inspired by Confucian and Taoist teachings, the life of the ssial had to show is the wu-wei politics. The ssial must not be political particularly in understanding human relation and diagnosing and solving social problems. While the main problems of human life are dealt with mainly in the issues of the distribution of power and power relations in the minjung theology, in Ham’s ssial philosophy are they treated as more moral and spiritual problems. It means that Ham did not usually engage in conversation of developing and implementing concrete political strategies and institutional and policy measures for the ssial. He could not do it because if he did it, the whole foundation of his ssial philosophy, which was extremely metaphysical and syncretic, would have collapsed. Ham did not want the ssial to practice politics but believe that they could and should have a positive political impact on the society. Jesus was very explicit about politics. When asked about a political vision for the oppressed Jews, Jesus said decisively, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” 47 The political impact that his teaching of the people of Nazareth in the history of humanity is unquestionable. He focused on enlightening the people of their divine origin and pushing their moral potential by liberating it from the institutionally shackled, doctrinal religion. The type of transformation that Jesus sought from his followers was not of politics but of character, which is cultivated by spiritual awakening to the divine unity and the inner moral pressure to unconditionally embrace other humans as brothers and sisters. Any positive political change and progress is, therefore, a sociological fruit of this ontological and ethical cultivation and transformation, which is so natural that it should not even be intended from the start. Ham made it clear that the true power that brings a positive influence on political life is the life of the ssial itself rather than politics. He said, “Therefore, the responsibility is upon us. It is not that the government make a good people but that the people make a

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good government.” 48 Ham believed that the character transformation of the ssial, well-grounded upon religion and education, would naturally extend the scope and quality of their civility and move their society forward. He encouraged the people to have the ownership of history and to stop their blind faith in politics. He called this transformation the task to revive the nation’s spirit (민족의 기운을 살려내는 것), which may take longer time to manifest as tangible results in history yet should bring the true benefit to the society. 정치의 개혁은 정치로만 되는 것이 아니라 생활을 통하여 민족이 기운을 살려내는 것이 더 긴요하고 긴 안목으로 볼 때, 그것이 도리어 속한 길이 란 것을 깊이 생각해야 할 것입니다. 이 문제에 관해서 먼저 반성할 사람 은 정치인입니다. 도대체 정치만능이란 생각을 버려야 합니다. 49 Political reformation cannot be done by politics alone but by the revival of the nation’s spirit through life transformation. We have to keep in mind that this is the true path in the long run. Thus, it is the politicians who should be penitent for this problem. They have to stop believing that politics can solve all the problems. 정부가 국민을 선하게 만드는 것이 아니라, 국민이야말로 정부를 선하게 만드는 할아버지입니다. 씨알 여러분, 단군 할아버지의 마음을 먹으십시 오. 우주 창조의 주인이신 하나님 할아버지를 믿으십시오. 여름볕에서 얼 음을 마시고 겨울 바람에서 봄숨을 마신다면 나라 일 저절로 될 것입니 다. 다만 하늘 땅을 우러러 생각의 스케일을 크게할 줄을 알아야 할 것 입 니다. 사람이 사람 비스이 되려면 수백만, 혹은 수천만년의, 긴 세월이 들 었습니다. 정치하는 사람들의 차고 굳은 마음도 一朝一夕에 된 일이 아닙 니다. 그것은 빙하시대 이래의 유물입니다. 그것을 녹이려면 씨알의 마음 도 두고 두고 서서히 달아 올라와야 할 것입니다. 생물 진화의 교훈은 한 마디로 천천히 입니다. 50 It is not that the government makes a good people but that the people are the grandfather that makes a good government. Everyone, the ssial, have the mind of Grandpa, Dangun. Believe in Grandpa, God, the creator of the universe. If you can drink ice under scorching summer sun and breathe the breath of spring in winter wind, the state affairs would naturally work out. However, you should be able to increase the scale of your thought as big as heaven and earth. It has taken thousands of and millions of years for the humans to have become who they are today. The cold and hardened heart of the politicians was not made over night. It is an antiquity from the glacial age. If you want to melt it, the heart of the ssial should gradually flare up. To sum up the lesson of the biological evolution, it is being gradual.

This wu-wei politics also demands the ssial to be as open-minded and flexible as possible in dealing with political challenges. Since the notion of justice in Ham’s ssial philosophy is anchored in the larger sense of self and belonging, which is the boundless, cosmic, organic unity, inordinate allegiance to a political community and its institutional objectives is not accept-

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able. No politician, ideology, government, and policy is perfect. They should be constantly scrutinized for its validity, efficacy, and morality. The ssial should always go high. It means that they should be able to stay away from both indulgence in and aversion to the existing political conditions and assets. They try to take advantage of and reshape politics to draw maximum benefit for their community. They always look at the hidden, bigger picture, the picture for life (생명, saengmyeong), rather than fluctuating constantly between hopes and fears over momentary success and failure of politics. This radical open-mindedness and flexibility of wu-wei politics helped Ham successfully keep his intellectual balance in the swirling torrent of ideological conflict between left and right and cultivate his non-violence philosophy embracing, as brothers, such unforgivable enemies as North Korean communists and the Japanese government. Here is how Ham expressed the flexibility of the political mind of the ssial: 그 사람들 (중국인) 장개석 때는 다 장개석 초상을 내 걸더니 또 手의 세상 이 되니 그 때는 다 手의 초상을 내걸더라 했읍니다. 주의 주장이 없더라 는 말입니다. 다만, 입으로 주장이 주장이 아니요 소위 운동만이 주의가 아니라는 것입니다. 그 보다도 필요한 것은 내가 한국을 사는 일입니다. 장개석과 모택동은 중국 민족이라는 커다란 흐름위에 뜬 한 나무잎새입 니다. 한 동안 뜨지만 뜰 때는 온 흐름을 다 독점한 것같지만, 나라를 생활 하고 있는 씨알이 살아 있는 한 그것은 잠깐후 없어지는 나무잎입니다. 나는 우리도 중국 민족같이 큰 끓은 솥같은 도량과 기상을 가지기를 바랍 니다. 51 The Chinese people would hang the portrait of Chiang Kai-sek when ruled by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and they would hang the portrait of Mao Ze-dong when ruled by Mao Zedong (毛澤東). It means that they had no claim or ideology. The spoken claim is not the only claim. (Political) movement is not the only ideology. What is more demanding is that I live Korea. Chiang KaiShek and Mao Zedong were simple tree leaves drifting down the big stream called Chinese nation. Although they float for a while and seem to dominate the current, they are nothing more than ephemeral leaves while the ssial build and live the nation. I wish we would have the open-mindedness and vigor that the Chinese people had.

Flexibility naturally accompanies patience. This may be what distinguishes the ssial philosophy from the minjung theology. Since Ham’s approach to political change was more indirect than direct, an excessive faith in and allegiance to a system or a course of action was considered dangerous. His political ideal is something that should be realized in historical process through the cultivation of the masses’ character. Ham expressed this cultivation as a revolution not in the sense of time but in the sense of the drastic change of the scale and dimension. He asked people to be patient not to be stuck to a truth, which can be temporal and parochial because of the constant

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change of our situation and because of a better goal for the future. This notion of (political) patience is based on Ham’s Christian theology and anthropology. The humans are the deceiver and the deceived. No matter what political ideal we pursue, we would feel deceived at some points not because the initially set ideal was a false ideal but because our understanding, expectation, and assessment change. We need to try to see a bigger picture of our political action from the historical point of view and from the viewpoint of character building. This attitude was not acceptable to many of his contemporary minjung theologians. In a sense, it was too compromising a stance with an unjust reality. It is too ambiguous to be translated into an institutionally strategic language. However, for Ham, who considered politics as part of the stereoscopic human nature, intended to manifest the larger telos, the cosmic being, patience is a divine essence of the ssial, which came from God. 속는 것이 아버지입니다. 씨알도 속습니다. 그렇습니다. 무한히 속는 것 이 씨알입니다. 세상에 속는 이가 있다면 하나님보다 더한 이가 누구입니 까? 창조이래 이날까지 속아온 것입니다. 몰라서 속는 것 아닙니다. 알고 도 속습니다. 믿고 속는다는 것은 무한한 가능성의 허락입니다. 무한한 자비입니다. 씨알이 하나님의 모습 밖엔 아무 것도 자랑할 것이 없는 존 재일진대, 씨알도 빚을 진 정부에 대해 무한히믿고, 믿음으로 무한히 속 을만한 사랑을 가져야 할 것입니다. 정치란 우리의 영혼의 상태를 비쳐주 는 철판입니다. 우리가 주먹을 쥐면 그 속에서도 주먹이 나올것이요 우리 가 밎지 못해하면 거기서도 악마의 얼굴이 나올 것입니다. 52 God is the deceived, so are the ssial. Yes, they are. The ssial are deceived endlessly. If there is a deceived one in the world, who else is more deceived than God? He has been deceived since the creation. It is not because he does not know. He is deceived, even if he knows. Being deceived with knowing means to allow possibility. It is an endless mercy. Since the ssial have nothing to be proud of other than God, they need to endlessly trust the government, to which they are indebted, and to have love, which can help them endure endless deception. Politic is a steel plate, which reflects the conditions of our spirit. If we clench our fists, it will project our fists. If we do things with distrust, the face of evil will emerge.

The wu-wei politics emphasizes the spontaneity of the ssial in making the effort considered to accomplish good political goals. For instance, the source of morality and law is the human nature, ssial. As the masses become enlightened of the divine origin and purpose of their existence, their moral consciousness and the law as its institutional expression would naturally ensue. Therefore, Ham’s ssial project is to get down to the basic: to help the people retrieve their ssial nature, which is spiritually deep and universally wide. It is an enlightenment project in the sense of spirituality and an educational project in the sense of socio-political community.

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옳습니다. 인류의 목적은 도덕적인데 있는데, 인간이 선해지는 것은 스스 로 하는 생명의 우주적 원리에 의해서 되는 것이지, 누가 시키고 강제해 서 되는 것이 아니기 때문입니다. 사람은 절대로 정치나, 법이나, 감옥으 로 선해지는 건 아닙니다. 예로부터 위대한 정치가, 법률가도 무명의 씨 알 일반이 성현으로 대접하는 그 인물들을 존경하지 않고는 될 수 없었읍 니다. 53 That’s right. Since the purpose of humanity is of the moral, what makes the humans good is the self-acting cosmic principle of saengmyeong (생명, life). It is not something that forces the humans to do. Politics, law, and prison can never make the humans good. From old times, it was not possible to become lawyers and politicians without respecting those, whom the ordinary, obscure ssial treated as sages. 정치가 법률가는 사무관이지, 자기 마음으로 벌주고 상주고 살리고 죽일 자격이 없읍니다. 그것이 문명했다는 모든 국가가 다 立憲制를 취하는 이 유입니다. 헌법은 누구가 만든 것이 아닙니다. 헌법이 처음으로 시작된 英國의 헌법이 글로 씌어진 것이 아닌 것은 그것을 말해 주는 것입니다. 다스림과 법은 하나님에서 나옵니다. 보통의 인간의식을 초월해서 하나 님 의식에 든 사람의 입을 통해 나온 것, 혹은 그것을 근본으로 하고 자기 네 사는 환경에 마추어 만들어진 것입니다. 그래서 自然法이라 하지 않습 니까? 54 Politicians and lawyers are simply officials. They are not able to award prizes and punish people on their own authority. That is why all the civilized states take the constitutional system. The constitution was not created by someone as we know from the fact that the first constitution of Britain was an unwritten one. Ruling and law came from God. They were made possible by what came out of the mouth of those who experienced the consciousness of God or by what they developed for their life environment, based on that experience. Isn’t that why it is called natural law.

SAENGMYEONG (생명, LIFE) Although saengmyeong is another important concept to understand Ham’s overall philosophy of humans, politics, and community, it often causes confusion because it is interchangeable with the notion of ssial. In this section, I try to define saengmyeong and clarify its relationship with ssial. The discussion of saengmyeong would enrich our understanding of Ham’s philosophy in general and specifically help reveal another metaphysical layer for his segyejuŭi vision (세계주의 비전, cosmopolitan vision). It will focus on four themes, which I believe would epitomize major points of Ham’s use of saengmyeong: origin, goal, political meaning, and non-violence philosophy.

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Definition of Saengmyeong Saengmyeong literally means life. According to Ham, there are two different ways to understand saengmyeong: phenomenal (현상적) and semantic (의미 론적). The former is to view life as a physical object for our observation and experience. It is a biological, material entity, which is generated, sustained, and banished by the law of physics. Out of this view do various questions about physical phenomena come out; when and how did life start? what material force or organisms caused it? and how does it survive and die? These questions can be handled by a good scientific analysis of the relationship between cause and effect of everything. Ham’s use of saengmyeong in his writings is obviously of the semantic. He argued that even the phenomenal understanding could be meaningful and valuable when properly guided by the semantic understanding, attitude, and appreciation. 물은 왜 고기로 가득하였으면, 산은 왜 나무로 덮였으며, 골짜기에는 왜 꽃향기가 차야하며, 공중에는 왜 새 노래가 높아야 하느냐라고 그것을 우 선 물은 후에 시험관도 들고 나가고, 현미경도 들여다볼 것이다. 말하자 면 우주를 먼저 사랑한 후에 연구하라는 말이다. 55 Why was the water filled with fish, the mountain with trees, and the valley with the fragrance of flowers? Why should the birdsong in the air be so high? It is not until you ask these questions that you can take out test tubes and look into microscopes. In other words, you cannot study the universe without loving it first. 봄날이 와도 한 떨기 홍록紅綠이 있어 대지를 수놓음이 없고, 쌍쌍호접 﨎﨎糊蝶이 있어 그 유탕遊蕩한 광명의 바다에 춤추는 것이 없으며, 가을 달이 밝아도 백충白虫의 음악이 이를 노래하지 않고, 몇 행의 안진雁陣이 그 그림자를 어지럽히지 않는다면, 이 우주는 얼마나 적적하였을 것이겠 는가? 56 How boring would that be if spring earth is left without being embroidered by threads of red and green, the sea without pairs of glittering butterflies dancing on it, the shining of the fall moon without the music of pure bugs singing it and flocks of gees deranging its shadow.

His use of saengmyeong focused on meanings and values, which the humans create or draw from saengmyeong. Saengmyeong is more than the biological state and capability to breathe and move. It is the cosmic principle that runs the entire universe, including the mysterious interactions and reality of subatomic particles, human history, and the providence of God. It is the force, principle, and telos by which everything, including non-spiritual things, lives and moves. It is something that precedes the material reality. Ham said,

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생명은 그 본질로서는 있는 자나 역사적으로는 항상 있으려 하는 자다. 그리하여 그 생명이 있으려 하는 데서 물질이 나오고, 식물, 동물이 나오 고, 세계가 나온다. 57 Life is something that is to be in its essence and something that tries to always be in history. So, in the place where life wants to be do the material, plants, animals, and world come out.

Saengmyeong is also “the law, which not only shapes the interaction of the materials in the phenomenal world but also creates and controls them behind the scene (현상계에 나타나는 사물 사이에 있어서 그것을 지배하는 법칙 이 될 뿐만 아니라 그 배후에 있어서 그것을 지배하고 그 존재를 가능하 게 하는 근본이 되는 생명이다).” 58 It means that we all humans are saengmyeong. Animals and nature are saengmyeong. The entire universe is saengmyeong. The will to be, grow, connect, and flourish is saengmyeong. Ham used this very abstract concept for the identity of the people. He would call the minjung and even his country, Korea, saengmyeong. His point for this use was that all people as saengmyeong, have the equal right, capability, and duty to live and ontologically connect, grow, and flourish with other lives. Like the concept of ssial, saengmyeong is not the same as the concept of minjung. Like minjung, it can be used to refer to the masses. However, the conceptual depth of the minjung cannot capture the entirety or the kernel of the metaphysics of saengmyeong. The primary goal of viewing the masses as minjung is to liberate them from unjust social relations and structures, thereby recovering the relationship with God and his kingdom on earth. This concept does have deep metaphysical nuances but its focus should be on down-to-earth concerns due to the Marxian theoretical ground emphasizing class struggle and the political revolution of the people. In many of his conversations with liberation theologians, Ham made it clear that the ssial consciousness should be laid upon a higher ground than the political and even the theological because his main objective was not a political system and justice, which is subject to constant reassessment and reformation for different times, spaces, and situations but the people’s consciousness, worldview, and moral capability. Saengmyeong is a philosophical concept going beyond that of ssial. In Ham’s literature, the term, the ssial, was a spiritually enhanced concept for the powerless. While the minjung as the powerless should be explicit, in principle, about their political stance and their active engagement in political fight, Ham’s notion of ssial was focused on cultivating their character: character to be able to feel, think of and act for the divine universal belonging. This concept is similar with the minjung in that it is formulated from the historical experience of the powerless. However, Ham was not interested in pointing out, as ideal, a particular course of political action and a particular political stance and community. He tried to inculcate, in the life of the peo-

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ple, critical thinking, historical consciousness, and scientific exploration so that they could have a stronger ownership of the community and authorship of the history. Therefore, political manifestations of the ssial identity such as policy decision and political reformation depend on the creativity and wisdom of the ssial. Similarly, Ham’s use of saengmyeong was not intended for a particular course of political action. He used this word to broaden the concept of ssial even further. Although not always, the concept of ssial was used to discuss the deeper metaphysical dimension of the minjung: the dimension in which the people can and should be blind to any political objective to best connect and reconcile with all members of the community. The main concern for the ssial still remain socio-political and historical. The concept of saengmyeong shares a lot in common with the ssial. Both can explain the true identity of human beings and are intended to cultivate the character to benefit the community of humanity. Saengmyeong as a metaphysically larger concept would ultimately complement and perfect the ssial. While the ssial is used when referred to the people in the horizontal movement (수평적 운동) of the human existence, such as the experience as the powerless and the sufferer in history, the saengmyeong is a conceptual paradigm to understand the people as part of the vertical movement (수직적/ 상향적 운동) of every cosmic existence, which is to be, live, grow, connect, and flourish. While the ssial is the historical being, the saengmyeong is the cosmic being. Again, Ham did not give a clear-cut distinction between these two concepts. However, he seemed to engage in more metaphysical discussions with the saengmyeong than with the ssial. In other words, when talking about the saegnmeyong, Ham’s discussion becomes less political and historical. Four Themes Origin of Saengmyeong According to Ham, the origin of saengmyeong is God. In his early writings, his concept of God was Christian. However, as his intellectual curiosity and efforts were expanded to various religious traditions, particularly Asian religions, his point of saengmyeong began to transcend the Christian framework. Life (saengmyeong) is an entity of biological organisms in the phenomenal dimension. In the semantic dimension, life is the universal/cosmic principle, force, and identity uniting all things into a single organic body, the cosmic body into which individual lives are internalized both meaningfully and functionally. To put it concretely, the origin of saengmyeong is the love of God, which is agape, unconditional love. It is the principle or power that makes everything breathe, rise, jump, expand, climb, and connect with other lives. This

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dynamic origin can be best explained by Ham’s interpretation of logos. The logos is the invisible expression of God. To be revealed to us, it should manifest in the flesh, which means its translation and actualization into the physical reality. Jesus is the best example of saengmyeong. He, who is God, the logos, came down to earth and was trampled like a seed. He was rejected, persecuted, and killed. However, all of his sufferings were meant to ultimately manifest the new, true life to come. He rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. Now, he lives forever in the voice of the Holy Spirit and the divine narrative of atonement. We humans as saengmyeong have the power that makes us see the light in darkness, order in chaos, love in hatred, and growth in loss, like the lotus flower blooming in muddy water. Physical obstacles and challenges are indispensable catalysts to help us encounter with our divine origin and to manifest our capability and identity as saengmyeong. 이 우주는 하나님의 로고스가 자기를 포기하고 그 영원하고 무궁한 자리 에서 내려와 만물 속에 거함에 의하여 사는 우주다 그러나 그 죽으심에 의하여 저는 그 영원히 살으심을 가진다 저는 스스로 낮아지는 가운데서 높임을 가지는 것이며 스스로 고난 받음에 의하여 자유로운것이며 스스 로 죄에 거함에 의하여 거룩함을 가지는 것이며 죽는 일에서 살으시는 것 이다 이것이 하나님의 사랑이요 이 사랑의 도道가 우주의 도道다 그러므 로 생명의 기원은 이 하나님의 사랑 곧 아가페에 있는 것이요 그 존재이 유도 이 아가페로써 일하는 하나님의 즐거움에 있는 것이다. 59 The universe is the universe in which God as the logos resides within all things by giving up himself and descending from his everlasting throne. However, it was the death that made him live forever, the humility that lifted him up, the suffering that liberated him, the dwelling in sin that sanctified him, and the dying that made him rise again. This is the love of God. The way of this love is the way of the universe. Therefore, since the origin of life (saengmyeong) is in the love of God, agape, the reason for its existence is in the joy of God working with agape.

Goal of Saengmyeong As implied in the origin, the purpose of saengmyeong is to realize the will of God, the logos. It is the realization of the cosmic love. Those who have been awakened to saengmyeong cannot help but appreciate the universal will to live (살고), grow (자라고), connect (연결하고), and flourish (만개하고). The will to live is both teleological and deontological. Just as commonly found in the teleological understanding of Aquinas and Kant, saengmyeong seeks perfection; its process should be considered natural. According to Aquinas, “everything moves toward a particular condition in which it can rest. That condition is the thing’s perfection.” 60 According to his Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant said, “A thing perfects itself, only when it attains an end inherent in the thing itself, what it has in itself to be, not merely an

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end which someone has chosen to set up as its objectives.” 61 Similarly, the driving force of saengmyeong is innate; every living thing is designed to hear the voice of saengmyeong and respond to the calling. External challenges cannot stop this movement. Ham compared this teleological drive with the autotomy of the lizards. 62 Lizards do not have to worry about their lost tails. It is the genetic recipe that triggers the internal organisms to regenerate the tails. It is an internal, natural structure. Similarly, Ham argued that the entire universe is moving toward a direction in which all lives coexist and coprosper so that they can attain perfection. This movement internally encoded takes the externalization process. For instance, the will of God, the logos, will be expressed in the chŏnirhwa kwajŏng (전일화 과정). As lives go through evolution, they externally develop individual identities by experiencing the differentiation of species. At the same time, the humankind, the most advanced species, go through the internal unification process with the divine will to put other lives in a meaningful place: the place to grow together for mutual perfection. 그러나 다 는 필연적으로 일一을 예상한다. 그러므로 다가 있는 곳에 일 이 있다. 진화의 이 과정은 복잡화인 동시에 통일에 향하는 노력이다. 복 잡한 만물 사이에는 유기적인 관련이 있음을 부정할 수 없고 더구나 이는 인류에 의한 의식생활의 시작에 의하여 한층 더 앞선다. 복잡화가 밖에 향하는 발산이라면 일화 一化는 안에 향하는 수렴收斂이다. 그러므로 진 화가 나가면 나갈수록 생명현상의 내면화는 필연적이다. 정신현상은 물 질현상의 복잡화에 의하여 우연히 일어난 것이라 하는 것은 천박한 의견 이다. 진화의 과정이 다화多化와 일화一化의 교류라고 하면 물질과 정신 이 일체를 이루는 것은 당연한 일이다. 63 However, multiplicity anticipates singularity. Singularity is anywhere multiplicity is. The evolutionary process is very complex; it is the (nature’s) effort toward unity. It cannot be denied that in the complexity of all things are organic relations, which are further expanded by the development of the human beings’ livelihood. While this complexity is the outward manifestation (of saengmyeong), unification (or desire to unite) is the inward cultivation. Thus, as evolution proceeds, the internalization of the phenomena of saengmyeong is inevitable. It is superficial to think that spiritual/mental phenomena are caused accidently by the complexity of the material phenomena. If the evolutionary process is the communication between multiplicity and unification, it is natural that the material and the spiritual ultimately become united.

This goal to unite with all things is the purpose of saengmyeong, which Ham understood as the logos. The logos has been manifesting in creation and evolution. The greatest manifestation of the logos, particularly in the historical dimension, is the life of Jesus. For Ham, the life of Jesus reflects the ontological and ethical potential and direction of all humankind. The ideal life as saengmyeong is not an artificial goal. It has been revealed to our

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history as a cosmic movement; it constantly pushes us to respond to the calling for agape in political and historical reality; it intends to move us ultimately to a point where our ŏl (얼, spirit) reaches the horizon of heaven, God, and Brahman. 그것이 혹은 얼이다. 그 한이 이 끝에서는 나로 알려져 있고 저 끝에선 하 나님, 하늘, 브라만으로 알려져 있다. 64 That is the spirit (ŏl). One end of the suffering of the spirit is known as I and the other end as God, heaven, and Brahman.

Political Meanings Saengmyeong also has significant political meanings in Hams’ writings. This term was used particularly when Ham needed to emphasize anti-classism and anti-nationalism. Once his country become independent, Ham passion for nationalism needed to be redirected. He gradually realized that his ssial philosophy focused primarily on building an independent nation and cultivating enlightened citizens suffered the contextual limit. Experiencing the enormous scale of moral complexity and ambiguity in his national politics and exploring various international communities particularly in the 1960s, Ham began to think of a larger community than nation-states. Instead of using the conventional names for political community, he thought that the ssial and the saengmyeong would be better expressions. With these two terms, Ham could focus on what was the most essential for the truth about political life and community, not distracted by context-limited conditions such as geographical, racial, and historical identities. For instance, in Sŏngsŏyŏn’gu (성서연 구, 1947), Ham already used the saengmyeong in expressing Korea to put the objective of his conversation beyond a particular institutional, historical entity. 그런고로 우리는 조선 자체로 하여금 말하게 해야 한다. 어떤 사상이 말 을 하여도 못쓰는 것이오 어떤 정책이 말을 하여도 못쓰는 것이오 어떤 영웅이나 어떤 계급이 말하여도 못쓴다 . . . 조선이란 전체 그 자신이 말 하여야 한다. 존재하는 것은 조선이라는 생명이지 무산계급도 아니요, 자 본가도 아니요 정당이나 교회도 아니다. 65 Therefore, let Chosŏn speak for itself. It is not right that an ideology, policy, hero, or class speaks for it . . . Chosŏn as a whole should speak. What exists is a saengmyeong called Chosŏn, not the proletariat, capitalist, party or church.

He said that we need to take off our glasses to see the truth, the truth of life, to better assess our political reality in as large a context as possible. The glasses would be our stereotypes, parochial political interests, and inordinate loyalty to a political stance. 66 Thus, the problem of Chosŏn was not just

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about Korean people but about the saengmyeong. When translated into the saengmyeong, the conversation about our own political issues can become more open-mind in assessing the fundamental cause and creative in thinking out sustainable solutions. Ham even argued that history is the history of saengmyeong. 역사는 결국 생명의 역사다. 국민의 역사거나 인류의 역사거나 문화의 역 사거나 천연의 역사博物거나 구경에 있어서는 이 대우주를 꿰뚫고 흐르 는 대생명의 역사다. 그러므로 그 주체되는 생명에 대하여 명확한 인식이 없이 정당한 역사 이해는 있을 수 없다. 67 History is ultimately the history of saengmyeong (life). Whether the history of the people, of humanity, of culture, or of thousand years, it is the history of the greater life, in observation, penetrating into and flowing in the macrocosm. Therefore, there is no right understanding of history without this clear recognition of saengmyeong as its principal agent.

Saengmyeong was also used when Ham needed to emphasize the spontaneity of the people in politics and history. As pointed out in the section of ssial, to see the life and world through the viewpoint of saengmyeong is to feel within oneself the divine human nature as creator. According to Park’s interpretation, the essence of saengmyeong is to do things by oneself (스스로 함, sŭsŭroham). This is a very important characteristic of God. Nature and the human beings share this characteristic. 함석헌은 하나님과 생명의 늘 새롭게 생성하고 변화하는 성격을 “. . . 려 함”으로 나타냈다. 생명은 변화와 자람과 됨이다. 하나님도 사람도 “려 함”이다. 영원히 되려는 것이기 때문에 끊임없이 자기부정을 하지 않을 수 없다. 68 Ham characterized God and seangmyeong, which is always regenerated and changed, as coming-to-be. Life is changing, growing, and becoming. God and humans are both coming-to-be. Since they are eternal coming-to-be, they cannot help but endlessly deny themselves.

This view presents two important points for Ham’s politics. One is to take people as an authentic player in the political arena. The other is to take people as transcendent of any existing political identity and system. Like God and organisms in nature, people themselves can and should shape their own destiny. They have the potential to pull out their maximum ontological capacity. They need to trust themselves. In other words, in principle, people should not give away their authorship of life to the elite as suggested in Confucianism. The people, who have been awakened to saengmyeong, always have the truth for political direction. Ham said:

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지배자가 제 마음대로 씨알을 이리 끌고 저리 끌지만, 그 노릇을 하는 권 리는 씨알에 있지 지배자에 있지 않습니다. 씨알이 지배자에 복종하니 그 러지, 만일 죽기로 한하고 반항한다면 지배자 자신은 쌀을 한 톨 생산할 수도 실을 한 치 만들 수도 없습니다. 종살이 아니하는 권리는 씨알에게 있습니다. 69 Although the ruler seems to lead the ssial here and there, the ssial, not the ruler, have the right to follow. The ruler can rule as the ssial obey. If the ssial resist the ruler for their lives, the ruler would not be able to produce a grain of rice and a piece of thread. The right not to live as a slave is upon the ssial.

The March First Movement for independence, the April 19 Revolution, and the Kwangju Uprising for democratization are good examples. People do not have the type of power that the wealthy and powerful have. However, their saengmyeong consciousness of master in shaping their political destiny is unstoppable. Political brainwashing, oppression, and persecution cannot permanently shackle the people because they as saengmyeong are destined to win the battle with any adversity. In addition, the saengmyeong consciousness as sŭsŭroham cultivates the virtue to transcend ethical and political parochialism. It helps people suspend the existing categories of their self to have an authentic solution, with a stronger moral ground, to various political problems. Since this consciousness is to place the most basic feelings and wills of existence (to live, grow, connect, and flourish) over any other concern, people’s unique political and historical identities should not be obstacles in drawing creative solutions for larger problems of the community of humanity. The virtue of sŭsŭroham empowers people to take the lead in shaping their destiny. However, it does not end up being anarchic. It constantly inspires, presses, redirects, and moves forward their community to the direction that would benefit the entire humanity. Ham called this transcendent aspect as saengmyŏngŭi yulli (생명 의 윤리, the ethics of saengmyeong). 그러므로 윤리는 생명적 통일이다 . . . 윤리는 개인으로 좌우되는 것도 아 니요 제도로 유지되는 것도 아니다. 그보다는 윤리는 차라리 전체적 현실 이다. 개인의 건강이 사백조 넘는 세포의 현실적인 조화 통일에 있는 것 같이 사회의 윤리도 전체의 산 통일에 있다 . . . 어지러움이란 다른 것 아 니요 전체를 잃은 것이다. 한 시대가 혼란에 빠졌다는 것은 결코 개인 행 동의 타락이나 어떤 제도의 깨짐을 말하는 것이 아니다. 70 Therefore, ethics is the unification of saengmyeong. . . . Ethics is neither controlled by the individual nor sustained by the institution. It is more of the reality of the whole. Just as the health of an individual depends on the realistic, harmonious unity of more than four hundred trillion of cells, social ethics depends on the living unification of the whole. . . . Darkness is nothing but to lose the whole. The fact that a generation is in chaos does not simply mean a corruption of an individual or a breakdown of an institution.

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SAENGMYEONG FOR NON-VIOLENCE PHILOSOPHY Finally, saengmyeong is the foundation for Ham’s non-violence philosophy. It is more foundational than ssial. While the concept of ssial presumes a strained relation between classes because of its emphasis on the powerlessness as the driving force for social progress, saengmyeong equalizes everything not through giving a new political identity but through eliminating all identities. Even if ssial philosophy has a cosmological depth, its primary concern is still about human affairs and society. In contrast, the saengmyeong philosophy takes everything, including animals and nature, as part of the same principle, force, and will. If awakened to saengmyeong, everything has to recognize mutual dignity for existence and work together to bloom harmonious growth. There is no place for violence in the saengmyeong consciousness. As Kim notes, all revolutions of power have been proven faulty at best and harmful at worst as shown in the history of Napoleon, Lenin, Mao, I Sŏngkye (이성계), and Park Chung-hee (박정희). Through his personal experience of political persecution by men in power, Ham agreed with the truth that Gandhi had found and promoted. 71 Ahimsa was the cosmic principle and imperative for all living beings. It is the principle of life. According to Kim Taesik (김대식), “Non-violence does not distinguish between self and others and violence occurs when we distinguish and discriminate between self and others.” He states, 여기는 인격의 차별이 없는 것은 물론, 인축(人畜)의 차별조차도 없습니 다. 생에 대한 절대의 존경을 그 도덕의 토대로 합니다. 그러므로 사람에 서 버릴 사람이 없습니다. 72 In saengmyeong is there no personal discrimination nor discrimination between humans and animals. There is absolute respect for saengmyeong, which becomes the foundation of morality. Thus, there is no one to be abandoned.

The best example to show the historical manifestation of saengmyeong is again the life of Jesus. Ham would call Jesus the t’ongsaram (통사람, the whole person, 全人). Jesus came to earth to save all. He is the living breath, the truth, and the way. What made his ministry of agape possible was his care for the whole coming out of the saengmyeong consciousness. Interpreting Ham’s pacifism, Kim explains Jesus’ consciousness of saengmyeong as follows: 예수의 평화는 전체의식, 즉 우리는 하나라는 자각에서 비롯한다. 모든 존재는 생명적 존재이자 우주적 존재와 맞닿아 있다. 개별적 존재 는 서 로 떨어져 있는 것이 아니라 전체인 생명이다. 73

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The peace of Jesus comes from the consciousness of the whole that we all are one. All beings are saengmyeong and they are interconnected with the cosmic being. Individual beings are not separate but saengmyeong as the whole.

NOTES 1. Voice 7, 20. 2. World History, 155. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 8. 5. Spiritual History of Korea, 33. 6. World History, 98. 7. Sok Hon Ham, “무엇이 참 문제냐” (What is the Real Problem?, hereafter Real Problem), Collection, 42. “인생이 있는 곳은 모순이 있고, 모순이 있는 곳은 제단祭壇이 있다.” 8. The Meaning of Ssial, 231–32. 9. Voice 3-Collection, 346. 10. The Meaning of Ssial, 231. 11. Ibid. 12. The term, chŭkchajŏk (즉자적, 卽自的), came from Hegel’s ding an sich (thing-initself). Ham refers to a passive and reactionary characteristic. In contrast, taejajŏk (대자적 민 중, 對自的, for-itself) minjung means people who exercise critical thinking and are capable of moving society forward. See The Meaning of Minjung, 261. 13. Ho Jae Lee, “함석헌의 종교사상과 잠재태로서의 씨알종교공동체,” Journal of the Korean Academy of New Religions 37 (2017): 79. 14. Voice 56, 78. 15. The Meaning of Ssial, 126. 16. Ibid., 128. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 241. 19. Those Who Think, Collection, 393. In씨알에게 보내는 편지 2 (Letter to the Ssial 2), Collection, 137, Ham said, “씨알이란 다른 것 아니고 인간 중 바닥 인간입니다.” 20. Voice 1-Collection, 11–12. 21. Genesis 1:31, New International Version. 22. Pope John Paul II, Pope John Paul II, Real Significance of Original Nakedness. Accessed July 12, 2019. https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb26.htm . 23. Genesis, 2:24. 24. The Meaning of Ssial, 134. 25. Ibid., 140. 26. Ibid., 232. 27. Ho Jae Lee, “함석헌의 종교사상과 잠재태로서의 씨알종교공동체,” Journal of the Korean Academy of New Religions 37 (2017): 82. 28. Voice 1-Collection, 7. 29. Ibid., 20. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 8–9. 32. Series of demonstrations for Korean national independence from Japan, which started on March 1 in 1919 in Seoul, the capital city, and later spread throughout the country. 33. Voice 1-Collection, 31. 34. Ibid., 25–26. 35. Ibid., 109. 36. Ibid., 111. 37. See Voice-19, p. 10. “全體는分子의 모인 것이 아니라全體가分子로 존재하고 있다. 分子를 모아 놓은 이상의 것이다.” 38. Ibid., 111–12.

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39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 112. 41. Sok Hon Ham, “끝나지 않은 강연” (Unended Lecture), Collection, 121. 42. The Meaning of Minjung, 249–51. 43. Voice 1-Collection, 107. 44. Spiritual History of Korea, 96. 45. An old person with good character. 46. Spiritual History of Korea, 135. 47. John 18:36. 48. Voice 86, 7. “그러므로 책임이 우리 자신에 떨어집니다. 국민이 정부를 선하게 만 들지, 결코 정부가 국민을 선하게 만드는 것이 아니라는 것입니다.” 49. Voice 89, 11. 50. Voice 86, 5. 51. Voice 89, 11. 52. Voice 86, 7. 53. Ibid., 6. 54. Ibid. 55. World History, 54. 56. Ibid., 38. 57. Ibid., 102. 58. Real Problem, 112. 59. World Hisotry, 56. 60. Herold G. Coward, The Perfectibility of Human Nature in Eastern and Western Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 10. 61. Ibid. 62. World History, 50. 63. Ibid., 95. 64. Those Who Think, 394. 65. Real Problem, 125. 66. Ibid., 116. 67. World History, 49. 68. Jae-Sun Park, “함석헌의 생명 사상,” 바보새 함석헌 동서를 아우른 생명 평화 사상, 38, accessed July 10, 2018, http://ssialsori.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=0402&wr_id=85. 69. Unended Lecture, 124–25. 70. Those Who Think, 45–46. 71. Young Ho Kim, “함석헌의 비폭력 평화사상과 그 실천 전략” (Non-Violence Philosophy of Ham Sok Hon and His Practice Strategies), Uwŏnsasang Nonch’ong 10 (2001): 198–228, 200–201. 72. Dei Seek Kim, “함석헌의 평화사상:비폭력주의와 협화주의를 중심으로” (Ham Sok Hon’s Pacifist Philosophy in Focus on His Thoughts on Non-Violence, Collaboration, and Harmony), 통일과평화 8, no. 2 (2016): 45–79, 52. 73. Dei Seek Kim (2016), 58.

Chapter Six

Ssial Philosophy for Cosmopolitanism

OVERVIEW OF COSMOPOLITANISM This chapter focuses specifically on finding a cosmopolitan voice in Ham’s works and attempts a conversation with existing cosmopolitan theories to identify some shortcomings of this lofty political idea and to present a possible theoretical contribution of ssial philosophy. To present successfully the main theme, which is to discover Ham’s cosmopolitan expressions, I will give a brief overview of major discussions of cosmopolitanism first, along with a discussion of their major weaknesses. This overview would not only remind you of shared spirits and objectives of cosmopolitan theorists and Ham but also help you see some positive insight of ssial philosophy to enrich the discussion of cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism is a system of thought, values, and political measures to envision the viability of kosmopolitês (citizens of the world). This concept has always been around our political concerns particularly as our political ambition and military might surpass our territorial limits and as our enlightened intelligence and political altruism find dissonance with the parochialism of the nation-state system. The physical conditions of the 21st century world demands cosmopolitanism more than ever. The new world is highly interdependent, interconnected, and even interlocked due to the revolutionary change of transportation and communication technologies. Appel estimates, “While roughly 300 million people boarded commercial airlines in 1970, today well over three billion fly each year. And in only 15 years, the number of internet users worldwide increased from 400 million (2000) to 3.2 billion (2015).” 1 We can travel to our neighboring countries in a few hours on a plane and communicate anyone on earth instantly via Face Time or email. Many natural barriers having divided our world in the past, such as seas and 81

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mountains, are now disappearing. Language and cultural barriers in communication are not obstacles anymore due to the development of new real-time translation technologies. The use of Google’s headphones with a Google Pixel smartphone and the Google Assistant would allow us to translate conversations in more than 40 languages almost instantly. Not just in travel and communication, we all are connected in economy and politics. Labor specialization for production process has been more diversified and sophisticated than ever to make up for or maximize individual countries’ economic weaknesses and strengths. It has created numerous multinational corporations and boosted international trade and investment. Since we all are producers and consumers to each other, no one is totally self-sufficient. According to Wright, economic interdependence has brought a positive development that advances peace, stability, and prosperity. He did believe that globalization had brought “unprecedented growth in western economies, and facilitated the ascent of China and India, among others, taking billions of people out of poverty.” 2 A World Bank statistics reports that the global poverty level fell from 64 percent in 1960 to less than 10 percent in 2015. 3 The infusion of foreign capital and technology provided poor countries with various opportunities to grow both economically and politically. However, this closeness and interdependence among countries necessarily accompany a shadow, which manifest usually in the socio-political domain. Although the overall economic pie has become bigger, a fair distribution has become harder and more complicated. Countries with an outdated mode of production and little resources to adapt to a fast-changing economic environment suffer the most. A massive influx of foreign industries and capitals into underdeveloped countries are not only incapacitating self-sustained economy but also causing serious environmental problems. Therefore, to obtain a better wisdom and reasoning of why and how to get along with distant others is imperative because pessimism and cynicism about human nature and human relations are not responsible and will not get us anywhere. The negative feelings about global community and cosmopolitanism specifically have been engendered by our countless traumatic experiences, including international terrorism, climate change, global financial crisis, and distrust in the efficacy of democracy. Since we are already irresistibly connected with each other from the deep root of our economic and political structures in a global scale, a simple return to isolationism indifferent or nation-state system hostile, to other countries, cannot be a wise solution. We need to develop a thought system that can refigure the way we view and interact with others, including our natural environment, to better adapt to these new challenges. This thought system, of course, does not have to be completely a new system. There are a whole host of philosophical thoughts and political systems to take the entire world as a single community. While some such as Marxism are institutional efforts, others such as the Unification

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Movement are spiritual. However, cosmopolitanism is a conceptual device, which captures the attention of both intellectual and spiritual communities. It has always been in our mind as a final stage of political institution, a political ideal or fantasy, or simply an enlightened state of mind. Cosmopolitanism is a system of thought, which considers all human beings as members of a single community. Most scholars agree that the concept of cosmopolis coined by the Cynics is older than Aristotle and Alexander. 4 It was imagined and expressed by numerous great ancient kings and thinkers, ahead of Greek philosophers. The religiously motivated vision of universal belonging and interdependence by the Egyptian Akhnaton can be a great example. The pharaoh believed that his divine source, which was monotheistic and universal, was the foundation to build the community of all humans. 5 It represented not only his religious understanding of the world but also his political ambition. The philosophical prototype of cosmopolitanism is found already in the stories of Socrates, which are witnessed by many ancient sources, including Cicero (106–43 BC) (Tusc. V.xxxvii.108), Musonius Rufus (30–108 AD) (That Exile Is No Evil), Plutarch (46–120 AD) (DeXilio 600F–601 A) and Epictetus (55–135 AD) (I.iv.6, III.xxxiv.60–70). 6 For the question of where he belonged, he did say, he was an inhabitant and citizen of the whole world. 7 Of course, his loyalty to the city of Athens was unquestionable. However, his search for wisdom and virtue was transcendent of any physical and metaphysical boundary. In Apology, Socrates expressed his transcendent will by saying, “Thus, even now I still go around seeking these things, and in accordance with the god I search after anyone, whether fellow citizen or foreigner, whom I think is wise.” Not only did he mean that political affiliation does not matter in searching wisdom but he also implied that the benefit of wisdom is universal. The source and impact of wisdom and virtue are universal because all human beings share common moral potentials and duties. Socrates said, “All human beings are good in the same way, for by achieving the same goals they become good.” 8 Diogenes the Cynic was more explicit than Socrates. His vision went beyond the utilitarian concern and the common ontological potential. He argued that “we should shrug off the coil of xenophobic particularism” to become a citizen of the world. 9 Although what he meant by kosmopolites might have been far from our contemporary understanding of cosmopolitanism because of his metaphysical focus on the universe rather than the community of mankind and because of his philosophical nuance of a polity of sophos, the wise, his cynical elaboration of the citizen of world still expresses a proto-cosmopolitan ethos. 10 Thoughts of Crates of Thebes and Zeno of Citium preserved this protocosmopolitan ethos. Zeno visualized a universal community this way, saying “We ought not to dwell in cities or in districts, dividing ourselves up into local systems of justice, but instead come to think of all human beings as fellow citizens of the same district, making a single life in this single cosmos,

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like a herd that pastures together and is ruled in common by a common law.” 11 This cosmopolitan vision was entertained not only in philosophical claims and moral ambitions but also in poetic expressions and it continued to expand with the new political order by the accelerated Roman conquest and the growing Stoic philosophy. The Stoics believed that human beings have a shared grounding in all schemes of truth, including ontology, epistemology, and theology. Every human being biologically belongs to the same category. We are the same species, enjoying and struggling with common physiological urges and corporeal limits. Due to the shared physical conditions and challenges and the advanced cognitive and empathic abilities, we can better connect with other members of our group than other species can. What binds us more strongly is, however, universal rational nature. According to Brown’s summary of the Stoic foundation, 12 it is the rational ability that helps us communicate with “cosmological or natural law.” 13 It means that our acknowledgement and understanding of the common fate as a species do not just end in an emotional state. We have a potential to live harmoniously with any one and anything: a potential or “capacity for human reason and communication.” 14 We have the ability to envision a common telos not just for an individual self but for a larger self as a species and to collectively think and act to overcome the challenges. In Hooft’s interpretation, it is “to live in accordance with the rational order, which marked the forms and cycles of the universe as a whole: forms and cycles that had been established by the gods and expressed their wisdom and love of justice.” This rational and communicational ability is more than a will power. It is a special gift to recognize the universal and natural law, which is running our world above and behind the scene. Thus, for the Stoics, envisioning the cosmos as the true polis is a natural cognitive and ethical process to be cultivated. The principle that moves the universe is the logos, which means that it is rational and divine. Human beings as part of the nature not only are able to understand but also ought to manifest and prosper this divine law. 15 However, cosmopolitanism in ancient philosophy was not considered as genuine and practical. Most of serious modern thinkers of cosmopolitanism agree on the problems of its motivation and its scale of agency. The defiant, antiestablishment claims and attitudes of the ancient Cynics, which are often considered a philosophical origin of cosmopolitanism were not originally intended to construct a creative, positive system of thought to resolve the problems of their times. They were expressions of their resistance to the established political, ethical, and philosophical systems. Brown characterizes this as “arguing against the dominance of arbitrary communal laws that were based on national origin alone.” 16 In other words, ancient Greek thinkers had to transcend the epistemological, axiological, and political foundations and boundaries to maximally enjoy the act of philosophy and acquire its outcomes. Creating and settling with a new perception of human community,

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whether or not more advanced and beneficial, was not of their main concern. Proto-cosmopolitan thoughts were natural outcomes of their elitist view of the problems of life and ultimate solutions. It was their superior philosophy that could make their society more civilized and virtuous. According to Trapanier and Habibb, the original version of Stoic natural laws can be understood by the following: The wise man alone is free, and “all the unwise are foreigners, exiles, slaves, and madmen” (Cicero Lucullus 136); the wise man alone is capable of friendship; he alone is beautiful and worthy of love affairs; all property by natural right belongs to him and his fellows, with whom he may share wife and children in a radical and incestuous communism; the wise man makes no moral mistakes and does no harm-but he is severe in insisting on the pitiless retributive punishment of the base and foolish unwise. 17

Even when the cosmopolitan idea became more concrete during the Roman Empire, its motivation was far from that of modern cosmopolitans. Cicero’s infamous words epitomize the imperialist motivation of the Roman Republic’s usage. Nor will there be one law for Rome, a different for Athens, or different laws at one time and then another; but for all nations and for all time one semipiternal and immutable law, and one common as it were magistrate and rule over allthat is, god, who is of this law the founder, the judge, and the promulgator. 18

A variety of cultures, laws, and even moral norms of independent civic life, which had been celebrated in the past, became a potential threat. To sustain the massive scale of the political institution of the Roman Empire, the rulers had to come up with ideas and political measures to unify different voices and colors within the large territories stretching from the north-western Europe to the Near East and the Mediterranean lands at its height. The unifying power did not just come from physical strengths such as the sophisticated system of administration, the formidable, disciplined army, and the welldeveloped infrastructure, including strategically placed forts and efficient networks of roads. It also came from the rulers’ and the elite’s political ambition and vision to ever expand and transcend their political and philosophical boundaries. The concept of cosmopolitanism, which had appeared sporadically and used impractically in in the ancient intellectual history was developed and expanded into a subject of more serious intellectual and political conversations in the Enlightenment Era. Instead of being an expected outcome of a cynicism or criticism against an established system or norm, the cosmopolitan thought came to be perceived as a necessary virtue to become a better human being, build a better community, and also enjoy a more successful life

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in the 18th century’s new economic and political environment. The idea of universal community and world citizen began to descend from the overly philosophical discussion to practical conversations of more down-to-earth concerns. The remarkable changes and challenges coming from all sectors of life nurtured and intensified our desire for transcendence, which had been traditionally taken care of by our philosophical amusement. The acceleration of scientific revolution not only changed our view of the physical world but also offered us various instruments through which we can leap from the parochial, feudalistic mindset to an open-ended political possibility. Our critical thinking sharpened with unrestrained use of reason and armed with experimental attitudes pushed us to challenge any force that hindered our creativity. In particular, the supremacy of church authority and the traditional model of political authority and community were hit the hardest. Synthesizing the greater respect of rational thinking acquired from their love of classic Greek philosophy and literature Greek, particularly Stoic emphasis on natural law, and Christian idea of equality of man, Enlightenment thinkers produced various levels of cosmopolitan thoughts. Some thinkers such as Christoph Martin Wieland, a representative writer of the German Rocco period, focused on identifying the indisputable non-religious foundation of universal belonging, which was the exquisite balance between reason and emotion. Fougeret de Montbron identified himself as a cosmopolitan in his 1753 autobiographical report, Le Cosmopolite. He talks about his free spirit and his unbound citizenship. He declared, “All the countries are the same to me” and “[I am] changing my places of residence according to my whim” 19 Others tried to come up with practical, institutional solutions to international conflicts through a transformation of our political consciousness and our sense of community. For example, Samuel von Pufendorfs, another great German philosopher, inspired by Hugo Grotius’ philosophy of natural law, began to advocate the necessity of the implementation of international law, envisioning a transnational community in which individual state would act as moral agent to build and sustain global peace. 20 Some thinkers like Anacharsis Cloots took a step further. He tried to utilize the French Revolution to realize his political ambition to establish a single state of mankind. These rejuvenated ideas of the universal foundation of human community and experimental and sometimes revolutionary attempts for political development laid a good groundwork for Kant’s further development of cosmopolitanism. Sharing the neo-Stoic rationale, which explained the necessity of an integration of cosmopolitan metaphysics and practical political measures to solve various problems of internationalized world, Kant tried to build a stronger theoretical framework for this ambitious view of human community and political interaction. Kant’s metaphysically grounded political discussions particularly through his two major works, Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical

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Sketch and Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784) not only addressed clearly the theoretical flaw of the Stoic model but also found a firmer ground for the universal community, which was more meaningful for an institutional change and growth of politics. Differing from the Stoics, Kant did not accept slavery. He did not want this political idea to be another elitist project. He recognized the dark side of European colonialism and imperialistic expansion. For him, the pursuit of knowledge through reason liberates, not enslaves people. As Williams (2014) notes in his reading of An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? in the Berlinischer Monatsschrift, Kant believed that “knowledge and the pursuit of freedom are intimately interlinked.” 21 Although accused by some African philosophers such as E. Chukwudi Eze of being “a representative of blinkered Eurocentrism,” 22 Kant’s political views did grow into a more progressive philosophy. Particularly in his later writings, including The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant evaluated the European colonialism as “one of brutal domination.” 23 Since reason is the natural, universal gift, this ambitious political imagination should be realized by a collaborative work of all human beings regardless of the race, social status, and country. Thus, the idea of being a citizen of the world does not come from an elitist enlightenment but from the universal morals formed by a civilized interaction, cooperation, and consensus of rational individuals and states. Another point that makes Kant look more elaborate than other neo-Stoic thinkers of the early Enlightenment period was his effort to separate the foundation of morality from theology. In contrast to many Christian cosmopolitans seeking the telos of human existence and the grounding of the universal community in a divine narrative, Kant believed that the universal purpose for both the individual and the community comes from “practical reason and his metaphysics of morals.” 24 The concept of God may be universal. However, our conceptualization of God is parochial, hierarchical, and often divisive. Theology as a system of thoughts about our spiritual experiences can be swayed anytime by a variety of feelings and desires. Once theology is settled as a system by a religious institution, it loses power to adapt itself to effectively respond to constantly changing human problems. For Kant, it is reason, not theology, that allows us to transcend any barrier to our effort to build a cosmopolitan community because it helps construct sustainable universal norms and standards of behavior. On the Kant’s vision of cosmopolitan rights, Hooft says, “These (cosmopolitan) rights and standards are rights held by any human being no matter what their citizen-ship or membership of a defined community. Whereas international law binds states in their relationships with each other, cosmopolitan law binds individuals globally.” 25 Thus, Kant’s idea has been recognized as the first authentic modern philosophy of cosmopolitanism, which contributed to the foundation of Interna-

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tional Court of Justice and Criminal Court. However, his idea was far from perfect in dealing with the complexity of modern problems in the international world. Based on his philosophy of the universality of rational capacity, Kant believed that our interpersonal and relational virtues in the personal level could be transferred or translated into political measures in the state level. States are not humans. They are institutional entities run mostly by a small number of policy makers, who claim to represent the collective will of their people. Although capable of interacting with each other, states cannot moral feelings as individual humans do. They are, in nature, not able to express the feeling of transcendence as individual humans do. Highest virtues, which make human species special, such as empathy and sacrifice, cannot be found in both the purpose and the drive of states. The cosmopolitan model that Kant was envisioning was not a single universal community in which every human being enjoys the same citizenship, rights and duties. It was rather an international community, which states would build to help their people travel other countries without the fear of a deprivation of basic human rights or unjust treatment. In other words, he was thinking about a cosmopolitan community in which the state systems of civilized rational individuals would build an international society that would work with democratic consensus, law, and order. The problem is that this system does not promote universal belonging but universal hospitality. It is minimal and defensive, intended primarily to secure rights of guest, travelers, and strangers in a foreign country. Social contract thinkers in the 17th and 18th century continued this conversation with a different focus. The philosophical discussion by three representative figures including Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau on the state of nature as the foundation of political relation and community and political rights contained a possibility of cosmopolitan vision. Although specific types of cosmopolitan system were never articulated, they all laid rational grounds for the justification of a larger, fair international relations and community. Since the individual’s inner reflection and assessment of security and success was the common starting point, their arguments on the nature of political and political community were defensive, utilitarian, and pragmatic. 26 Numerous intellectuals of the 21st century have tried to respond to these shortcomings of these unriped models of antiquity and Enlightenment. The idea of cosmopolitanism has been further articulated, reassessed, and redirected by many contemporary thinkers for new agendas. Some efforts are classified by their focus-legal cosmopolitanism, political cosmopolitanism, cultural cosmopolitanism, civic cosmopolitanism, moral cosmopolitanism, etc. Some efforts are classified by the level of respect for or loyalty to one’s own culture-Thick vs. Think cosmopolitanism. Others are classified by the level of implementation-Weak and Strong Cosmopolitanism, Extreme and Moderate Cosmopolitanism, etc. The effort to overcome the problems of the

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Eurocentric elitism and the theoretical approaches inclined too much to metaphysical discussions have been particularly noticeable. John Rawls, who has made a great contribution to moral and political philosophy, allowed many cosmopolitan thinkers to reexamine their systems from the view of justice in international relations. His hypothetical device of the original position through the veil of ignorance helped us see the complexity of fairness in building a democratic community and an ideal contractual situation for individuals with different capabilities, interests, and status. Some cosmopolitan thinkers saw the utility of Rawls’ model in constructing a global scale of fairness and justice. For example, Charls Beitz believes that Rawls’s contractarian device is applicable to global scale, talking about “global original position.” 27 Simon Caney also argues that most society-wide principle of justice should be transferrable to global principles of distributive justice. 28 Others thought that his conceptual framework of justice could not work in the international dimension. Rawls himself did not see a viability of global justice and cosmopolitanism. 29 He thought that a very important precondition for the original position was hard to be in place to think about a fair contractual relation in international community. For his system of justice to work in a community, individuals must be liberal and decent individuals. They should take democratic values and procedures as a common grounding in establishing a sense of belonging and shaping their pattern of interaction over consensus. However, the understanding and institutional expressions of liberal democracy are still controversial. A simple recognition of the Western liberal democracy as the ideological default for cosmopolitan governance and a simple expectation of its implementation into foreign policies of all participant states are too ambitious at best and too dangerous at worst. It may cause another version of imperialism. For Rawls, if the original position has to work in international scale, participant states need to voluntarily have a shared understanding of democracy and its procedures. In other words, he did not believe that a cosmopolitan system would come soon with the invention of a revolutionary theoretical framework of international community or a transformation of individuals’ political consciousness. According to Rawls, as participant states accept the fact that democracy is innately connected with justice and as they are willing to translate it into their domestic contractual system and foreign policy, a cosmopolitan community becomes possible. 30 Habermas, who has made a remarkable contribution to bridging the gap between the continental and Anglo-American philosophical traditions, has been phenomenal in moving forward the Enlightenment tradition seeking the development of human society through a proper understanding and utilization of our rational faculty and civilized social interaction. His theories covering a variety of subjects are also anchored with the common concerns of major cosmopolitan thinkers discussed above and present a meaningful in-

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sight. For Habermas, our rational faculty and innate moral law or an advancement of our political institutions are not the reliable foundation of the cosmopolitan community. For example, he criticized Rousseau’s foundation as “a danger of a tyranny of community,” while Kant’s framework as the danger of a tyranny of reason.” 31 For Hegel’s foundation giving more credit to the history of the community, Habermas emphasizes the power of the individual’s autonomy and freewill. According to Habermas’ theory of public sphere, a strong social solidarity does not come from individuals’ awareness of their deontological duties as Kant argued. Nor can it be sustained by the arbitrary power of an authority. Whether in state level or international level, a sense of political belonging, unity, and solidarity is generated by a shared understanding, recognition, and acceptance of basic rights and justice derived from the notion of universal human dignity. A cosmopolitan commitment cannot be simply made on the basis of our moral feelings or a special institutional makeup. Habermas advocated the process of democracy transpiring through the autonomous individuals’ rational thinking guided by universal moral feelings and their active engagement in making consensus over matters of interest with equally positioned others. This process is not just an interaction of emotionally engaging individuals but an outcome of ethical, legal, and institutional discourses of people of different nationalities. Grieff argues that Habermas defends “the establishment of supranational institutions with executive, legislative, and judicial powers” and “the creation of appropriate representative democratic procedures at the supranational level.” In particular, his support for a European Parliament and the enhanced executive functions of the United Nations is a good example. Although Habermas explicitly rejects “the ambition of a world democratic state,” he supports democratic procedures and legal protections beyond the framework of the nation-state. He envisions a legal cosmopolitanism, which can transcend the specific ethical substance of the modern nation-state. What makes him more practical and institutionally engaging than other moral cosmopolitans is his embracing of the value of the nation. In contrast to some idealists rejecting completely the political justification and the institutional efficacy of the existing political system, Habermas tried to draw a cosmopolitan secret from the ecology of the nation-state system. Following Benedict Anderson’s line of thought in Imagined Communities, he recognized the innovative aspects of the nation. Comparing the nation-state to the medieval feudal system based on ethnicity, a common language, or a shared culture, Habermas believes that the very idea of the nation comes from “the bonds of mutual solidarity among former strangers.” 32 For him, this political development from a parochial community sustained by traditional bonds into a community of shared interests and ideals and contractual relations is a positive sign for an establishment of a supranational integration. Like Derrida’s thought revealed in his concept of Democracy to Come, Habermas does not

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wait for an advanced international political system but for a new sense of democracy or democratic dialogue that would organically build a sense of international community. He advocated a procedural constitutional democracy recognized, updated, and executed voluntarily by people of different nation-states. He focuses on the process, interaction, and discourse in which people would engage to form a supranational bond and duty, not “a simple codification of predetermined, abstract moral rules.” 33 David Held, one of the most prominent experts in cosmopolitan democracy, shares the common concern of modern cosmopolitans about what we can do institutionally to come up with a both justifiable and workable global community. In his book, Cosmopolitanism, Ideals and Realities, Held, like Habermas, tried to find the proper domain of cosmopolitanism. A sustainable global community cannot be established simply by a transformation of the political consciousness of the people. Personal moral enlightenment alone cannot guarantee a change or progress of political reality. There is always a gap between what people think and feel and how their political community can represent their collective will. He inherits the Kantian solution taking the nation-state system as the platform to build a sense of cosmopolitan community and shares the Habermasian emphasis on the discoursive process in creating an international democracy, which can be accepted as just, reasonable, and effective by participant nations from all spectrums of political and economic status. Held characterized his cosmopolitan vision as a mixture of thick and thin models. While recognizing the existence and necessity of some universal values such as fundamental human rights, he suggests a creativity and flexibility in selecting the values to be taken as universal and implementing them into a particular national setting. 34 It means that a cosmopolitan community is not a new institutional entity. It is a sense of solidarity that makes participant nations and their people feel mutually connected and dependent to secure and advance their rights. It is not an organization but a system of interaction and relations. As Kant envisioned in Perpetual Peace, nations are the agent that creates cosmopolitan virtue, relationship, and worldview. He said, “Cosmopolitanism becomes a means whereby national and global cultures can be mediated above the national sphere, but still through it.” 35 Although it is important to have in place some metaphysical liberal tenets, the cosmopolitan community should be built by an impersonal structure of public power. He takes more seriously the power of our institutional efforts, including foreign policy, internal laws, and the translation of the nation-state governance into the international. According to Leung, to have viable legal and institutional measures, Held encourages “a mechanism to promote competition and debate between alternative political platforms.” 36 Along with these theories focusing on the building process of cosmopolitanism, there has been a lively academic debate over the foundation. Some

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thinkers have put more weight on multiculturalism and others on universalism. For example, Appiah believes that a deep appreciation and reflection of multiculturalism would gradually lead to cosmopolitanism. He meant that those who have a high multicultural intelligence would not only have a firm identity for their socio-cultural and political belonging but also take “a keen interest in the cultures and ways of life of other people.” 37 He said, “In the human community, as in national community, we need to develop habits of coexistence” and continues, “Conversation does not have to lead to consensus about anything . . . it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another.” 38 Thus, for Appiah, building a habit or virtue to embrace and coexist with people of different cultures is the foundation. In contrast, Nussbaum’s controversial essay, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism appeared in the Boston Review in 1994 revived the universalist argument. Uncritically promoted multiculturalism can hinder our international political progress. 39 She argued that we have to lay our cosmopolitan foundation in our basic rights anchored in human dignity and potential. In her essay, she said, “We should give our first allegiance to no mere form of government, no temporal power, but to the moral community made up by the humanity of all human beings.” 40 The concept of the moral community here is formulated by our shared understanding of what human life is and what it can become. She focused on capabilities that we all humans share in common and agree upon. They are ten capabilities: 1. Life, 2. Bodily Health, 3. Bodily Integrity, 4. Senses, Imagination, and Thought, 5. Emotion, 6. Practical Reason, 7. Affiliation, 8. Other Species, 9. Play, 10. Control over One’s Environment. 41 Nussbaum argues that if we fail to recognize and work together to secure a threshold level of these ten central capabilities, we cannot live “a life worthy of human dignity.” 42 Nor can there be a room for a cosmopolitan virtue and community. The uncritically embraced and exercised multiculturalism perpetuating identity politics makes it hard for nation-states to construct a common ground to build a larger sense of community in not only improving the life conditions particularly of underdeveloped countries but also conceptualizing an institutionally tangible idea of justice for all. Therefore, she suggests liberal education as a solution. Influenced heavily by the ancient Greek philosophy, particularly the Stoicism, Nusssbaum expects, according to Naseem and Hyslop-Margison, 43 three different outcomes from the liberal education. First, liberal education would enhance our self-examination skill. Like the gadfly representing Socrates’ philosophical lifestyle, a cultivated critical view and examination of life would continue to reassess our morals, politics, and material conditions. It will help us effectively identify and fix the problems of our society and set a new direction for the future. Second, a variety of learning methodologies and contents of liberal education would inspire us to go beyond our parochial mindset and worldview to think about a global moral and human community. Lastly, liberal education would

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nurture our capacity for narrative imagination to envision a larger sense of community. As more exposed to different people through literature, history, and cultural learning, we would strengthen our communication skills. Different and sometimes conflicting storytellings would allow us to reassess our narratives of what life ought to be and to reflect on the possibility of a universally shared notion of community. Although accused of being Eurocentric/Americentric and being ignorant of class dynamic, her capabilities doctrine is considered to a meaningful effort to identify the foundation and motivation of cosmopolitanism in a balanced focus between entitlement/ rights and ability. TWO GROUNDINGS OF HAM SOK HON’S COSMOPOLITAN VISION The ssial philosophy discussed in Chapter V is both the spiritual and philosophical source and telos of Ham’s political thoughts. For Ham, politics is part of human nature and a very important instrument to express the feeling of transcendence in our power-and-spirit-seeking reality. Politics allows us to not only experience the shadow of our egotistic desire but also discover within us the light to reconcile and reconnect with people on the other side of the territory. The reason why we experience the dark side of this paradox is not because of the nature of politics per se but because of the false and incomplete understanding and use of politics. The dominant understanding of politics has long been formed by our misguided passion to perfect the system of our relations and interaction with others. Particularly since the Enlightenment Era, politics has been reduced to a human activity aiming to optimize life conditions to secure and sustain temporary peace and maximize our interests. Not many of us recognize the function of politics linked to the divine task to actualize the full potential of human existence. Of course, politics is a system of thoughts, values, and behaviors, derived from and intended to generate, a communal sense of self and a collaborative way of creating a larger sense of good and building a distinctive community. The problem of politics comes from the false mode we take. In human history, some politics is driven by the religious mode, which can be easily found in a primitive society in which politics was manipulated, abused, and dominated by the religious elite and their agendas. Some politics is degraded to a servitude to an economic mode, which is best represented by our contemporary Western democracy taken hostage by the unrestrainable global capitalism. Other politics is instrumentalized by our ideological ambition for a utopia. The communist project having envisioned a stateless and classless society was the best example. With these modes, the idea of cosmopolitanism is simply a political strategy and consciousness to build an optical politi-

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cal organization. Since the common focus of all these modes is on changing and improving the external life conditions, the traditional cosmopolitan have been accused of being aggressive, paternalistic, and even power mongering. They have been expressed in a variety of negative forms, including imperialism, colonialism, religious universalism, and ideologically driven global movement. Ham assessed our current experience of politics as follows: 정치는 있을 수밖에 없었다. 나와 너는 끝없이 낙원 속에만 있을 수 없다. 국(國)은 부서지게 마련이요 쫓겨나게 마련이다. 나와 너는 ‘것’으로 타락 하게 마련이다. 정치는 거기서 나온다. 정치는 아무리 착하게 하는 덕치 (德治)와 인정(仁政)이라 해도 벌써 나와 너의 산 순수한 인격의 관련이 아니다. 그것은 나와 것의 관계다. 너가 아니고 것인지라, 인격이 아니고 물건인지라 거기는 강제가 있을 수밖에 없다. 그러므로 정치의 길은 지배 와 피지배의 관계로 타락하게 마련이다. 44 Politics is indispensable. It is not possible that you and I live in an endless heaven. The state is destined to be shattered and expelled. You and I are destined to degenerate as a thing. There comes politics. No matter how good and virtuous our politics may be, it does not represent the genuine characters of I and thou. It is about I and it. Since you are it rather than thou and you are a thing rather than a person, there is always coercion. Therefore, politics is destined to become a relationship between the ruler and the ruled.

However, for Ham, politics has a divine purpose. Cosmopolitanism as a political expression and practice should be understood accordingly. Politics should be guided, inspired, and manifested by a divine intelligence, character, and will, with which all political agents should be equipped. Although, as defined by many others, politics is a system of thoughts and activities to deal with our relational, organizational, and power-related issues, it has a deep internal connection with the fundamental source of human existence. This connection is something that the sisal philosophy would reveal. Ham believes that politics is the social outlet for our divine impulse, which ceaselessly expands and ascends. People, who are enlightened of ssial, cannot live any more the old self, which is shackled with unjustly imposed religious and social identities and worldviews. Although being able to live alone, we have an irresistible inner calling and drive to connect to others and even to those who might put ourselves in a vulnerable position. Although being able to be happy about who we are, we have a higher calling of who we ought to be. In other words, for Ham, politics is a techne to express our sociological responses to these profound callings. It is also an arete revealing the maturity of our character and spirituality. Unfortunately, as in traditional understandings, politics usually becomes a tool to draw a boundary of interest, gather like-minded people together, win power, build a community, and compromise over peace and security. We only look at the instrumental side of politics to satisfy our

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material desire, losing sight of its more fundamental potentials. However, politics can be a tool to manifest our spiritual maturity and drive. Ham argues that the type and use of politics should be in line with our spiritual maturity. Being spiritual here means our inner drive to go beyond how we are defined and limited, not simply being religious. A political system is an inevitable outcome of how we understand life, others, and the world. It is the physical manifestation of an enlightened ontology, theology, and cosmology rather than a simple social activity. Ham suggests a new mode: the mode that can raise our politics on a higher platform than those of religion, economy, and ideology. In summary, a genuine sense of cosmopolitan community is generated as we get out of the outdated, defensive mode of politics seeking an ego-centric security, success, and prosperity and move to a new mode of politics pursuing universal belonging, interdependence, and co-prosperity. His sisal philosophy lays the foundation of this new mode of politics because the sisalawakened political agent looks at what the conventional political agents may not be able to see in conceptualizing and building a true community of humanity. Philosophical Project Ham’s ssial philosophy as a new mode of politics for cosmopolitanism shows two distinctive characteristics. First, his idea of politics and vision for cosmopolitanism is a philosophical project. Philosophy here does not mean an academic field or a theoretical basis of a body of knowledge but a way of life and an attitude equipped with critical thinking and reflective mind. It is a new power that would usher in a new era. Ham said: 이제는 힘의 철학 시대가 지나갔습니다. 이것을 모르고 자꾸 힘을 양성하 고 힘만 믿고 있으니 인간이 멸망을 자초하고 있는 것입니다. 지금이야말 로 사랑의 철학 시대가 왔습니다. 새로운 관념을 가져야 할 때가 온 것입 니다. 45 Now the era of the philosophy of power has gone. We incurred downfall because we try to enhance and rely on power, not knowing the truth. Now is the age of philosophy. It is time to have new ideas.

Philosophy brings a set of ideas, values, views, directions, behavioral patterns, and responses. More importantly, it generates a personal and collective character. Collectively shared and accepted ideas of human nature, interaction, and community lead to a particular political reality and system. Think about monarchy as an outcome of a philosophy. It shows that any political vision or measure is guided by the philosophy of the people. For instance, a strong, just monarchy can be established not by an elitist machination but by

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a consensus of the subjects. As a devoted educator, Ham always enjoyed philosophical pondering and encouraged the people to do the same. For him, philosophy is a rational way to identify and take off the old worn-out self and to cultivate a new self. It allows us to see, reflect on, and analyze the problems of our life and to escalate our epistemological horizon into a constant self-reflective and transcendent mode. It reminds us of ourselves as a transcendent being. It challenges us to find out what is more essential than our physical reality, what is more ultimate than our immediate reality demands, and what is more profound in value than our present justice. Particularly for political matters, it helps us see what is beyond what we have taken for granted for the notion of fairness. Through his ssial philosophy, Ham recognizes the value of philosophical life particularly in envisioning a cosmopolitan community. Just as clarified when Russell distinguishes the philosophical man from the practical man, philosophy best represents our transcendent ability, which is a key element for the full human being and the foundation of cosmopolitanism. To come up with the basic principle of living together with people without any consideration of social affiliations such as race and religion and politics, we all need to be a philosopher, who thinks deeply and acts wisely. We need to get out of the Platonic cave, breaking the intellectual, cultural and religious bondages. People transformed as the ssial are supposed to live a philosophical life because they all should be ready to become a gadfly in their society. They should be willing to embrace any challenge of who they are and to accommodate their identity to better adapt to a new moral situation. In particular, this magnificent political project of cosmopolitanism cannot be launched without an extremely open-minded attitude. Russell said on the transcendent value and function of philosophy, “It cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions.” The main value of philosophy is uncertainty, open-mindedness, self-reflection and criticism, and dialogic attitude to yield a better answer and solution. Similarly, the thought system of ssial is not anchored in a particular city, race, culture, and ideology. As articulated in the previous chapter of ssial, it is based on saengmyeong, life, whose notion dissolves distinctive identities of the individual beings into an organic unity, chŏnch’e (전체), driven by the spirit of freedom. Responding to Park Nam Sun’s question on the value of education, Ham recognizes this profound value of transcendent ability as an essential part of human existence. Differing from other species, human beings feel a sense of restraint even when free. Regardless of the objective qualities of our life conditions, we constantly feel deficiency and seek a way to make it better. The Platonic light in the allegory is not a physical reality existing outside of us but within our nature. Politics, which gives an order and system to our relational chaos and threats, should be always in the philosophical mode

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constantly defying institutional and ideological complacency, settlement, and fixation. Therefore, the cosmopolitan vision formulated by his ssial philosophy demands this philosophical attitude of the political agent. Here is how Ham articulates the power of our transcendent ability in moving our society forward. 살다 보면 자신이 속해 있는 사회가 그것을 구속하는 것을 느끼게 되는 데, 그런 구속감 때문에 왜 내가 보고 싶은데 볼 수 없나, 하고 싶은데 할 수 없나 하는 갈등도 생기고, 더 나가서는 내가 하필이면 왜 이런 집, 이런 나라에서 태어났을까 하는 의문도 생기는 것이지. 물론 대답할 수 없는 문제들이지만 그런 생각을 할 수 있어야 해. 그런 생각이 있는 사람과 없 는 사람의 차이가 어떤가 한번 생각해 보시오. 그런 생각이 없으면 절름 발이로 태어났으면 절름발이로 살고 앞이 안 보이면 안 보이는 대로 살아 가는 것 아니요. 그거야 어디 동물과 똑같지 않은가, 동물이야 죽고 사는 생각 안하니 죽으면 죽는 거고 살면 사는거고… 하지만 늘’왜 이렇지’하 고 생각하다 보면 마음이 몹시 괴롭지. 가만히 있으면 바람이 없지만 달 려가면 바람이 생기잖아, 그래도 내 생각에 생명이란, 한없이 발전하고자 하는 것이니, 많은 저항을 받으면서도 발전을 꾀하는 것이야. 46 We often feel in life that the society restrains us. This feeling makes us ponder over why we can’t see what we want to see, why we can’t do what we want to do, and furthermore why we were born in this home and in this country. Although these questions may be not all answerable, we still have to ask. Think about the difference between those who ask and those who don’t. Without this thought, we just live as a limper if born as limper and live as a blind person if born as blind. What makes this life different from the animals? Animals live and die in due course because they don’t ponder over life and death. However, we are distressed by thinking why things are what they are. If you keep still, there is no wind. But, if you run, you can feel wind. This is what life is. It ceaselessly tries to develop and strives to grow in the face of resistance.

Ham’s life-long objective of minjung-kyemong (민중 계몽, people’s enlightenment) confirms his ssial-inspired-cosmopolitanism as a philosophical project. According to Ham, cosmopolitanism is not a system but a state of political consciousness equipped with critical thinking and creativity. A new humanity and civilization, which could embrace and bind all differences together in a single organism can be drawn by a transformation of the people’s philosophy. Without a profound philosophy in the people’s thought and character, a sublime human community like cosmopolitanism cannot be possible. What is notable here is that this new philosophy as a way of life, worldview, and moral will cannot be found in the Western intellectual resources. Ham argues that although Western philosophy played a critical role for the scientific revolution and modernism, it has lost its grip on moving our life forward to another new stage. Quoting an Indian philosopher, Ham points out that the saenghwal ch’ŏrhak (생활철학, life philosophy), which

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the ssial have to adopt, should be something that can transform our life. It should be beyond the instrumental dimension of computation and analysis. While the former is the Eastern study, the latter is the Western study. He classified philosophy, stating “While the sŏyang hangmun (서양학문, Western Study) is aimed at the accumulation of information, the tongyang hangmun (동양학문, Eastern Study) pursues the transformation of character.” 47 To realize a future community of humanity, we must live with the true philosophy, which is able to not only bring us knowledge to enhance our intelligence to effectively evaluate and use available resources to better survive but also transform this knowledge into wisdom to better shape our axiology. Knowledge itself that we acquire in and for our context is often malfunctioning and even invalid when applied to an interaction with people from very different boundaries. It should always be revisited, refined, and reformed for different experiences. What makes this transformation possible is the wisdom that Ham believed ssial philosophy can cultivate. The lower level philosophy intended to pursue only knowledge is not a living philosophy but just an intellectual entertainment. Here is how Ham pointed out the problem of the low-level philosophy. 그때에 그가 맞잡고 열심으로 싸웠던 소피스트들도 지식은 굉장히 많은 사람들이었습니다. 그러나 그들을 궤변학파라고 부르는 것은 그 지식이 실학이 아니고, 즉 실지 인생을 위한 학문이 아니고, 한낱 지식을 위한 지 식, 치우친 지식이었으므로 하는 말입니다. 48 Even the Sophists, with whom Socrates was struggling, were extremely knowledgeable. However, the reason why they were called Sophists and skeptics was because their knowledge was not practical, which means that it was not for life. It was lopsided, being knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

According to Ham, a cosmopolitan community, which demands a tremendous amount and level of intellectual open-mindedness and ethical and political creativity, cannot be possible without the individual citizen whose disposition and character have been cultivated by the philosophical attitude constantly seeking wisdom of life. The ssialized minjung (the ssial-transformed people) are the philosophers not in the sense that they are intellectually extraordinary but in the sense that they apply into their everyday life the wisdom drawn from the socio-political translation of the feeling of transcendence to find a way to live without territories. In his criticism of statism, Ham denounced both pillars of the world’s political and economic systems, which were capitalism and communism. He argued that the reason why humanity was suffering from the Cold War was because people did not recognize their divine nature nor do they trust their power to lead history. They were brainwashed by the powerful to think and

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live as followers. The state deceives, manipulates, exploits, and enslaves the people for its own survival and prosperity. Ham said: 우리는 그런 우상적인 국가주의를 초월해야 한다…우리 스스로를 믿으 면 태양이 따로 오는 것이 아니다. 우리 스스로를 믿고 서로 사랑하면 그 것이 곧 그 우상을 녹여 없어지게 하는 태양이다. 49 We have to transcend such an idolatrous statism. . . . If we trust ourselves, there is no need to wait for the sun. The power that we trust and love each other is the sun that will melt away the idol. 의심이 곧 우상을 불러들이는 악마의 겨울바람이다. 그러기에 냉전이라 하지 않던가? 스스로를 믿지 못하는 공포의 찬바람이 우리 모두를 얼어 죽게 만들었던 것이다. 서로서로 믿지 못하고 미워했을 때, 우리 혼은 모 두 얼어 국가주의라는 우상의 종이 되어 서로 서로를 욕하고 미워하여 서 로 서로를 시체로 만들었다. 생명은 죽는 법이 절대 없다. 우리 스스로가 생명의 자녀임을 잊어버리고 악마의 국가주의의 거짓 선정에 속아서는 안 된다. 자본주의니 공산주의니 하지만 문제는 거기 있는 것이 아니다. 자본주의는 물론죄악이지만 공산주의도 마찬가지로 잘못이다. 그 두 가 지는 수단으로 하는 선전이요 싸움이지 근본 문제가 아니다. 보라, 지금 계급투쟁을 그렇게 외치던 공산주의도 돈 벌려고 미쳐 돌 아가지 않던 가? 정말 속셈은 독수리도 곰도 똑같이 국가 지상주의에 있다. 내가 모든 것을 주장하겠다는 것이다. 보라, 평등이니 뭐니 하면서도 인간을 즘생으 로 만들어 영구히 지배하겠다는 욕심을 그대로 지니고 있다. 둘이 다 둘 만 아니라, 모든 강대국이 똑같이 지배주의다. 우리가 거기 속아 약자인 우리끼리 서로 의심했기 때문에 우리는 속아 얼어 죽은 시체가 되었지 만. . . . 50 Doubt is the devil’s winter wind that invites the idol. That’s why it is called the Cold War. The wind of terror that has deprived us of our trust has made us frozen to death. When distrusting each other, our spirit has become a servant of the idol called the state and has made each other a corpse, cursing and hating everyone. Life never dies in principle. We should not forget ourselves as the child of life and be deceived by the propaganda of statism. People argue over capitalism and communism. The problem is beyond that. Although capitalism is sinful, communism does not differ much from it. They are not the fundamental problem but just instruments of propaganda and fight. Behold, is even the communism emphasizing class struggle not going crazy about making money? The ulterior motive of both the eagle and bear is the statism. They try to assert their own point of view only. Behold, even if talking about equality or whatever, they have the greed to control humans eternally by making them brutes. It is not just the two. All other powerful nations try to dominate too. Deceived by them, we the powerless doubt each other and thereby have been frozen to death. . . .

In other words, the era of power in which all the nations are run by a few powerful men with the defensive mindset and philosophy seeking parochial security and prosperity, has gone. The ssial are experiencing the limit and

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injustice of the power-driven leadership and they have been intellectually and spiritually empowered to take the lead in history. They are the one that suffered the harmful effects of power. They are the one that has discovered the breakthrough, which is love. 지금이야말로 사랑의 철학 시대가 왔습니다. 새로운 관념을 가져야 할 때 가 온 것입니다 . . . 힘의 대결은 곧 인류가 공멸한다는 것을 인간들이 알 게 되었습니다. 그러므로 앞으로의 역사는 달라집니다. 그것은 국가주의 나라는 개인주의를 위한 힘의 철학은 탈피해야 됩니다. 평화로 통일이 불 가능하다면 힘으로 전쟁의 통일은 더욱 불가능할 것입니다. 앞으로 차원 높은 이념이 나와야 평화 유지가 될 것입니다. 51 Now has the era of love come. It is time to have new ideas. . . . People have gotten to know that power struggle shall bring only co-destruction to humanity. Therefore, the history to be written in the future shall change. It should break from the philosophy of power driven by statism and egotistic individualism. If the unification is not possible through peace, the unification by war though the principle of power would be more impossible. Thus, a higher level of ruling ideology should precede to sustain peace.

Spiritual Project The second aspect of Ham’s ssial philosophy is his emphasis on spirituality in politics. As explained in Chapter V, all human activities, particularly politics, cannot be fully explained without spirituality. In his theological eyes, history is a grand design of God in which every single life activity manifests meaning and purpose in interaction with others. Politics as a brush of the calligraphic art of history is no exception. It is an institutionalized expression of our feeling of transcendence endlessly seeking a better perspective and relation of humans. To accurately diagnose the problems of our politics and envision the community of humanity, Ham believes that a good spiritual interpretation of history and politics should precede. For instance, his magnum opuses, 뜻으로 본 한국 역사한국역사 (Queen of Suffering, A Spiritual History of Korea) and 뜻으로 본 세계역사 (A World History from the Viewpoint of Meaning), were not intended to write just another narration of dramatic incidents of human life, which often appear to be an outcome of random interactions and conflicts of various historical players, but to find a profound course of history, which can be observed in a larger-scale interpretation and a deeper level of reflection. For Ham, politics is an expression of our spiritual desire. Political community is a practical outcome to show the process that our spiritual desire is translated into a grand sociological project. Ham writes: 사람은 우주적 산물이요 우주를 대표하는 자요 우주에 향하여 도전하는 자기 때문에 인사人事는 인사만으로 달아서 알려지는 것이 아니요 우주

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적 대국을 보는 큰 눈을 가지고 우주와의 산 관련에 있어서 달아서만 알 수 있는 것이다. 저의 존재에는 우주적 이유가 있고 저의 하는 일에는 우 주적 뜻이 들어 있다. 그러므로 한국역사를 정당히 이해하려면 우주사적 인 관점에서하지 않으면 안 된다. 52 Since human beings are the cosmic outcome, representative, and challenger, human affairs can be understood not just by human affairs but by a greater eye, which can observe the greater kingdom with a living relation to the cosmos. In their existence is there cosmic reason. In their work is there cosmic meaning. Therefore, a correct understanding of Korean history is possible only through a cosmic or cosmological history.

Ham tried to formulate a concept of spiritual community, in which politics is an instrument of light that we all inhere. As shared in the Book of John, this light is the divine source of our existence and the power to connect to and heal our surroundings. It is the human nature, foundational goodness, and original moral inclination and will. The ssial is Ham’s term for the light. From the outset, the ssial refers to the name of a collective identity of the oppressed, underprivileged, and alienated. When it gets deeper, the ssial can mean the type of consciousness that Ham believes would change our perspective of others and establish a borderless community. In other words, the type of political community depends on our political consciousness. It can be territorial, militant, strategic, and pragmatic for our interests. It can be also boundless, altruistic and brotherly. The style of politics and political community depends on how much our political understanding and will is inspired and empowered by the heightened spirituality. For the spiritual maturity or awakening of the people as the political agent, Ham often used different concepts such as hon (혼) to emphasize a superhuman capability in raising the utility and purpose of politics to a higher, ontological dimension. Like the united consciousness understood as Atman in Hinduism, Ham’s notion of spirit or hon was a metaphysical grounding on which every living being equally stands and feels the common moral duty for various practical political acts. Ham said: 혼이 해방이 되는 날 총은 저절로 떨어진다. 물질적인 얽 매임에서 해방 이 된 혼은 누구를 죽이지도 않고 누구에게 죽지도 않기 때문이다. 53 When the spirit is liberated, the gun falls by itself because the hon liberated from the material does not kill anyone and is not killed by anyone. 그것이 혹은 얼이다. 그 한 알이 이 끝에서는 나로 알려져 있 고 저 끝에선 하나님, 하늘, 브라만으로 알려져 있다. 54 That is al (알) or eol (얼). The one al is known as I in this end and God, heaven, or Brahman in the other end.

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According to Ham, all sallim (살림, life affairs or activities) are different expressions of the same divine journey of humanity to seek the salvation of the whole, which is the ultimate awakening to the divinity of life and the universality of natural rights. Ham expressed the unity of all human phenomena as follows: 알게 혹은 모르게 하나님이 저기 있다고 느낀 다음, 인간을 향하여 그리 나가라고 구령을 하고 몰아치는 자가 임금이요, 종교가며, 선각자요, 그 렇게 하는 활동을 정치라 하고 개혁이라 한다. 이 사랑 찾기의 여행을 위 하여 양식 준비를 하는 것이 경제며, 문명이요, 이따금 날카로운 느낌을 가진 자가 혹은 자연 속에 혹은 인생 속에 하나님의 그 모습의 번쩍하는 한 그림자를 본 것이 예술이다. 55 The one that dictates where his people should go, after feeling the divine consciously or unconsciously, is the king, religious leader, and pioneer. Acts coming out of that process are called politics and reformation. The act to prepare the food for the journey to explore the love of the divine is economy and civilization. To witness the sparkling shadow of the image of God is arts.

Spiritual Source Ham tries to bring our attention to two different aspects of spirituality in envisioning and establishing the community of humanity, into which I believe his political thought developed in his later life. One is about the source and the other about the process. According to Ham’s metaphysics, we all came from the same source of existence. In his early writings, this source was obviously the God of Christianity. All things, particularly living things, were originated by the living breath of God, and they live, grow, and prosper under his grace and providence. As Ham’s philosophy was more exposed to non-Western philosophical and religious literature and his faith became deepened and widened by various dramatic life challenges, including a series of personal and national crises, his language of the divine became more inclusive and syncretic. His understanding of the divine as the common source of our existence and vitality was gradually liberated from a doctrinal framework. His expression of God came to be more translatable with other religious languages. He must have felt that to envision a universal sense of community, a universal sense of the origin of life should precede. Unless we have the belief that we all came from the same place and that place is divine, it would be hard for us to find a strong reason and motivation to pursue a cosmopolitan community. In other words, the sanctity of the common origin is not a description of who we are but a mandate of who we ought to be. As Plotinus articulated a sense of unity in infinite variety, Ham argued that samnamansang (삼라만 상, the universe/all nature) came from hana (하나, one), which is the light and grace of God. According to Plotinus, all different natural phenomena,

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including different psychological, ethical, and spiritual states, came from the same intellect. They are different curves of the divine vibration. Deficiency, chaos, and conflict are not a sign, which undermines the plausibility of the existence of God, but rather a counterevidence to trace back to his absolute purity and perfection. What flows out from Intellect is Reason [logos], and it always flows out, for as long as Intellect is present among the things that are. But it is as when in the rational formula [logos] in a seed all [the parts] are together and in the same place, and none conflicts with another or is at variance with it or obstructs it; but when [the creature] acquires bulk different parts are in different places, and one might hinder another or even consume it. So this whole universe arose from a single intellect and was separated, and of necessity some things are friendly and kind to one another while others are hostile and at war, and some willingly, some even unwillingly injure each other; and different things, perishing, bring about the coming-to-be of one another. And as they acted and were acted upon in such ways they began a single harmony applying to them all, each singing their own songs, but Reason creating a harmony and a single ordering of them all in relation to the whole. 56

Similarly, Ham believed that multiplicity, plurality, and heterogeneity that we experience are different colors and manifestations of God’s grace. 57 Among the myriad of difference is the common force and directionality, which we can feel to find a possibility of unity because we are linked by the thread of saengmyeong (생명, life). Ham’s notion of ssial is the sociological tributary to this larger cosmic current of saengmyeong. Everything moves, grows, flourishes, and sometimes conflicts with each other. It is the saengmyeong’s differentiation process (생명의 분화과정). The ssial refers to a state of mind or a collective identity of people that guides this reality of plurality in, and tunes it to, the positive, unifying spirit of saengmyeong. People and nations have changed over time. They might continue to remain physically separate. However, Ham believed that the people with the ssial consciousness will be intentional and effective in finding creative ways to transcend the conventional barriers of politics in guarding and advancing the value of humanity in various domains of life because the enlightenment of ssial would manifest as various virtues in social reality. For instance, the virtue of the ssial is compared with the Confucian jen (human-heartedness) in the volume 4 of Voice of the People (씨알의 소리 통권 4호) . In his commentary of Wang Yang-Ming’s Interpretation of the Great Learning (大學問), Ham identifies the great man (大人) as the one that does not separate but unites things together. The one that binds things together is the person of jen and love. For Ham, the ssial is the great man. It is the person that constantly seeks to bind, connect and embrace. In particular, the great man is represented by han (한) whose sound was used in the

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past to refer to Korea. Used in various forms such as 韓, 漢, 汗, or 干, han has two positive meanings: greatness and unity. The great man is the person who sees the whole universe as one or who makes all nature one body (천지 만물을 하나로 아는 사람, 혹은 천지 만물을 한 몸으로 만드는 사람). 58 Sympathetic with Wang Yang-Ming’s interpretation, Ham believes that the person of jen, who seeks han, perceives the cosmos as his body. This virtue is not something that one can utilize for a utilitarian purpose. It is something inherent and essential coming out of our inner being. Jen is the nature and the seed to which all humans have to awaken. Ham clarifies jen by saying “Jen is love in a narrow sense, but it is also the life force or essence that makes humans human (그럼 인은 좁은 의미의 사랑만 아니라, 사람의 사람된 생 명력, 사람의 사람된 본질이다).” 59 According to Ham, the awakening to the ssial in a practical reality is a deep understanding of the common origin and the divine purpose of life that inspires us to more empathize with people and better connect with them for the common good. It was his conceptual framework to maximize both the dimension and the sanctity of the self and the human community. Like neoConfucian scholar-politicians of the Chosŏn dynasty, Ham believed that our metaphysical awareness of the cosmic unity would lead to a positive political reality because he strongly believed that it is the inner change of the person that brings the outer change of the world. The inner change is the spiritual transformation, which draws moral acts. To sum up, moral thought, impulse, will, and act are all possible because we humans share the common source of goodness, which is the principle of saengmyeong. Ham had an optimism that our intentional effort to cultivate this universal consciousness of saengmyeong would necessarily lead to a progress in various aspects of our physical reality, including politics. Furthermore, the ssial consciousness developed out of this principle of saengmyeong particularly for socio-political concerns would enlarge our imagination of community and help us continue to seek a better way to unite together. The nation-state system, which is the strongest version of human community to date, is formed by a variety of bonds such as race, culture, history, and language. However, since these bonds are artificial (人爲) and fragile in Ham’s point of view, a basis for a stronger solidarity is required. It is the ssial foundation that rewires the thought system on our identity and community. As already discussed in depth in previous sections, the notion of ssial brings our perspectives down to a more fundamental dimension of existence than artificial and historical categories can offer. All human individuals come to existence due to the same source of life. Varying drives to survive, compete, and prosper are creatively manifested channels of this larger cosmic force. Although universal and natural in origin, this force of life to grow, connect, and flourish has unfortunately succumbed to the culture of tribalism due to the dominance of the powerful materialism, which Ham anticipated to

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happen in history. However, he never lost his faith in humanity. Ham asserted and predicted that the darkest moments of this inordinate parochialism would ironically turn the wheel of our destiny for a positive direction. Sufferings and scars in history from the divisive, materialistic, artificial community would let us not only face the incurable flaw of the traditional thought system but also turn us to a deep soul searching on the ultimate solution. Ham argued that we must to strip off the artificiality (인위, 人爲) to get down to the common origin of the dignity of all people. It is to meet each other in the place of ssial from which to build an organic community, the community whose members sincerely understand and accept the dignity of each other’s desire to grow, connect, and flourish in life. Ham explains this organic community as follows: 우리는 민족이니, 국가나, 계급이니, 종파니 해서 서로 뗄 수 없다. 떼면 전체 곧 인류가 망하게 된다. 그러므로 이제 우리 당면한 문제는 개인으 로서가 아니라, 전체로서 생각하는 단계에 들어가야 한다. 사실 이 때까 지의 개인, 민족 별로 발달한 의미는 여기 이르러서야 정말 그 의미를 가 지게 된다. 60 Nation, state, class, or denomination cannot separate us. If so, the whole mankind would fail. Therefore, the problem that we are facing now should be dealt with by the thought of not the individual but the whole. As a matter of a fact, this is the point when we can find the true reason of why individuals and nations have developed separately this far.

The organic community, which Ham actually tried to build with the ssial kongdongch’e (씨알공동체, ssial community), is based on the philosophy that every individuals shares the inner seed of the heart (마음 속의 씨). 61 The seed of the heart does grow into different organic bodies in physical dimension but moves toward a single source in collective consciousness. Ham expressed this process as “a flowing back to the whole (전체로 흘러들 어가는 과정). He says, “What produced seed is forest. What reclaims forest is seed (씨를 메기자는 것이 숲이요, 숲을 이루자는 거이 씨다).” 62 The return to the seed in the anthropological sense is that the full human person is realized. It means that we spiritually become enlightened and intellectually and physically wise and strong. Ham described this neo-Platonic process of flowing-back as follows: 하나는 영, 육을 갖추고 지.정.의의 활동을 하는 한 개 사람으로, 나서 자 라고 죽는 누구나 다 같이 걷는 인생로를 걷는, 일생의 완성을 목적으로 하는, 현실의 인간으로서 하는 것이요, 또 하나는 자기 존재의 배경이 되 고, 생활 근원이 되고 활동의 터전이 되고, 정신의 교섭자가 되는 이 세계 를 영원에서 흘러나와 영원으로 흘러드는 이 생명 행렬을 의미적으로 파 악하는 정신으로 하는 일이다. 63

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One (task) is to do as an individual person of the present, who performs the act of intellect, emotion, and volition and aims at the completion of life, equipped with body and soul. The other is to do as the spirit that grasps the world meaningfully, which is the origin and background of their existence, as the procession of lives flowing out of and back to eternity.

Spiritual Process The other aspect of spirituality is process. The ssial expressed as hansaram (한 사람, the great man) reflects the inner change intended to benefit the cosmic community. In his further explication of the great man, Ham presents four different types of person in engaging in the world. They are not only types of human character but also developing stages of personhood. The enlightenment of ssial represents the ultimate stage of our moral and political consciousness. We came from the same source, grow in different forms and shapes, and prosper through coming back to the original ontological place. 64 It is not an evolutionary process of the self, which assumes struggle and survival, but a cultivation process in which a heightened state of our physical and spiritual capacities builds a stronger sense of universal community. This spiritual process is a state in which tawŏnhwa (다원화, pluralization) and irwŏnhwa(일원화, singularization) remain simultaneously active. Ham understood this mutually growing process as a divine communication or connection. He expressed it as yŏnjŏp (연접, connection). Trying to distinguish the human being from other species in A World History from the Viewpoint of Meaning (뜻으로 본 세계역사), Ham argued that the development of the brain has clearly revealed the connection between the two realms of human existence. He said, “The connection between the two worlds has been revealed. They are the spiritual dimension (영계, 靈界) above and the other the physical dimension (육계, 肉界) below.” 65 The development and expansion of the physical dimension represents the growth of the housekeeping of our species (살림, sallim). The development of the spiritual dimension represents the process of returning to our divine, unified origin. The former creates forms, builds structures, and draws boundaries. The latter challenges those intellectual and physical frames and limits, to constantly respond to the ever-emerging feeling of transcendence, which always leads to a recreation of our sallim. It is our voluntary and volitional recognition of the common origin of existence that tunes these seemingly conflicting realms or desires in an organic flow. The first stage of the development process of personhood, which marks the primitive state of our political consciousness and community, is the saguninja (사군인자, 事君人者). The saguninja represents the person of the political mind focusing only on serving one’s master (제 주인만 섬기면 그 만인줄 아는 인물). 66 The political community that the saguninja can maximally envision is primarily a feudalistic entity. The master to which he

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pledges allegiance and puts the highest value for political relation is the one that can secure and support the necessities of his animalistic life, which mean conditions for survival and convenience. Since his loyalty is conditioned by a very narrow sense of self, community, and well-being, interaction with others is always a potential threat to the status quo for his survival. The only person whom the saguninja genuinely relies on and cooperates with to construct a political relationship and community is the one that has the talent, power, and authority to give him immediate benefits and protection. In particular, what forms a political relation and solidarity in this system is the land. The political virtue of the saguninja comes from his clear understanding and utilization of the resources of the hereditary landholding elite. The master and the servant need each other. Their political relationship and community are utilitarian and contractual. The master provides the fief and the servant provides labor and armed forces. This relationship between the suzerain and the vassal is strong as long as both parties can provide each other with the expected services. However, if the master fails to secure the land for the vassal, the foundation of their allegiance to, virtue for, and trust in, the counterpart would be shaken and their social structure would collapse easily. The driving force to build the political community in this mindset is the parochial personal identity and security by belonging to and owning the land (땅). The saguninja cannot envision a political relation outside one’s immediate interest. Nor can his imagination of political community go beyond the physical boundary, which he falsely believes brings the most justifiable and viable sense of identity and community. The second stage is the ansajikshinja (안사직신자, 安社稷臣者). It is “the person, who regards the nation as the most important (나라 생각함을 그 行動의 최고로 아는 사람이요).” 67 The ansajikshinja does have a sense of a larger community than the feudalistic community because he recognizes the value of multi-dimensional patron-client relationships and the complexity of personal interest intertwined with the interests of more distant others. What binds people’s hearts and minds together in this stage is not only material benefits such as the land and security but also immaterial conditions such as common language and culture and shared memories. The bourgeoisie middle class in Europe, which opened doors for an expansion of the traditional territories of sallim (살림, housekeeping), is a good example. People came to have a more widened notion of community because of the revolutionary change of the traditional economic mode by the internationalization of their productive and trading activities. This expansion happened not necessarily because of a sole, drastic change of the people’s political intelligence and tolerance but because of the change of their politico-economic environment. The expansion of merchants’ economic activities in the global market undermined the feudal political system and economic relations, pushing serfs to leave their manors and encouraging them to find new connections for new

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interests. The highly commercialized, capitalist interests and concerns sweeping over the whole of Europe demanded a new sovereignty. Powerful monarchs met the demand. The political consciousness found in this historical time period reflects the ansajikshinja. The ansajikshinja is able to envision a nation-state community and finds security and happiness. He even regards the nation-state as divine, believing that he has finally reached the ultimate stage of political community. However, according to Ham, the political mind of the ansajikshinja is not the final stage. The nation-state is simply a sophisticated and expanded version of the feudal system. Although the political boundary and the contractual relationship have been enlarged, the driving motivation for political community is still parochial, egocentric, and defensive. According to Ham’s interpretation of the Confucian classical literature of the great man, both the saguninja and the ansajikshinja do not represent the person of the ideal political consciousness. They are still soin (소인, 小人, small man). As Wang Yang Ming articulated, the taein (대인, the great man) takes the universe as a single significant whole. His political consciousness and morality are built upon the enlightenment of the cosmic unity. Ham stated: 천지 만물을 한 몸으로 여기는 仁한 마음으로, 하자해서 하는 것이 아니 라 저절로 내가 우주요 우주가 나인 자리에 가게 되는 사람이다. 68 (The great man) is the one that comes to the place where he naturally becomes the universe and the universe becomes he due to his human-heartedness, which takes all creation as one.

The third stage is the ch’ŏnmin (천민, 天民, the heavenly man), which is a concept closer to the cosmopolitan person. Differing from the first two stages, the ch’ŏnmin’s view of community is more abstract. It is the view that the world is the center of our morality. Ham said, “The ch’ŏnmin is a global person, who feels the world as of his responsibility (天民이란 世界的인人 物, 世界를 자기 책임으로 아는 사람이요).” 69 He is the one whose sense of moral duty is not limited to a particular territory, culture, race, and class. Like the notion of the Mandate of Heaven entertained for long time by ancient Confucian scholars and politicians, Ham’s ch’ŏnmin is the one whose moral foundation and political motivation are rooted in the heavenly principle. The ch’ŏnmin is not swayed by the demand of the body but inspired to do the right thing for the world by the awareness of the common belonging of all human beings. Ham’s vision of political consciousness does not stop at this stage of ch’ŏnmin. The ch’ŏnmin is obviously cosmopolitan. However, this concept is limited to human relationship. Ham wanted to stretch further our consciousness of political community to embrace other beings. He envisioned the taein

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(대인). Although politics is a human activity, it impacts every single thing that our life touches. There should be a meaningful place for everything surrounding and interacting with us such as animals and natural environment, in our personal identity and political consciousness. Deeply influenced by Eastern thoughts such as Taoist and Buddhist notion of emptiness, everchanging interconnectedness, and the Confucian notion of the concentric expansion of self, Ham wanted our political consciousness to become more than a collective consciousness of the instrumentality and utility of power for group interests. He saw a seamless connection between material conditions and political consciousness. The very degree that we value others, nature, and environment determines the moral character and the functional efficacy of our politics. According to Ham, the cosmopolitanism initiated and driven by the ssial is the pinnacle of our political consciousness. It is a divine outcome that the human individual produces through a personal journey on a variety of dark moments of life, which becomes a catalyst, if well guided, to get him out of the box: the box that confines the individual to a cognitive and political shackle of the egotistic desire for survival and success. The growth, expansion, and deepening of our political consciousness takes place through the maturing process of spirituality. Our genuine embrace of those outside of the boundary comes from the historical experiences, which we human beings commonly share through intentional reflection and cultivation on our common ontological foundation. Therefore, the political desire and the contrivance of the institutional measures to build a larger, transcendent political community are outcomes of our spiritual enlightenment. This growing process implies a heightened political consciousness and some important virtues of community that we need to pursue. Ham explained these qualities with a monkey (잔나비) story. The story is about a group of monkeys trying to cross a river stream, which has stopped their journey. It tells how wisely they overcome the challenge by uniting and acting together with each other, following a great leader. For Ham’s discourse of ssial and saengmyeong, this group of monkeys represent the community not only of the Koreans but also humanity particularly from the angle of saengmyeong. 잔나비의 한 떼가 사나운 짐승에게 쫓겨 가다가 큰 냇물에 다다랐읍니다. 넓고 물살이 빨라 도저히 건널 수 없었읍니다. 당황한 잔나비란 놈들은 냇가에 섰는 큰 나무 아래 모여 떠들기 시작 했읍니다. 한참 떠들더니 그 중 가장 나이 들어 뵈는 놈이 일어서 뭐라뭐라 하니 여러 놈들이 차차 떠 들기를 그쳤읍니다. 그러더니 그중 가장 튼튼해 뵈는 한 놈이 그 나무로 기어 올라갔읍니다. 올라가서 그 시내 위로 걸쳐진 높은 가지로 추어 올 라갔읍니다. 그러고는 한 팔로 그 가지를 단단히 붙잡은 후 한 팔을 내려 뜨리고 매달렸읍니다. 그 다음 또 한 놈이 기어 올라가 그 첫놈을 톱아 내 려가 제 한 손으로 그 놈의 손을 잡고 다른 한 팔을 내려 드리고 매달렸읍 니다. 이렇게 해서 세째 놈, 네째 놈 차례차례 해서 다 올라가 매달린 다음

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Chapter 6 맨 나중에 튼튼한 한 놈이 올라가서 맨 끝에 내려가 매달렸읍니다. 이리 해서 잔나비의 한 그네 줄이 높은 가지에서 거의 물에 닿을 정도로 매달 리게 됐읍니다. 그렇게 된 것을 보고 맨 밑의 큰 놈이 나무 통을 박차서 그 네를 밟기 시작했읍니다. 줄이 물위로 나갔다 나무 밑으로 돌아왔을 때 그놈은 한번 더 힘 있게 박찼읍니다. 이렇게 해서 두 번, 세 번 거듭하는 동안 잔나비의 줄은 점점 더 넓은 폭으로 흔들리기 시작했읍니다. 그러다 가 그 줄이 최대한의 폭으로 흔들려 저 건너편 언덕 위에 갔을 때 마지막 놈은 재빨리 거기 서 있는 나무의 한 가지를 붙잡았읍니다. 그런 다음 건 너 편에 있는 맨 처음 놈이 제가 잡았던 가지를 놓고 내려와 모든 잔나비 는 서로 서로 이끌어 이쪽 언덕으로 올라 오더라는 것입니다. 그리해서 잔나비라나 놈들은 하나하나로서는 도저히 건널 수 없는 냇물을 건너서 전체가 다 살아났다는 이야기입니다. 70 A group of monkeys running away from a fierce animal, has just ended up facing a strong current. They could not cross the river because of the rough current. Flustered monkeys begin to gather and talk together under a big tree on the stream. After a long chatter, as the oldest looking monkey starts speaking, the rest become quiet. A strong looking monkey climbs up the tree and get to a branch stretching over the stream. Holding tightly the branch with one hand, he gets the other hand hang. Following the same course of action, another monkey grabs the hand of the hanging monkey, with his other hand hanging as the first monkey did. After the third, fourth, and all other monkeys do the same, a strong monkey takes the last turn. This cooperative act has made them a single rope as long as it can touch the surface of the river. The last monkey starts kicking a wood to swing the rope of monkeys. When the rope swings back to the tree, he kicks hard again the wood to make a full swing. As they repeat the swing a few more times, the rope of monkeys gets to swing big enough to reach the other side of the stream. When the last hanging monkey reaches the hill of the other side, he quickly grabs a tree branch and the monkey holding the branch of the opposite side immediately lets it go and swings back. This helps all monkeys cross the stream safely. This story shows that a work that cannot be done by the individual, can be done by a collective effort.

In particular, Ham talked about four defining characteristics of an ideal behavior of the community connoted in the process of becoming the ssial. He describes some attitudes and dispositions to effectively overcome the crisis of the community. Although not explicit in the parable, Ham’s intention was to dramatically express the mindset that we the people as the author of history have to cultivate in building a community, whose fullest form may be existent only in our imagination but must be substantial in making us constantly reflect on our efforts. The first ontological characteristic that I believe Ham would have expected for the process of spiritual maturity is his/her clear awareness of the singularity of hana (하나, one or individual) and chŏnch’e (전체, the whole). He emphasizes that hana and chŏnch’e share a single unified destiny. The conditions of each one’s life reflect and affect those of others. They are

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inseparable. Just as the seed of a plant inherently contains the full potential of the completed body, individual members cannot think of themselves separately from the community. To think of their own survival and prosperity, each one has to take the well-being of their community seriously by internalizing it in their sense of purpose and externalizing it with concrete historical acts. The community imagined here in this story must be a cosmopolitan community because Ham’s reference to the ssial in this particular passage was of the in’gan (인간, the human being), not of a particular social community. Ham said: 첫째, 단체 행동입니다. 개개의 잔나비가 저만 살겠다고 따로 따로 떨어 져 나갔다면 다 죽었을 것입니다. 자유는 전체에 있읍니다. 종살이는 이 기주의의 결과입니다. 압박자가 씨알을 잡으려 할 때는 언제나 한알 따리 로 합니다. 한 사람을 종으로 잡아갈 때 그것이 곳 전체인줄 알아야 합니 다. 잔나비도 그렇습니다만은 인간은 더구나 하나에 삽니다. 살아도 하나 죽어도 하나입니다. 하나를 살리려면 전제가 동원돼야 하고 전체를 살리 려면 하나하나가 살아야 합니다. 사나운 짐승이 따라오는 이쪽 언덕에 나 혼자 도망가면 살 것 같지만 결국 도망갈 곳이 없읍니다. 하나씩 하나씩 다 죽고 맙니다. 여러분 스타린이 제 동무를 차례차례 죽이던 것을 알지 요. 하나 돼야만, 같이 죽기를 각오해야만 살길이 나옵니다. 전체는 언제 나 개개의 총 합계보다 큽니다. 살리는 지혜도 힘도 전체에 있읍니다. 알 알이 도는 것은 씨알이 아닙니다. 71 First, it is collective effort. If each monkey had tried to set apart to save oneself alone, all would have died. Freedom is in the whole. Enslavement is the result of selfishness. When the oppressor tries to capture the ssial, he captures one at a time. We have to be aware that the capture of one means the capture of all. It is truer to the human beings than to the monkeys. We should be one, live or die. To save one, all have to be mobilized. To save all, every single individual must live. One might think that he can save his life if he alone flees to a heel. However, there is no place to run away. All would die one by one. Don’t you remember that Stalin killed his comrades one by one. Only if being united and resolving together to die, we can live together. The whole is always bigger than the parts. The wisdom and power to save is upon the whole. What lives separately is not the ssial.

The second characteristic is to take a higher principle or vision to get out of the dark pit of human crisis. According to Ham, the collective desire and effort would be useless unless all individual members have a shared vision. He states that the crisis of our time can be overcome through the act of leaping and flying, which demands a focused attention to a higher point. Our vision of the higher point, which is beyond where we are and where we want to go, is not necessarily a place where we believe we can settle or a type of life that we believe we can live. It is an intellectual and/or spiritual catalyst to help us leap over our crisis. Ham states:

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Chapter 6 건너 뛰려면 이 언덕 저 언덕을 다 굽어 볼 수 있는 자리까지 올라가야 하 듯이 낡은 시대에서 새 시대로 건너가려면 그 둘을 다 뛰어넘은 제3의 자 리에 가서만 할 수 있읍니다. 그것은 근본 원리를 찾는 태도로만 됩니 다. 72 Just as one has to go up to a vantage point, to leap, where he can overlook this hill and that hill, he has to go to a higher place (third place) to cross from the old age to the new age: the place to leap over both ages.

Ham meant that people without a higher vision are not able to move their society forward. The shared vision is spirit and power that can turn the page of history. It is something that all individual members should find in the midst of their crisis and something for which they all put their hearts and minds together with the strong belief that their vision can bring them to a better place. Good examples include The World Health Organization (WHO) seeking international public health, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) attempting to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, United Nations Global Compact promoting corporate responsibility, World Economic Forum (WEF) dealing with climate, gender equality, and labour market. The third characteristic is kicking or storming out (박차고 나가는 것). It means that we clearly understand that if we remain where we are, we all are going to fall. It represents our strong will to leave the old age and our determination on the future direction. Of course, there will be setbacks in the course. However, they will spur our passion for the promised land rather than crush our vision. Ham states: 박차야 합니다. 내가 매달린 나무지만 밉기는 한듯 사정 없이 박차야 합 니다. 건너뛰는 힘은 거기서만 나옵니다. 낡아가는 시대에 애착을 가지고 역사적 민족이 되는 법 없읍니다. 그리고 그것은 단번에 되지 않습니다. 모든 혁명은 결침으로야 됩니다. 이것이 생명의 법칙입니다. 다만 처음에 붙잡은 그 원리를 죽어도 놓지 않는 것입니다. 그렇기만 하면 실패를 거 듭할 수록 힘이 늘어갑니다. 73 We have to storm out. As if we hated the tree that we are hanging on, we must ruthlessly kick it. That is where the power to leap comes from. If attached to the old age, we cannot become a historic people. And, (the revolution) cannot be done in one big step. It is done through kyŏlch’im (결침, 波狀運動, wavy motion). This is the law of life. It is not to lose the principle that we set up at first. Then, the more we fail, the more we get empowered.

The fourth characteristic is to unite together. A historic act is a communal and collective act. Ham notes that the main cause of every failure of revolution is usually the break of solidarity. Just as the monkeys did, a successful

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migration to the promised land for humanity would happen when we clasp each other’s hand. 역사적 행동을 하는 동안은 몸과 마음의 온 힘을 손에만 모은 것입니다. 실제로는 이것이 가장 어려운 일입니다. 모든 혁명의 실패는 결국 결속이 무너지는 데서 옵니다. 74 When acting for a historic cause, we must put together the whole power of our minds and bodies to our hands. This is the hardest part. After all, every failure of revolution comes from the break of solidarity.

The fifth characteristic is to take momentum. No matter how strong the historic swing is, if we miss to grab the pertinent branch at the right time, all of us will fall. It demands strong and wise leaders, who are able to see the opportunity of a new age and throw off the old age with agility. Ham asserts, “Just as the monkeys put strong and experienced monkeys as the leaders, leaders should be at the front and the rear of revolution (잔나비가 앞뒤에 튼 튼하고 익숙한 엄지들을 세웠듯이 혁명 행렬의 앞과 뒤에는 지도자가 서야합니다).” 75 Finally, an adventurous soul is demanded in the life of the ssial. Concerning about security is a natural feeling. This natural feeling comes with a stable sense of identity, belonging, and life-direction. However, we are all growing in all aspects of life, for example, in body, intelligence, and spirit. This growth pushes us to constantly reflect on our current life conditions and envision a better direction. It demands us to get out of our comfort zone. Ham said, “We fear because we desire to live. But, a coward cannot live. Life is meant to grow. There is no way to live without dying. Life is an endless adventure. Only at the risk of our life can we live.” 76 Death here has a profound meaning, which is further articulated in his other writings. For Ham, suffering and death are the dark side of life yet the spiritual grounding of human growth. Death equalizes every living thing. Death places humans in the humblest position and inspires them to better connect with other lives and have a stronger reason to live. This spiritual process with the positive characteristics of community building is also the process that the humans bridge the chasm between the changing mode of life and the new desire that it generates. He was not a social Darwinian but believed the evolutionary process of the inner and the outer world of human life. In both of his writings of human history (뜻으로 본 한국 역사, 뜻으로 본 세계 역사), he takes the biological evolution as a fact. Like other animal species, human beings grow and change over time, actively reacting and responding to the vicissitude of their environment. However, what makes Ham different from social Darwinians is his strong belief in the divine guiding principle or force within our inner being and outer cosmos. According to Ham, the inner principle is the innate, sacred

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drive, which is supposed to run the ontology of the ssial. The outer principle is the divine will of God itself, which inheres in the universe. Like Rousseau’s criticism on the artificial political relations and community deviated from the state of nature, Ham’s argument with his ssial philosophy points to a corruption in our political consciousness due to the breakaway from the divine nature, which was originally unified in moral judgement on the wellbeing of humanity. Ham argues that the sprouting of civilization was an attempt to depart from the state of ssial. The emergence and sophistication of numerous civilizations were therefore a symptom of the dissonance between our fast-growing intelligence and relatively slow-growing spirituality in responding to material changes and challenges. Ham expressed the loss of our divine nature as follows: 문명은 결국은 자연에서 멀어가자는 방향이고 (참 문명이 그럴리가 없겠 지만) 그러니까 지금은 사람의 큰 잘못이 자연을 잊어버리고 자연에 반항 하는 건데, 그게 근본의 절대적인 의지라 할까 그게 곧 자연인데, 자연 속 에 있는 건데 노자도 그 사상이고, 인도의 힌두이즘도 그 사상이고. . . . 77 When it comes to the thought of Rousseau, we have to talk about nature. Like Rousseau’s notion of nature, the ssial is none other than nature. The civilization moves farther away from nature (if the true civilization, it would not do so). In other words, the human’s biggest problem was to forget and resist nature. The fundamental, absolute will is nature, something in nature such as in the thoughts of Lao Tzu and Hinduism. . . .

However, the development of civilization is not the end of the story. Ham believed that spiritual growth in the global scale would ultimately overcome the evil of the civilization. It is the divine process in history and the divine duty in the destiny of human community. The deepening and intensifying of our spirituality would help us return to the state of ssial. According to Ham’s theological language, this process is the return to God. 물은 바다로 가는 것이라면 역사는 씨알로 간다. 바다가 모든 물의 근본 이요, 끝이듯이 씨알도 모 든 인간적인 존재의 알파요, 오메가다..씨알로 감은 결국 하나님으로 감이다. 78 If water flows into the sea, history moves to the ssial. Just as the sea is the original source of water, the ssial is the alpha and omega of all human beings. . . . To return to the ssial is to return to God.

What is important in Ham’s point on the returning spiritual process to the ssial particularly in the discussion of cosmopolitanism is his articulation on the interaction between spirituality and reason. This interaction makes human species unique and shows how the genuine civilization can be established. According to Ham, the primitive society is the society in which in-

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stinct struggles with reason. In the meantime, the historical society is the society in which reason struggles with supra-reason, which is spirituality. Like other human capabilities, spirituality also grows. As Albert Einstein argues, our spiritual capability in the primitive society was expressed as a language to respond to shamanistic demands. However, it was developed into an instrument to respond to complex moral demands for an advanced human community. Spirituality would continue to play a critical role in not only training our ability to deal with big questions of life but also shaping the character of our political life and community. It allows us to see the limits of both body and reason. Throughout the course of history, we have realized that the body often cannot keep up with our desire, passion, and imagination. At the same time, reason cannot fathom completely the complexity and mysteriousness of life and the universe. 이성은 세계를 완전히 정복하여 자기 마구간에 넣어두려 하지만 세계는 이성이란 조그마한 손아귀에 들기에는 너무도 크고 너무나 분방奔放한 것이며 그 조그마한 식도食道로 썰기에는 너무도 거대하고 너무도 복잡 한 구조요 너무도 강력하다. 79 Although reason tries to conquer the world and puts it in its stable, it is too big and freewheeling to pick it up by hand and it is too colossal, complex, and powerful to be sliced by a small gullet.

All different stages of political life and community that we have experienced so far are the products by the wit of body and reason. Ham argues that the future civilization will be and should be led by our spiritual transformation. Taking four different stages, the type and objective of our political community would evolve toward the ideal direction through the guidance of the deepened spirituality. The four stages of civilization that Ham identified are in parallel with the spiritually growing process of humanity. It has evolved from palsaenggi (발생기, nascent stage) to sŏngjanggi (성장기, growing stage) to tallyŏn’gi (단련기, tempering stage). It is moving toward wansŏnggi (완성기, completion stage). According to Ham’s evaluation, the current stage of our political consciousness is the tallyŏn’gi in which nationstates compete and conflict with each other. We are about to move toward the wansŏnggi because we feel acutely the unendurable agony of the current system. The nation-state-lead economy has worsened the disparity between the rich and the poor. According to a report of Norwich University, the top 1 percent owns 40 percent of national wealth. 80 Oxfam International reports that the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased $900 billion in 2018. It means that “26 people owned the same as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.” 81 Global politics is also dark. We suffer the cruel reality of the absence of moral leadership in international community. Even when the global hegemons execute explicitly humanitarian works, their

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genuine moral intention is often suspected. To the eyes of small power states, their altruism seems to be a strategy to bolster their influence and contain the power of their rivals. Various instruments of collective action for global justice such as the UN Security Council and International Criminal Court do not seem to function effectively. They are ignored and disparaged. However, Ham saw a light in this dark era. Experiencing the limit of the wit of body and reason, not only do we wince away but also seek a solution: solution that body and reason alone cannot produce. He believed that although we have reached the limit with body and reason, our spiritual desire and imagination to connect, reconcile, and unite with other lives become stronger. The more we experience division, chaos, and conflict, the deeper our awareness of the necessity of co-existence and co-prosperity becomes. According to Ham, at the worst point of the nation-state system is the wansŏnggi. The wansŏnggi is the stage of civilization in which all humans would feel each other as citizens of the world. This stage may not be historical but substantial in our political consciousness to be able to inspire and push us to produce concrete political measures to nurture a cosmopolitan vision and believe in its universal value. Ham explains: 이것은 우리 마음에만 있는 환상이다. 의미의 세계에서 하는 말이다. 나 타나 보이는 현상의 세계에서 하면 끝이 없다. 영원한 변천의 과정이 있 을 뿐이다. 그러므로 완성기의 그림은 요한의 환상같이 마지막으로 알았 던 일곱째 나팔이 또 일곱으로 전개되어 나오고, 또 일곱으로 전개되어 나와 끝없이 번져 나갈지도 모른다. 그러나 그러면서도 마지막이라는 그 환상은 역사의 수평선 끝에 서 있는 것이요 그 환상이 역사의 배를 이끌 어 간다. 82 This (wansŏnggi) is an illusion only in our mind. It is a concept in the world of meaning. If understood in the visible world, which is the world of phenomena, stages are endless. They are in the endless cycle of transformation. Therefore, the picture of the wansŏnggi is like the seventh trumpet of John’s Book of Revelation, which is believed to be the last but may reveal an endless set of sevens. Nevertheless, the illusion of the final stage stands at the end of the horizon of history; that illusion leads the ship of history.

Ham here emphasizes that the root cause or foundation of history is not our sociological and political drive but spiritual drive. All the historical processes that we have taken are adventurous dramas unfolded in spiritual journey, which is hidden from the shallow-minded eyes. They are the outcomes that our expression of and reaction to the transcendent feeling mainly with body and reason have produced. Thus, his ssial project is to open these closed eyes. We came from love, agape. We return to love. This is the kernel of human history. Ham said, “History came from love and it will be drawn, by love, back to love (역사는 사랑에서 나왔고, 사랑에 이끌리어 사랑으 로 들어가고 말 것이다).” 83 The darkest human history that we experience

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is the sign of the penultimate stage. Politics has been degenerated into a simple instrument to satisfy our material needs. Civilizations have been driven by the desire only for power and security. In Prospect for A New Generation (새시대의 전망), Ham characterizes this chaos as the battle of Armageddon, which is prophesied in the Book of Revelation. It symbolizes the biggest battle between politics and religion. 84 It represents an age in which our political mind is completely oblivious of the ontological inspiration and guidance of spirituality. 땅에 있는 모든 나라가 연합하여 영에 나라에 반항하는 최후전이다. 그것 은 정치와 종교의 대결을 의미하는 것 아닐까? 참 하나 됨으로 그 대결을 지나서야 될 것이다. 이 시대는 아마겟돈 싸움으로 달려 들어가는 것 아 닐까? 85 (The Battle of Armageddon) is the last battle, which all nations on earth are united to fight against the kingdom of spirit. Does it not mean a conflict between politics and religion? We need to pass this predicament by being united. Isn’t this world jumping into the Battle of Armageddon?

Therefore, for the wansŏnggi, Ham envisioned a revolution in the political consciousness of the people. It will come as a result of the transformation of the collective character of human community. Ham used the character of Jesus as an example. He believed that the Christian baptism is not a public statement that converts make to express their new doctrinal and denomination identity but a faith statement that they make to express their will to think and live like Jesus. It means the revolution of character. 그럼 예수그리스도의 이름으로 세계 받는다는 것은 이제부터는 자아를 내버리고 진리인으로 도인으로 생명인으로 살겠다는 말이다. 그렇듯 인 격의 변혁을 말하는 것이므로 ‘각각’이라 했다. 어떤 혁명당에 가입을 하 는 것이 아니다. 당의 사람으로 사는 것이 아니라, 내 인격이 완전히 자유 로 그렇게 되는 일이다. ‘죄 사함을 받는다’는 것은 지나간 모든 역사에서 완전히 해방 됨이다. 아무런 제약도 받는 것이 없다. 지나간 역사가 원인 이 되어 미래의 나를 구속하는 것이 아무것도 없고, 아무 되풀이도 없다 는 말이다. 완전히 ‘새 것’ ‘새롬’ ‘샘’이다. 그러므로 완전히 정신적일 수 밖에 없다. 86 To be baptized in the name of Jesus is to vow to live as a person of the Truth, a person of the Way, or a person of Life. Since this is about a transformation of character, (the Bible) says each one. It is not to join a revolutionary party and live as a person of a party. It is for my character to be completely liberated. To be forgiven is to set completely free from all the past. There is no constraint. What is already past will not, as a cause, constrain my future. Nor is there repetition. It is a whole new thing, newness, new. That is why this (transformation) should be something spiritual.

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The person of Truth, Way, and Life in the wansŏnggi is the person whose highest value of all aspects of life, including politics and political community, is transcendent of any constraint. Just as Jesus lived the life of love, transcending any religious and political boundaries, and serving and fighting for the most humble and despised group of people, the ssial emerging out of the wansŏnggi should be a cosmopolitan and cosmic person. This new identity is represented by Jesus’s disciples and followers waiting on the Day of Pentecost for the empowerment of God. They were waiting for a new power to endure the religious persecution but also a new belonging and a new sense of direction for their community. What Ham found profound in this miraculous event was the new stage of life implied in that story. When the Holy Spirit came down, it felt like fire. The disciples and followers felt the fire, which excited their passion for Christ and melt various human identities into the language of heaven. They started speaking not in human language but in spirit. It represents the beginning of the wansŏnggi in which people redefined their personal identity, community, and moral drive of life. With the fire of the Holy Spirit, they received the familial identity. Just as Jesus came down to the world as the son of God, his disciples and followers came to have a new sense of community and worldview. The community established by the Holy Spirit was a new religious community (새종교), which would dissolve every artificial, categorical identity, including racial and national identities. It demands a revolutionary turn as experienced in the life and ministry of Jesus. For Ham, this new identity as the son or child of God represents the character, which the ssial would discover within themselves and actively practice in real life. “형제들아” 함으로야 적말 새 종교이다. 이것은 새 역사의 원리다. 국민이 아니요 가족이란 말이다. 이제 인간관계는 물리적, 법리적 관계가 아니고 윤리적 생리적 관계이다. 한 아버지의 아들이다. 그러므로 한 몸이다. 하 나다. 모든 대립 적의 부조화가 없어졌다. 각기 개체면서도 하나인 것, 개 성을 가지면서도 한 인격인 것이 형제이다. 인류 역사에 이러한 혁명이 어디 있었나? 혁명가로서의 예수의 온갖 비결은 다만 ‘하나님의 아들이 라는데 있었다. 그가 하나님의 아들이 되어 아버지와 하나가 될 때 우주 의 질서는 일변해 버렸다. 해가 전날의 해가 아니요, 달이 전날의 달이 아 니었다. 한말로 아버지가 만물을 내게 다 주셨다 했다. 만왕의 왕이 됐다. 그가 세상을 마음대로 고치시는 것은 이 혼의 절대의 힘으로 써다. 그랬 기 때문에 역사의 막다른 골목에 걸려 “우리가 어찌할꼬” 하는 민중에게 서 사도둘은 여러말 없이 “예수 그리스도의 이름으로 세례를 받아라!” 했 다. 너희도 다 하나님의 아들이 되라 하는 말이다. 하나님과 하나인 외아 들, 그 말을 번역하면 뭔가? 참 밖에 아무것도 없다. 영밖에 아무것도 없 다. 절대의 참에 들어라. 절대 거룩의 영에 들어라, 네가 곧 참이요 영이어 라, 하는 말이다. 그 사람에겐 아무것도 없다. 아무것도 없는 세계를 마음 대로 다니기 때문이다. 87

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The new religion ultimately emerges when we say, “brothers.” This is the principle of the new history. It is not about the citizen but about the family. Now, human relationship is not of the physical and legal but of the ethical and biological. We all are the son of one father. Thus, we are one body, the one. All conflicting dissonances have gone. Being separate individuals, we are also brothers, with the shared character. Has there been this kind of revolution before in history? The best secret of Jesus as revolutionary was his identity as the son of God. When he became the son of God and one with him, the cosmic order had completely changed. The sun was not the sun of the day before. The moon was not the moon of the day before. In other words, all things in the universe were given to him. He became the king of kings. He healed the world with his absolute power of spirit. That’s why when the minjung asked, “What are we going to do?,” the apostles simply shouted, “Be baptized in the name of Jesus.” It means that all have to become the son of God. How can God and his only begotten son be translated? It means nothing but the Truth. It means nothing but the spirit. Belong to the absolute Truth; belong to the absolute, spiritual Truth; this is to say that “I am the Truth and the Spirit.” Nothing constrains him. He travels the world without any constraint.

FIVE POINTS OF HAM SOK HON’S COSMOPOLITAN VISION Along with the above metaphysical discussion, I want to highlight some additional points of Ham’s cosmopolitan vision. As I mentioned in Chapter II on his methodological approach, Ham left no systematic arguments for his cosmopolitan ideas nor did he share his thought about specific political measures to conceptualize a larger political community than the nation-state. He was a thinker, who loved to share his ideas on many important issues of his society. He was an educator, who was extremely passionate about cultivating people’s thoughts. He was an idealist, who loved to critically evaluate human affairs and inspire people on the moral character of our community. However, As Pak Jae-Soon noted, although Ham was usually very articulate about his thought, he was always reluctant to play the active role in translating his thought into a mass movement. It makes sense because he had the strong belief that the genuine ssial movement should arise with people’s own awakening and their voluntary, collective effort rather than the charismatic leadership of a revolutionary intellectual with a brilliant idea. He claims: 나는 이상주의자입니다. 그러나 그것을 어떻게 실현하느냐 하면 용기가 나지 않습니다. 88 I am an idealist. But, I often feel that I don’t have the courage to realize my ideals.

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The way he expressed his political thought and vision was thus indirect, symbolic, and poetic. Even if the audience could clearly get his point, it was always possible that their interpretations and applications could vary. Therefore, the five points that I identify in this section are the points that I personally thought are persistent throughout most of Ham’s writings dealing with politics and the future of human community. These are the points that are relatively explicit for his articulation of the community of humanity and that make sense with his larger metaphysical frameworks particularly for me, as an interpreter, to develop a system of thought on behalf of him. The five points include: 1) genuine self-realization, 2) minjung-lead movement, 3) pluralistic project, 4) vision for peace movement/pacifism, and 5) microstatism (소국주의). First, Ham’s cosmopolitan vision is not just a political vision. It is an outcome of his larger intellectual and spiritual observation, insight, and interpretation. His deep reading of history and other literature on wide-ranging themes led him to the conclusion that political enlightenment and the positive transformation of political consciousness particularly for cosmopolitan community (세계주의 공동체) should go hand in hand with people’s enhanced understanding of self-realization, which generates a variety of virtues. The ssial consciousness helps this process. It is the collective state of consciousness, which recovers our pat’al (바탈, nature or foundation). It is not a dogmatic belief but a heightened feeling of transcendence, which allows us to imagine an organic, universal community, on which a single united civilization of humanity can be built: a civilization existing mainly in our thought and imagination but vivid and existential enough to push our moral acts to a cosmopolitan direction. 역사적 명령은 바탈에 있다. 바탈은 개인 개인의 속성 너머에 있는 초월 적 우주적 원리이자 명령. “사람의 마음을 건드리지 말라는 말 뒤에는 사 람의 바탈의 선을 꽉 믿는 생각이 들어 있다. 바탈이란 개개인의 생각을 초월한 초개인적인 보편적인, 모든 의식의 근본이 되는 근본의식이다. 이 것을 그들은 하늘이라 했고, 도라 했고, 사리라 했고, 혹은 자연이라 했 다. 90 The historic imperative is in the pat’al. The pat’al is the transcendent, cosmic principle and imperative beyond the attributes of the individual. The saying, Do not bother one’s heart, implies a strong belief in the good in the people’s pat’al. The pat’al is the fundamental consciousness, which is meta-personal and universal, transcending the individual’s thought, and becomes the founda-

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tion of all consciousnesses. That is why it is called heaven, Tao, principle or nature.

The necessity of our awakening to the pat’al to heal and advance our civilization has been historically clearly observed. Our current political culture shows the symptom of its loss. The pat’al is the Dao that moves the universe. It is the Dao that we humans have to fulfill. It is the ontological principle and the ethical imperative. 정치란 그 우주적인 큰 조화를 믿고 거기 안심하고 있지 못하고 작고 옅 은 자기 생각에 미쳐 제 재주와 힘으로 제 세상을 만들어 보려는 데서 나 온다. 91 Politics comes from our disbelief and unsettlement in the greater cosmic harmony and our effort to build our own world, obsessed with a small, shallow thought and talent. 위에서 강조하는 것처럼, 함석헌은 인류가 새로운 문명사시대 곧 전체 인 류, 아니 지구촌 전체생명이 하나의 유기체적 몸이라는 것을 자각하는 ‘하나의식’에 도달하려면 세계역사에 대한 새로운 해석의 비젼이 필요하 고, 그 일을 수행하는데 있어서 종교의 역활이 중요하다고 본다. 알고보 면 종교의 궁극적이고도 제 일차적 임무가 개별자로 하여금 ‘우주적 하나 의식’을 깨닫도록 하는데 있다. 문명이 새로워 지려면 종교가 새로워지 고, 근본적으로 혁신되어 참종교가 출현되어야 한다고 본다. 92 As emphasized above, Ham Sok Hon thought that to establish the era of a new cultural civilization and reach the hanaŭishik (하나의식, the united consciousness), which takes the entire humanity or all lives on earth as an organic unity, there needs to be a new vision of interpretation on the world history and the role of religion is very important to execute this task. As a matter of fact, the first and primary role of religion is to help the individual realize the sense of cosmic unity. Thus, for a civilization to become new, religion should become new and ultimately, the true religion (참종교) should emerge through a complete transformation of the old one.

What is important here is the fact that the true self-realization, which can bring virtuous acts, should arise with the active, meaningful role of our spirituality. As we recognize the positive place and function of spirituality in our life and world, we can see more clearly the fundamental problems of the crisis of humanity and come up with effective measures to deal with them. Ham made this point clear by summarizing Confucius’s understanding of the virtuous universal self. In Crying Out to Thirty Million People (3천만 앞에 부르짖는다), Ham argues that when the true religion (참종교) emerges, we will naturally desire a more universal self. The conventional community, which is coercive or contractual, could not satisfy our desire for this new belonging. According to Ham’s interpretation, virtue develops in three differ-

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ent stages. This development premises not only the accumulation of knowledge but also the growth and expansion of our self-identity. The Confucian understanding of virtue can be summarized by myŏngmyŏngdŏk (명명덕, 明 明德), ch’inmin (친민, 親(新)民), and chijisŏn (지지선, 止至善). Ham interprets myŏngmyŏngdŏk as representing the realization of the individual self (개아의 실현). Chinmin represents the realization of the social self (사 회아의 실현). It is the chijisŏn that realizes the cosmic self (우주아). Chijisŏn is indeed the ideal stage of morality. However, Ham believed that it should be actively sought with the spiritual understanding and interpretation of human affairs and history. As the minjung/ssial become keenly aware of chijisŏn as the goal of history, they would naturally feel uncomfortable with the old political community. They would realize that they have been enslaved by the instrument that they invented for convenience. Ham expressed it as follows: 소위 국가라는 것이 이 인류 안에 있는 어디가나 볼 수 있는 국가라는 것 이 이 국민을 너무도 깔본다 그말이야. 국민들은 국가를 위해있다. 천만 에 국가야 말로 국민이 만든 건데 우리가 잘살기 위해서 그렇해 하는 것 이 편리하기 때문에 만든 건데 머슴 놈이 일을 잘해주겠기에 갖다 두었더 니 이놈이 나를 타고 앉아서 너는 나하는 데로 해라. 93 So called the state in this world is disparaging us. People exist for the state. It is preposterous. We are the one that created the state to make things convenient and live better. We have kept it because it served us well at one time. But, now this servant is trying to ride on and control me.

Ham said, “(A false) politics comes from the attempt to create one’s own world with cheap tricks and power, locked in his small, shallow thought, disbelieving in the great cosmic harmony.” 94 Although human beings currently suffer from the misguided politics, it is a matter of time for the pat’al to resurface the arena of history. Since Ham believed that saengmyeong is supposed to return to the divine, which is love, the moral direction to which the pat’al leads will be ultimately prevalent. It is the direction to the brotherly love of the virtuous self transcending the conventional ontological and political boundaries. Second, the leading force of Ham’s cosmopolitan vision is the minjung (민중). According to Ham’s terminology, the minjung is a more profound concept than that of the Korean liberation theology. While the minjung in the liberation theology are people as a politico-theological agent, concerning primarily about fighting against injustice, Ham’s notion of minjung as the ssial is a more metaphysical concept. Dealing with a variety of socio-political and economic problems, Ham focused on the metaphysical root cause: the cause that generates specific kinds of civilizational tools. He sought a change in our understanding of the self, politics, history, and community. He

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tried to build a frame of thought, which could lay a good foundation of universal moral consciousness and positively impact whatever political system that we live on. It is the ssial consciousness, which derives from the most bottom of our existence: the basic consciousness as saengmyeong (생명, life) to live, grow, and ontologically flourish (살고, 자라고, 존재론적으로 꽃피 고). Ham argued that the historic agent that can transform the world history did not have to be saints or prophets. The supra-civilization (초문명), which is a cosmopolitan community in Ham’s literature, demands the active role of the ssial, which is a high-level, spiritual saengmyeong. 95 Ham stated: 이 운동은 오히려 무식하고 약한 보통의 민중이 하는 것입니다. 그들의 깊은 가슴속에서 잠자고 있는 흔히 동원령을 받고 어제의 골목 범인(凡 人) 보통사람이 오늘 정신적 십자군의 영웅이 되게 하는 세계적 혁명의 비전입니다. 흉악한 로마제국의 군대도 두려워하지 않고 “어린양의 싸 움”을 싸워 이겼던 초대 기독교도의 힘은 이 하늘나라의 이상, 세계사적 비전에서 나온 것입니다. 96 This movement should be led by the powerless, ordinary people. It is the vision of world revolution, which awakens and mobilizes the spirit of the sleeping people and transforms them into a heroic crusader. (It is like) the power of the early church that was fearless of the brutal Roman armies and won the battle of the lamb, inspired by the ideal of the heavenly kingdom and a vision of world history.

Ham was thinking about the community of humanity led by the politics of wu-wei. It means that people, not the elite and the overdog, will have to take the lead in politics because the wu-wei philosophy premises the non-possession of power. As we have clearly witnessed in history, politics by the powerful few would never resolve the chronic problems of human community represented by the endless struggle for dominance. The conventional political agent created by and for power does not qualify for this historic leadership because their mindset is limited to the shallow concern about the utilization and distribution of power to perpetuate the status quo to maintain their political advantage or to fight the competing power to maximize their interests. In contrast, the minjung as the ssial qualify for this sublime task. The drive that motivates the minjung to actively engage in political process is not the desire for power but the genuine passion to recover and improve the dignity of human life. Since they stand as the powerless in the political process, there is a stronger reason for them to unite with each other. Since they come from the bottom of life and society, they have a more vivid notion of equality and a clearer sense of moral responsibility for other lives. Ham takes the experience and history of suffering as the very reason and duty to save the world.

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Chapter 6 나는 우리 역사를 고난의 역사라고 하지만, 왜 고난이냐? 지난날의 잘못 을 깨달으라고, 깨닫고 아픔과 잘못됐음을 증거하라고, 증거 해 온 천하 만 백성을 건져내야지. 잘못이 무슨 잘못이냐. 국가주의, 폭력주의의 종 이 됐던 것이 잘못이지. 그 책임은 뉘게 있느냐? 지배했던 자와 지배에 못 견디었던 자가 다 같이 책임이지. 지배자가 만일 제 잘못을 깨닫지 못한 다면 우리의 당하는 아픔으로 그 양심을 깨우쳐야지. 앞으로는 남을 재배 하는 큰 나라는 없어질 것이고. . . . 97 I call our history the history of suffering. Why suffering, because we need to acknowledge our faults, witness our pain from the mistakes, and save all humanity. What is wrong is that we have been enslaved by statism and its violence. Who is responsible? It is both the ruler and the ruled. If the ruler can’t acknowledge its own fault, we have to awaken them through the pain that we are experiencing. In the future, large countries dominating other countries would disappear. . . .

The politics that the minjung peform is therefore the politics of people themselves rather than of an institution, class, or power. It is of people’s selfgovernment driven not by external pressures such as artificial law but by the natural moral impulse by the enlightenment of people’s political consciousness embracing every human being in a single unified community. Ham found a historical possibility of the minjung-lead politics in India’s independence movement, which Gandhi had inspired and led with mass civil disobedience. According to Ham, the driving force to ultimately disarm the British power was not an elite political force or an institutional resistance. Nor was it a militant struggle. It was the enlightened intelligence, spirit, and will of the people. People’s heightened awareness of the dignity of life and the historic role as the author of their destiny and their active expressions through civil disobedience movements such as the Dandi Salt March undermined the moral stature of the British. The colonial power built upon a sense of superiority, including moral supremacy, could not help but collapse because the Indian minjung movement made it too obvious that the British Raj was neither natural nor right. The movement confirms the simple fact that a community should be led by its genuine members making up the both quantitative and qualitative content. Politics should be an institutional expression for the people to concretize their will to live and prosper together as a unified community. This is what Ham believed the wu-wei politics is. It is a natural version of politics, which means that people themselves, not external and artificial power, take the lead. 그러나 무위의 정치는 결코 아무것도 하지 말고 멍청히 있으란 말이 아니 다. 말을 바꾸어 한다면 그것은 자치 정치다. 씨알들이 스스로 자기를 다 스려 갈 수 있도록 하라는 말이다. 재유 (在宥)란 그런 뜻이다. 둬두라, 둬 두면 저절로 바로 된다는 것이다. 왜냐하면 사람은 스스로 하는 것이기 때문이다. 그러므로 무위주의는 요샛말로 한다면 자치주의다. 98

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However, the wu-wei politics is not to be like a bump on a log. In other words, it is a self-governance. It is to let the ssial rule themselves. This is what chaeyu (재유, 在宥) means. Leave it alone. If you do so, things are naturally straightened up because human beings help themselves. Therefore, the wu-weism, as they say, is the self-governance.

One can easily find more recent examples of the ssial movement. The force that ousted the Philippines’ longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 was the popular uprising called the People Power Revolution. The real powers that pushed the Czechoslovakia’s communist leaders to give up dictatorship and caused the downfall of Slobodan Milošević accused of electoral fraud were the Velvet Revolution and the Bulldozer Revolution respectively, both of which were people’s movement. The list continued in the 2000s: Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution in 2005, Iran’s Green Revolution in 2009, Tunisia’s Jasmin Revolution in 2011, the most recent Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution in 2019 etc. In particular, the Battle of Seattle in 1999 was closer to Ham’s vision of people’s movement. Tens of thousands of people from various nations and backgrounds gathered in Seattle to protest the WTO Ministerial Conference in 1999. They were united with the same political consciousness and objectives demanding “fair trade for the poorest, labor rights, environmental standards, and freedom from debt slavery.” 99 They shared the vision of global civil society and attempted mostly a nonviolent revolution as envisaged in Ham’s ssial movement. However, some may argue that idealists like Ham and other liberation theologians are prone to fantasizing and even idolizing the plight of the powerless for unrealizable political dreams. Some may also raise questions about the sustainability of the ssial movement and the naivety or irony of Ham’s belief in the creative power of the state of powerlessness. It is true that the powerless have occasionally played the revolutionary role in major milestone of human history. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to find a good historical example of people directly ruling their society. It is always the elite, a powerful few, that controls the destiny of people and community. One can use the failure of the original Marxian vision as a counterexample to Ham’s ssial-led-cosmopolitanism. Although Ham was a philosophical and spiritual idealist, he did not simply believe that the ssial revolution would be easy and come naturally. Nor did he believe that it could be done overnight. When envisioning the ssial revolution, he thought of the evolutionary process of the whole human history, the process that people get to realize their role as the master of history guided by the will of heaven or God. It is the transformation of our spiritual and political consciousness, which enlightens our sense of self and community to become deeper and more authentic and inclusive. Therefore, the state of ssial is not simply of a social class such as Proletarian mentality envisioned by Marxian and Leninist idealists. It is the

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state of mind and spirituality into which the political consciousness and moral mind of any person of the social ladder can grow because the experience of suffering, oppression, alienation, and helplessness can happen to any part of the social spectrum in a variety of shapes and forms. Ham did not romanticize the powerlessness of the underprivileged and the oppressed. He meant the emotional state and the moral will, which one’s enlightenment of the true self, which is transcendent and boundless due to his awareness and acceptance of the sanctity of life and its purpose, would bring in historical reality. Third, Ham’s cosmopolitan vision is a pluralistic project. When talking about a cosmopolitan community, Ham never thought about a single institutional community with a unified cultural identity. He was envisioning a community of shared moral consciousness, which a variety of unique communities make up. Ham used a metaphor of music for this pluralistic foundation. Just as a musical harmony occurs when different musical notes and tones are arranged in the way that the ear accepts reflexively as pleasant, smooth, beautiful, and stable, the idea of cosmopolitanism does not remain in a single identity. It is an invisible harmony that our moral voices from different historical and social contexts would collaboratively make. Ham was thinking of a larger sense of the Anderson’s imagined community, in which different and sometimes conflicting moral judgements of individual communities become finely tuned particularly in the consciousness of the minjung because of their shared memories of suffering and shared hopes. It is contrasted with the powerful whose moral languages are not communicable with each other because of varying political ambitions. Ham stated on the global village, which is the cosmopolitan community in his language, as follows: 전체의식이 정신운동을 일어날 때에 없어서는 안되는 평화운동의 동력 은 민족의 특성입니다. 50억 인간 가족을 생각한다하여 50억에게 똑같은 제복을 입히고 오대양 육대주의 160개국이 일시에 “앞으로 가”를 하자는 것이 결코 아닙니다. 서양이 동양을 향해 오고 남쪽 나라들이 평화리에 북으로 가고 오는 질시는 오히려 장엄한 심포니 오케스트라요 오페라이 지 독무대나 독주나 독창이 아닙니다. 100 The driving force of peace movement inevitable for the consciousness of the whole to emerge is a national characteristic. That we think of a family of five billion people is not to demand those five billion people to wear the same uniform nor to cry, forward march, to the five oceans and the six continents. The movements that the west comes to the east and the countries from the south come to the north peacefully are not a solo stage, solo recital, or vocal solo but a solemn symphonic orchestra or opera. 나는 통일된 한 빛깔의 한 가지 꽃만 만발한 봄을 상상할 수 없습니다. 붉 은 장미가 아름답기 그지없지만 천하가 다 붉기만한 풍경은 완전을 잃는

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모습입니다. 흰 백합의 향기가 아무리 좋아도 이 지구촌이 온통 흰 백합 뿐이라면 백가지 꽃들의 천가지 빛깔과 향내를 결하여 쓸쓸할 것입니다. I can’t imagine a spring when only a single flower with a single color is in full bloom. Although a red rose is incredibly beautiful, the scene that the world is colored only with red is far from perfect. No matter how good a white lily’s fragrance is, if the world is full of only white lilies, it will be forlorn because of the absence of thousands of colors and fragrances.

Fourth, the cosmopolitan vision was an inevitable outcome of Ham’s later activism of global peace movement with non-violence philosophy. After 1970, Ham’s thought on the ssial community and movements had been drastically expanded. He started recognizing the significance of broadening his view on the ssial and community to a global scale. Differing from his focus on cultivating national identity, liberation, and prosperity right after the country’s independence, Ham’s language was shifting toward a deeper and larger paradigm to be able to identify and solve more fundamental problems of human life: problems that human beings were universally facing regardless of different nationalities and political contexts. He noted that the historic destines of all human beings are interconnected due to the revolutionary development of international communication and transportation. We all are members of the community of a single destiny not just in the metaphysical dimension discussed heavily above but in the practical dimension. According to Ham, the principle of zero-some game dominating the international relations during the Cold War era had serious flaws in sustaining global peace. The type of peace that the people of the Cold War era were experiencing was temporary and defensive. It was usually secured by the diplomatic measures oblivious of the positive human potential such as realism and constructivism in which states sought peace by keeping the status-quo and the balance of power or projecting and prescribing a hegemonic cognitive structure in international relations. Ham started believing that the effort to save the destiny of an individual country would be like pouring water in a sieve. Just as Rev. Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Ham realized that to build a just community for the people is naturally a global project. Even if the well-being of my country has been secured, if our neighboring countries still suffer injustice, our happiness would not last long. As Ham learned from the concentric notion of self and community inspired by the Neo-Confucian and Taoist philosophy, every living being should be considered in a single cosmic community. We are all brothers and sisters. Without this notion of brotherly love, the justification and efficacy of Ham’s nonviolence and peace movement cannot be persuasive. In other words, when Ham found inspirational in Gandhi’s ahimsa movement, he did not just see the methodological value. He saw a more profound

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cause than the political objective of the movement. Ham said, “인류 생명 세 계의 통일이 깨지고 한 몸의 지체들끼리 서로 싸우는 것이 세계의 위기 다 (The real global crisis is that the unity of the world of life is broken and the limbs of the same body fight each other).” 101 It was the idea of the union of Atman and Brahman, in which individual identities are dissolved into a singularity of life. In particular, for Ham, this union was not an impersonal union such as a non-material and non-historical union of energy. It was compassion and empathy that binds all lives together. The ability to interact and unite with everyone in peace comes from this affective feeling of union, which naturally demands a cosmopolitan vision. Therefore, Ham’s peace and non-violence movement and his cosmopolitan vision should coincide. Fifth, Hams’ cosmopolitan vision was not of building a large international institution such as a new form of the United Nations or the Kantian confederation of states. It is a sogukchuŭi (소국주의, micro-statism). He warned of the problem of the mega-statism represented by the two hegemonic ideological blocks (the Soviet Union and the United States of America), which he believed was ruining the world. 102 Rejecting both the inordinate individualism and the statism, Ham promoted a small-scale-community practice movement (소규모 공동체 실천운동) because within the large-scale political community, it was almost impossible for the people themselves to lead the community. They often become anonymous as political agent or degenerate into an impersonal part of the larger machine called country or state. 만일 세계가 하나로 된다면 그건 주권이 하나가 될 터이니까, 대국의 세 력이 분산되어야 하겠지. 그렇다면 중공도 미국도 다 갈라져야 한다고 봐. 그땐 지방자치제가 늘어갈 거니까 주가 각각 독립해야지. 그래야 커 뮤니티가 형성되지 않겠어요? 대국주의란 안주 나빠요. 그게 우상 노릇 을 해서 작은 민족이 못살게 되는데, 그래 작은 민족이 살려면 대국은 무 너져야 한다고 봐요. . . . 우리가 물리쳐야 할 것은 집단주의 (collectivism)야 대국이란 것도 실은 집단주의지. 103 Since there will be a single sovereignty if the entire world becomes one, the powers of big countries should be dispersed. If so, China and the United States of America should be also broken up. As the number of local self-government would increase, each state will need to be independent. Wouldn’t this form a (true) community? The super-power-statism is evil. Acting like an idol, it bullies small states. I think that for small states to live, the superpowers should collapse. . . . What we have to defeat is collectivism. The superpowers are in fact came from collectivism.

To build a larger human community such as a cosmopolitan community, the minjung should be able to awaken to and actualize their ssial nature in a specific political context of their immediate community. It means that the transformation of character and worldview demands a community in which the ssial would emerge, grow by personally interacting with other ssials, and

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translate their enlightenment into a political reality. The small-scale community is the starting point for the people to find their true identity and belonging and to cultivate their virtues for a global-scale community. He characterizes the ssial movement in the small-scale community as an effort to build an organic community and as sasangŭi kerillajŏn (사상의 게 릴라전, guerilla fight of thought). 104 With a small community, people can practice ssial philosophy as a way of life. They can easily participate in their political process as an authentic player, find a stronger connection to other members, and feel a stronger feeling of moral responsibility for the sufferer. They can be more creative in coming up with ways to translate their affection into institutional measures. Therefore, the new history, which will be written by the new community of the ssial, which Ham thought of as segyejŏk (세계 적, cosmopolitan), should be launched by our genuine participation in a small community movement. Ham said: 구체적으로 말하자면 공동체 훈련 안 하면 안 된다는 겁니다. 우리가 새 역사를 짓는 씨알 노릇을 하려면 하나가 되기 전에 자기 부근의 가능한 한도 안에서, 크게 욕심 부리지 말고 공동체 훈련을 해야 돼요. 사랑을 하 는 것, 대적을 위해서 기도하는 것, 우리가 악을 대적하기는 하지만 그 사 람을 미워해서는 안 된다는 것, 그런 것을, 하기는 어렵지만 힘닿는 데까 지 해요. 한 급우끼리, 한 가족으로, 또 다른 사람들하고 하면 더 좋고. 105 To be concrete, community training is essential. To play the role of ssial, we need to have community training as much as we can in our given situation, not driven by too high a goal. We have to try to love and pray for the enemy and not to hate the enemy even if we confront it. It can be done with your classmates, family members, and it would be even better if you can try with strangers.

HAM’S EXPERIMENT: THE SSIAL COMMUNITY Although Ham did not do any specific organizational movement directly related to cosmopolitanism, he did try to experiment his ssial community as a foundational practice to internalize the cosmopolitan ideal. In contrast to Gandhi’s ashram, which was successful in translating his philosophy into a political reality, Ham’s ssial community was institutionally a failure. It never grew to as organizationally stable and historically influential a movement as the Sabarmati Ashram. The topic about this failure would demand a whole new discussion, which I think is not part of the main concern here. His experiment of ssial community does confirm that building a ssial community is a starting point in the organizational level yet the ultimate place in which the cosmopolitan ideal can be practically reflected and cultivated. The cosmopolitan implications that I have found in Ham’s experiment of ssial community are his practical efforts to build a community environment

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in which people could find the true meaning of life and cultivate a larger sense of belonging and moral responsibility. The project of his ssial community was intended to break the old self, which has been formed by the concerns mainly about the well-being of the individual and one’s immediate community. The Samil Kyoyuk (삼일교육, Three-One-Education), which was the foundational philosophy of the ssial community, represents clearly Ham’s enduring interest in the cosmopolitan ideal. The Samil Kyoyuk was Ham’s three different educational focuses: education, religion, and farming villages (교육, 종교, 농촌). Ham thought that “the three elements, education, religion, and farm villages, are essential for his future and his country’s future.” 106 They build a triangular pyramid making up a single unified apex, which is the spark of saengmyeong (생명의 불꽃). 107 According to Ham, the idea of common belonging and unity does not come naturally. An intentional effort is required. People should learn intellectually and experience physically that they are all from the same source of life and have the same rights to live, grow, and prosper. The empathy and the sense of community toward every life should be built and cultivated in a smaller scale community first. Ham thought of the unity pursued in the Samil Education as follows: 하나란 가장 구체적으로 말하면 나라의 통일이다. 그러나 그것은 그것으 로 그치는 것이 아니고 나아가서는 세계가 하나 되는 세계국가에까지 가 야 하는 것이요, 속으로 들어 오면 내가 하나가 되는, 나와 하나님이 하나 되는 인격 통일에까지 이르러야 한다. 108 To be specific, hana (하나, one) means the unification of the country. However, it should not remain there. It should move forward to the stage that the world becomes one, a country of the world. Internally speaking, it also means the union of character, in which I become one and God and I become one. 나와 하나님과 하나요, 세계가 하나라는 것은 더 올라가면 우주와 하나님 이 하나란데 가고 마니 이것은 위로도 아래로도 하 나님에 가고 마는 교 육이다. 109 The fact that God and I are one and that the world is hana means that as we clime high, we reach a place, in which the cosmos and God are hana. This represents the education that necessarily leads us to God from both the above and the below.

In other words, the ssial community provides three dimensional resources for the character development to envision a cosmopolitan community, which is the community of humanity. With education, people investigate and reflect on an infinite variety of human affairs and phenomena particularly through history, philosophy, and scientific knowledge. With religion, people learn about the divine, common origin of life and the endless moral possibility through the universal religious narrative of human limits and salvation. The

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farm village offers a space in which people can practically experience the dignity of life through engaging in farm works. Farm work and land provide a miniature of the larger world and life. People learn not only the interconnectedness of life but also a deeper sense of moral responsibility for the world. For example, the productivity of a farm depends on a variety of elements. A productive farm land demands healthy conditions of soil, water, air, and sunlight. To secure the fertility of soil, farmers need not only proper mineral and chemical composition but also diverse organisms living in the soil. The guarantee of biological diversity and the symbiosis of organism are essential. With this metaphor, people as farmers come to have a deep appreciation of the earth shared by every living organism and realize the interconnectedness of everything to produce something meaningful and valuable. In particular, farm works allow people to feel authentic about their being in the world. Instead of being an impersonal part of a machine, they can actively participate as a creator in the farming process from the beginning to the end. They find themselves authentic, purposeful, and therefore meaningful. They also feel respected by the people who consume their products and appreciate their hard work. Therefore, the farm land is the space to recover the just human relation, including just economic relation, and relation to the true meaning of labor and the natural environment. According to Hwang (2014), in his life time, Ham attempted four times of ssial community: 1) Songsan Nongsa Hakkyo in Pyeongyang (평양 송산농사학교) in 1940, 2) Ssial Nongjang in Yongch’ŏn (용천) in 1941, 3) Ssial Nongjang in Ch’ŏnan (천안 의 씨알농장) in 1957, and 4) Ssial Nongjang in Anbandŏk (안반덕의 씨알 농장) in 1961. These experiments of ssial community reflect well Ham’s will to put the samil education into practice. As Lee Ho Je evaluates it critically, his movement was not successful. The ssial community failed to sustain due to the lack of strong, organizational leadership and skills. 110 However, they are at least a good evidence to show Ham’s ideal vision of community, which should be built and practiced by a metaphysical, transnational, and strong ethical sense of self and community. Songsan Nongsa Hakkyo was Ham’s first attempt. He took over Songsan Nongsa Hakkyo from Kim Tuhyŏk (김 두혁) right after he quit his teaching job at Osan Hakkyo in 1940. Following the samil principle, the daily life of this ssial community was made of both intellectual and spiritual practices and physical work. Participants would start early morning with prayer and bible study and learn different academic subjects such as literature, history, Chinese, and agriculture in the morning, and spend the afternoon with farm works. Ham tried to cultivate the character of the people, who were historically enlightened, spiritually mature, and morally active in empathizing and working together with others of any boundary to realize the full human potential. This first attempt did not last long. As Kim Tuhyŏk, co-founder, who taught agriculture, was sent to prison by the Japa-

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nese colonial authority due to an accusation of being involved in independence movement, known as the Kyeuhoe incident (계우회 사건), Songsan Hakkyo was shut down. It was an unavoidable decision because Ham himself was arrested and remained as a prisoner on trial until May of the following year. When released from the prison, Ham went back to his home town, Yongch’ŏn, and tried to rebuild the ssial community. Unfortunately, his attempt was to no avail due to the Sŏngsŏjosŏn incident (성서조선 사건), another accusation of independence movement. Thirteen people, including Kim Kyosin and Ham Sok Hon, were consigned to prison. In 1957, Ham started another ssial community in Ch’ŏnan. Chŏng Mansu (정만수), who was deeply inspired by Queen of Suffering: A Spiritual History of Korea (성 서적 입장에서 본 조선역사), donated about 14 acres for the ssial community. Chŏng’s personal retrospection reveals indirectly Ham’s sallim education. 이 농장의 이념은 선생님의 씨알사상을 중심으로 나라의 동력이 될 수 있 는 인재를 양성하자는 것이었다. 더 나가서는 인류평화운동에 기여하자 는 것이 었다. 함선생님은 인도의 간디 선생의 아슈람도 생각하셔서 종 교•교육•농사를 하나로 통하는 생활교육을 하실 계획도 하셨다. 같이 살 기 운동을 펴보실 마음 을 가지시고 남녀 독신자를 모아 인간개혁의 꿈을 씨알 농장을 통해 이루어보자는 꿈도 가졌다. 그래서 미래의 신천신지, 새 나라의 핵이 될 도장을 그렸던 것이다. 111 The objective of this community was to educate people, who would be the driving force of the country, based on ssial philosophy, and furthermore contribute to the peace movement for humanity. Inspired by the ashram of Gandhi in India, Ham wanted to offer life teaching through religion, education, and farm work. Having the philosophy of living together, he dreamed of bringing in single men and women and transforming their characters in the ssial community. In other words, Ham was envisioning a training center, which would be the kernel for a new country and the new heaven and earth of the future.

In this ssial community in Ch’ŏnan, Ham’s vision was clear. He wanted to build a laboratory, which could awaken and draw the most beautiful potential of human beings. It was the power of love derived from the spiritual and intellectual understanding of the divine source of life and the natural feeling of moral responsibility and will to express this love in political reality. Participants in this community were trained to redefine their spiritual and social identity and belonging. Engaging in the creative and productive process of various farm works, along with the deep reflection of the meaning and value of saengmyeong through both secular and religious narratives and wisdom, they began to practice to expand the purpose of life and the conventional notion of community into an open-ended scale. Since the primary objective of the ssial community was to cultivate hon (혼, spirit), the notion of self and community could not remain in the individual and the local community. He

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believed that “we would need the power of hon (혼, spirit) rather than of the material to better prepare for the future battle.” 112 Like the previous communities, this project was short-lived. Although Ham worked hard to keep his community self-sufficient, he had to close it for various reasons. From the outside was political censorship and pressure by the military regime because of his active social criticism particularly through Sasanggye (사상계, Ideology World). From the inside, he was marred by an extramarital affair. He lost focus and suffered public disappointment. The fourth attempt was the ssial community in Anbandŏk, which was located on the mid-slope of a mountain. This community was founded by Kim Chongtŏk (김종덕), with whom Ham had once worked together in a previous farm. Kim and a few others reclaimed this area to start a farm in 1961. Ham joined them in 1962. As in other ssial communities, Ham continued to focus on character transformation of the participants. They read the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and works of Teilhard de Chardin. Ham expressed his objective as of idealism. He wanted to envision and pursue the highest and deepest possible. His vision may not be achievable but substantial to inspire and push us to move forward. His vison of the community of humanity is always embedded in this thought process. 무엇보다 중요한 것은 정신이니 굳센 뜻을 가지도록. 꿈을, 될수록 높은 꿈을 가지도록 해요. 에서가 호인이어도 망하고 야곱이 교활한 점이 있으 면서도 축복을 받은 것은 까닭이 있소. 야곱의 야곱 된 점은 하늘에 까지 닿는 사다리를 꿈꾸는 데 있소. 그것은 이상주의자인 것을 말하는 것이 오. 나는 세상에서 불행하더라도 차라리 이상주의 편이 좋소. 안반덕은 해발 500인 것을 잊지 마시오. 높아야지. 113 Since what is the most important is spirit, have a strong will. Try to have a dream, as high a dream as possible. There is a reason why Esseu failed though he was a good person and Jacob was blessed though he was cunning. What made Jacob was his dreaming of the ladder reaching heaven. It represents an idealist. I want to be an idealist though this might make me less happy. Don’t forget that Anbandŏk is located at an altitude of 500 meters. We should be high.

Like the other farms, this ssial community did not last long either. According to Hwang, it was too isolated. Ham himself lamented later, “We have made our people beggars. There is nothing left at the Anbandŏk farm in Kansŏng of Gangwon-do after four or five years.” 114 The ssial community never reached the scale of Gandhi’s Satyagrah Ashram. It ended up to be his personal experiment. There was no professional and collective support from the minjung. His idea was a philosophically profound yet organizationally too inchoate.

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NOTES 1. Frank Appel, “An Interconnected World Is a More Prosperous World,” Delivering Tomorrow, accessed July 12, 2019, https://delivering-tomorrow.com/an-interconnected-world-isa-more-prosperous-world/. 2. Thomas Wright and Thomas Wright, “Sifting through Interdependence,” Brookings, July 28, 2016, accessed July 12, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/sifting-throughinterdependence/ . 3. Ian Bremmer, “The Dark Side of Globalisation,” The Irish Times, June 4, 2018, accessed July 12, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-dark-side-of-globalisation-1. 3516550. 4. Olav Eikeland, Cosmopolitanism: Educational, Philosophical and Historical Perspectives (Switzerland: Springer, 2016), 22. 5. Garrett Wallace Brown, Grounding Cosmopolitanism, From Kant to the idea of a Cosmopolitan Constitution (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2009), 4. 6. Eikeland, 24. 7. Eric Brown, “Socrates the Cosmopolitan,” Stanford Agora: An Online Journal of Legal Perspectives 1, no. 1 (2000): 74, https://philpapers.org/archive/BROSTC-2.pdf. 8. PLATO, MENO, in PLATONIS OPERA, supra note 5, at 71e1–72a5, quoted in Eric Brown, 79. 9. Brown, 4. 10. James D. Ingram, Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 27. 11. De Alexandri fortuna aut virtute, quoted in Tad Brennan, The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, & Fate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 162. 12. Brown, 5. 13. Anand Bertrand Commissiong, Cosmopolitanism in Modernity (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 27. 14. Brown, 6. 15. Olav Eikeland, Cosmopolis or Koinopolis? 43, in Cosmopolitanism: Educational, Philosophical and Historical Perspectives, ed. Marianna Papastephanou (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018). 16. Brown, 5. 17. Lee Trepanier and Khalil M. Habib (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 43. 18. Republic, quoted in, Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Globalization: Citizens without States, ed. Lee Trepanier and Khalil M. Habib (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016), 44. 19. Fougeret de Montbron, Le Cosmopolite ou le Citoyen du Monde (Paris: Ducros, 1970; originally London, 1750), 130. 20. Samuel Von Pufendorf and Frank Bö hling, De Jure Naturae Et Gentium (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014). 21. Howard Williams, “Colonialism in Kant’s Political Philosophy,” Diametros 39 (2014): 154–81, 155. 22. E. Chukwudi Eze‚ “Modern Western Philosophy and African Colonialism,” in African Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Emmanuel Chukwudi. Eze (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2005), 213–21. 23. Williams, 170. 24. Brown (2009), 9. 25. Stan Van Hooft, Cosmopolitanism: A Philosophy for Global Ethics (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2009), 18. 26. See more discussion in Chapter 4 on the State of Nature. 27. Simon Caney, “International Distributive Justice,” Political Studies 49, no. 5 (2001): 974–97, 977. 28. Ibid.

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29. Justyna Miklaszewska, “Rawls on Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice,” in Uncovering Facts and Values. Studies in Contemporary Epistemology and Political Philosophy, ed. Adrian Kuzniar and Joanna Odrowaz-Sypniewska (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2016): 323. 30. Miklaszewska, 332–33. 31. Commissiong, 126. 32. Pablo De Greiff, “Habermas on Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism,” Ratio Juris 15, no. 4 (2002): 427–28, doi:10.1111/1467-9337.00217. 33. Commissiong, 121. 34. David Held, Cosmopolitanism, Ideals and Realities (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2010), 80. 35. Ibid. 36. Gilbert Leung, “A Critical History of Cosmopolitanism,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 5, no. 3 (2009): 370–90, 372. 37. Hooft, 6. 38. Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 85, quoted in Chike Jeffers, “Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 51, no. 4 (2013): 488–510, 495. 39. Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 110, quoted in M. Ayaz Naseem and Emery J. Hyslop-Margison, “Nussbaum’s Concept of Cosmopolitanism: Practical Possibility or Academic Delusion?,” Paideusis 15, no. 2 (2006): 51–66, 55. 40. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” Boston Review, October 1, 1994, accessed July 13, 2019, http://bostonreview.net/martha-nussbaum-patriotism-andcosmopolitanism. 41. See Martha Nussbaum, Woman and Human Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 78–90. 42. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Pariotism and Cosmopolitanism,” Boston Review, retrieved on June 13, 2017 from http://bostonreview.net/martha-nussbaum-patriotism-andcosmopolitanism. 43. Naseem and Hyslop-Margison, 53. 44. Sok Hon Ham, 지배자와 피지배자 (the Ruler and the Ruled), “3천만 앞에 부르짖는 다” (Crying Out to the Thirty Million People, hereafter Crying Out), Collection, 385. 45. Sok Hon Ham, 평화문제에 대하여 (On the Problem of Peace), “생활철학” (Life Philosophy), Collection, 376. 46. Sok Hon Ham, “싸우는 평화주의자” (A Fighting Pacifist), Collection, 133. 47. Life Philosophy, 131. 48. Ibid., 133. 49. Sok Hon Ham, “한민족과 평화” (One Nation and Peace, hereafter One Nation), Collection, 162. 50. One Nation, 163. 51. Life Philosophy, Collection, 376. 52. World History, 7. 53. Those Who Think, 187. 54. Those Who Think, 394. 55. Spiritual History of Korea, 65. 56. Plotinus, The Eneads, 3.2 (47), 2.1 ff., quoted in R. W. Sharples, “Plato, Plotinus, and Evil,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 39 (1994): 171–81, 173. 57. World History, 95. 58. Voice 4, 36. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid., 39–40. 61. Ibid., 34. 62. Spiritual History of Korea, 26. 63. Ibid., 26. See World History, 98. 64. The original source is God. See Biography, 37. “씨알로 감은 결국 하나님에게 감이다 (To go to Ssial is to go to God.”

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65. World History, 92. 66. Voice 9, 37. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid., 8, 3–4. 71. Ibid., 4. 72. Ibid., 5. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. Meaning of Minjung, 140. 78. Those Who Think, 394–95. 79. Real Problem, 34. 80. “Global Economic Inequality–and What Might Be Done About It,” Norwich University Online, accessed July 13, 2019, https://online.norwich.edu/academic-programs/masters/ international-relations/resources/infographics/global-economic-inequality-and-what-might-bedone-about-it . 81. “5 Shocking Facts about Extreme Global Inequality and How to Even It up,” 5 Shocking Facts about Extreme Global Inequality and How to Even It up | Oxfam International, accessed July 13, 2019, https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme-globalinequality-and-how-even-it-davos . 82. Spiritual History of Korea, 76–77. 83. Ibid., 77. 84. New Era, 85–86. 85. New Era, 85. 86. New Era, 91. 87. New Era, 102–3. 88. Crying Out, 329. 89. Ibid. 90. Sok Hon Ham, “하늘 땅에 바른 숨 있어” (True Breath in Heaven and Earth, hereafter True Breath), Collection, 112. 91. True Breath,113. 92. Kyoung Jae Kim, “새로운 문명의 길라잡이, 함석헌의 씨알사상,” 바보새 함석헌 동 서를 아우른 생명 평화 사상, accessed April 16, 2019, http://ssialsori.net/bbs/board.php?bo_ table=0402&wr_id=41&page=5&ckattempt=1. 93. Unended Lecture, 341. 94. True Breath, 113. 95. See Sok Hon Ham, “평화로운 새 세계로의 초대” (Invitation to the New World, hereafter New World), 바보새 함석헌 동서를 아우른 생명 평화 사상 (Pabose), accessed June 16, 2018, http://ssialsori.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=0310&wr_id=56. 96. Ibid. 97. One Nation, 164. 98. True Breath, 112. 99. “PEACE in Action,” People Power Across the Globe - PEACE in Action, accessed November 22, 2019, https://promotingpeace.org/2007/4/mcdonald.html). 100. See New World. 101. Chŏnjip 9: 286. 102. Chŏnjip 4: 340, quoted in Young Ho Kim, “함석헌의 비폭력 평화사상과 그 실천 전 략 (Ham Sok Hon’s Non-Violence Movement and His Practical Strategies),” Uwŏnsasang Nonch’ong 10 (2001): 198–228, 216. 103. Ibid., 215. 104. Ibid., 214.

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105. Unended Lecture, 127, quoted in Young Ho Kim, “함석헌의 비폭력 평화사상과 그 실 천 전략 (Ham Sok Hon’s Non-Violence Movement and His Practical Strategies),” Uwŏnsasang Nonch’ong 10 (2001): 198–228. 214. 106. See Chŏjakchip 7: 56. 107. Ibid. 108. Minhyŏk Hwang, “새 시대의 종교를 위한 에클레시아 연구” (Master’s thesis, 감리교 신학대학교 대학원, 2014), 65–67. 109. Chŏjakchip 3, 246, quoted in Hwang, 66. 110. Ho Jae Lee, 함석헌의 종교사상과 잠재태로서의 씨알종교공동체, Journal of New Religions 37 (2017): 75–104, 78. 111. Mansu Chŏng, “이발소 50년 노우트 2 : 이발을 생각하며,” 씨알의 소리85 (1979), 99, quoted in Hwang, 60–61. 112. Hwang, 61. 113. Sok Hon Ham, “진실을 찾는 벗들에게” (To the Friends Seeking the Truth), Collection, 166. 114. Ibid., 63.

Chapter Seven

Ham Sok Hon’s Ssial Philosophy as Derridean Singularity

In this appendix, I invite another Western thinker to shed light on Ham’s cosmopolitan thought. It is Jacques Derrida. To highlight the unique, common characteristics of Derrida’s and Ham’s thoughts and contrast them with other classical and modern cosmopolitan theorists, this section begins with a brief review of the history of cosmopolitanism, which is already extensively discussed in chapter VI. My intention of review is to remind you of the theoretical shortcomings of the established theories, particularly Kant’s theory, and help you find a common response of Derrida and Ham and a possible contribution of Ham’s philosophy in the wide-ranging theoretical spectrum. As presented in chapter VI, cosmopolitan thought and vision are found even in the earlier stage of our intellectual history. Although remaining parochial in traditional political ties, both pre-Socratic and Classical Greek thoughts did recognize the argument of cosmopolitanism. Democritus of Abdrea found the true abode of humans in a metaphysical dimension. He said, “To a wise man, the whole earth is open; for the native land of a good soul is the whole earth” 1 In Protagoras, Plato presents a rationale through Hippias’ words. He addresses strangers and foreigners in a larger category of community, saying that they are “kinsmen, intimates, and fellow-citizens-by nature and not by law; for like is akin to like by nature, whereas law, despot of mankind, often constrains us against nature.” 2 Socrates in Plato’s dialogues is explicit on his cosmopolitan identity. Brown argues that “Plato’s Socrates renders his special service to Athenians without acknowledging any special obligations to do so.” 3 It means that he would question the ordinary politics for the extraordinary politics, not to lose the core of his virtue, which should be transcendent (Brown,78). 4 All these statements show a malleability of our belonging. However, one of the salient motives of the ancient cosmopolitan 139

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imagination was the intention to defend their dissident views on the dominant culture of the society. Cynic Diogenes’ claim of kosmopolites was an example. So was Socrates’ defensive attitude, in the Athenian court according to Derrida. 5 Antigone’s argument, in Oedipus Rex, for the burial of her brother, Polynices, is a dramatic example. She exclaimed: It was not Zeus who published this decree, Nor have the powers who rule among the dead Imposed such laws as this upon mankind; Nor could I think that a decree of yours—A man—could override the laws of Heaven Unwritten and unchanging. Not of today Or yesterday is their authority; They are eternal; no man saw their birth. 6

The further development of cosmopolitanism was made during the GrecoRoman period. Alexander the Great’s Koine Greek as lingua franka and his cultural syncretism laid an infrastructure to make the nascent cosmopolitan vision look more practical and political. The later Stoics expanded the notion from a politicized ambition to a philosophical and moral principle. Chrysippus tried to expand the idea of polis into the city of gods; Sphaerus’ advice to King Cleomenes III of Sparta was intended to build an ideal city whose guiding principle was more metaphysical than political. Some Stoics went so far as to believe in a cosmic polis to be established by reason. Marcus Aurelius (d. 180 AD) states: If our intellectual part is common, the reason also, in respect of which we are rational beings, is common: if this is so, common also is the reason which commands us what to do, and what not to do; if this is so, there is a common law also; if this is so, we are fellow-citizens; if this is so, we are members of some political community; if this is so, the world is in a manner a state. For of what other common political community will any one say that the whole human race are members? 7

However, it should not be assumed that the cosmopolitan vision of later Stoics was formulated by a desire for a supra-polis-community. They were not as universal as are modern cosmopolitans whose notion of justice is not anchored in a territorial community. Konstantakos argues that while the primary concerns of early Cynics were individual freedom and the role of the wise in a polis, later Roman philosophers focused on moral concern. He points out, “Stoic justice typically emphasized only moral cosmopolitanism: the agent’s quest for virtue in the context of his own society.” 8 Whether explicit or implicit, this cosmopolitan vision has been remaining as one of our unfinished moral and political tasks in history. A series of cataclysmic changes, particularly in the media, transportation, and political consciousness, through scientific, industrial, and digital revolutions have made this task more urgent yet complicated at the same time. Its significance

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for modern life was refreshed and reminded by many prominent thinkers and activists such as Zygmut Bauman who promoted the idea of liquid modernity 9 and Edward Said and Alberto Melucci, 10 who viewed the cosmopolitan identity through the point of view of a nomad. It was, however, Immanuel Kant, who elevated the discussion of cosmopolitanism into the dimension of international ethics and politics for those modern thinkers. Fusing elements of republicanism and liberalism, Kant made the cosmopolitan vision more tangible at least theoretically. He envisioned a global governance under which individual nations act like citizens, of a single community, with shared sense of fairness and justice. In Perpetual Peace, Kant stated, “If all is not to be lost, this can at best find a negative substitute in the shape of an enduring and gradually expanding federation likely to prevent war.” 11 Not only did Kant extend our moral imagination beyond the parochialism of the bordered nation-state but he also promoted the validity of rationalism and institutional arrangements in international politics. 12 However, Kant’s vision has been subject to criticism for three major issues, to which I believe his predecessors had also often failed to respond. First, some modern cosmopolitan theorists such as David Held do not accept Kant’s belief that cosmopolitanism is part of natural process. He believed that “the highest purpose of nature, a universal cosmopolitan existence, will be at last be realized as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop.” 13 Held responded, “Cosmopolitan order as a normative goal to be fought for politically rather than as a natural outcome.” 14 It means that a maturity in the political consciousness of the individuals equipped with reason and logic would not necessarily lead to an institutional arrangement for a cosmopolitan community. Individual nations should be willing to negotiate, compromise, and cooperate with each other to create specific policies and systems, which could generate a larger sense of belonging. Second, reason, which Kant considered to be the universal foundation, has been problematic in the postmodern political environment. Although there is no doubt that reason is a common faculty of humans to generate a sense of order and a power to connect, outcomes that it produces are varying because the postmodern thought questions the objectivity particularly of values and promotes a break from the traditions of the past. When placed in a hegemonic relation of international politics, reason suffers from a power dynamic. The validity of reason particularly in the political dimension can be questioned over its arbitrariness of the reasoner; reasoning of the powerful and the oppressor would dominate the reasoning of the powerless and the oppressed. For instance, the Japan’s nationalist interpretation, of its colonialization of Korea, focusing only on material benefits, can sound convincing to the imperial mind. However, it is intended only to justify Japan’s unjust

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occupation, glossing over the history of atrocity, including sex slaves and massacres. In this reasoning, invasion is replaced by advance. Third, Kant’s cosmopolitan vision, particularly universal hospitality, does not go beyond the domain of the state. According to Vaughan-Willams’ criticism, Kant’s universal hospitality remains within the territory of a state. “The right to universal hospitality is a right of visitation not residence; the right to universal hospitality only applies to citizens as such; the right to universal hospitality as law is ultimately still dependent on and controlled by the state and its police.” 15 Held argues that international community, not individual states separately, has to work on shaping and directing the universal hospitality with concrete institutional efforts: “the reform of the UN Security Council, the creation of a second chamber in the UN, the enhancement of political regionalization, the use of trans-national referenda, the creation of a new Human Rights Court, the foundation of a new coordinating economic agency at regional and global level/ and the establishment of a new effective accountable, international military force.” 16 DERRIDA’S SINGULARITY AND HAM’S SSIAL According to Vaughan-Williams, Derrida’s notion of singularity would effectively respond to the above-mentioned shortcomings of the classical and modern cosmopolitan theories. I believe that this concept of singularity closely mirrors Ham’s idea of ssial. Both ideas emphasize the creative, practical, and transcendent aspect of our identity and our perception of and attitude to others. The individual as the singular and the ssial brings his identity back to the most natural state of existence and lowers his guard in meaningfully placing the stranger in the narrative and boundary of his life. VaughanWilliams’s presentation of Derrida’s singularity offers a new insight, not a new strategy, into our discussion of cosmopolitanism. For the Kant’s argument that cosmopolitanism would be a natural outcome of our moral and political enlightenment, Vaughan-William rather emphasizes the intentionality nuanced in Derrida’s singularity and challenges it pertinent generality. It is not our rational faculty per se but our constant encounter and interaction with others and our intentional effort that create a true sense of community. The feeling of community does not just emerge naturally. Nor is the idea and rationale of a community naturally formulated because our reason and reasoning are not always static and receptive. They are actualized and developed from potentiality through responding to and interacting with external stimuli. For instance, as argued in Piaget’s theory of schemas, our cognitive processes, including intelligence, language development, and reasoning, constantly change, move, and grow, through the interactive mechanism of assimilation and accommodation. 17 Not only do these

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processes show the significance of external environment and players but they also imply the intentional and active role of the reasoner in engaging in, reflecting on, and utilizing the external information to constantly confirm and reshape his reality. In other words, we as the reasoner do not just observe or absorb what is happening but always try to put it in a new framework of understanding and response. We all participate as the author in the creative process of making things workable or at least understandable for us. This authorship or intentionality contradicting naturalness directly questions the generality of cosmopolitanism as well. As stated above, our reasoning is a creative process, often going beyond the basic cognitive functioning such as information processing and computation; it can defy the norms of a particular time and space. As we become an active interpreter and appraiser in making sense of our reality in the best shape and form, our action becomes concrete and practical than abstract and general. Vaughan-Williams identifies this creative engagement as a defining characteristic of Derrida’s singularity. Our effort to settle our understanding of hospitality to the other in a fixed norm, principle, or policy is an example. He said, “Any agenda or programme designed to extend hospitality to others constitutes an attempt to provide an ethical generality in world politics that is doomed to failure.” It means that it would be naive to think that our intellectual enlightenment and advanced institutional strategies would naturally lead to “the mutual acknowledgement of, and respect for, the equal and legitimate rights of others” particularly in international relations and community. 18 To have a shared idea of a larger community such as cosmopolitan community, its ensuing feeling of loyalty and moral responsibility, and the desire to express it in reality, we need to be fully aware of the presence of others and constantly engage in the dialogue on their memories, stories, and needs. Likewise, we need to show our presence and express our narrative to others. The cosmopolitan idea and value are interactive and mutual, and they always remain unsettled, because every encounter between I and thou with the genuine heart of coexistence and co-prosperity reveals a new problem, writes a new story, and shows a new direction. Vaughan-Williams says on the intentionality and unnaturalness of singularity, “It is precisely this ‘being-with’ that gives rise to concrete situations in which decision–making, responsibility, and other aspects of the realm of the ethico-political arise.” 19 Derrida’s democracy to come (la democratie a venir) can be another example to show this concept of singularity, which denies normativity, fixity, and generality in conceiving a political relation and community. His democracy is not something that has been already established. Nor is it something that we project as ideal for our current needs. According to VaughanWilliams’s interpretation, Derrida’s notion of democracy relates to “a democratic order outside the parameter of the classical model, as defined and

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developed historically in the west.” 20 It is not a political system or an ideological model; it rejects a pre-given (natural, theological, or transcendentalpragmatic, procedural) universality of norms.” 21 It is a malleable political culture, attitude, and perspective. Derrida says, “Democracy welcomes the possibility of being contested, of contesting itself, of criticizing and indefinitely improving itself.” 22 It is a noble virtue, which is ceaselessly openminded and tolerant to differences and even what might be considered a threat to the very notion of democracy. Thomson’s interpretation confirms this characteristic of singularity against generality. He defines, “The virtue of democracy, that opening to the competing parties taking turns, expose it in turn to the risk of destruction by the electoral institution of those who seek to suspend or restrict democracy.” 23 It means that democracy never exists as a political stage or condition with stable, static properties. Democracy contains within itself a potential that could destroy what constitutes its very existence. The dynamic movement of individuals for a community does not just happen. It demands an active unceasing engagement, reflection, and creativity of the individuals in putting the other in a proper place and status in a deeper understanding of his reality, which is a metaphysical reconfiguration: rewriting of ontology and axiology. Like Derrida’s singularity, Ham’s notion of ssial denies naturalness and generality in shaping our thought of others and a sense of a borderless community. The perfectibility of human nature, which Kant was envisioning, was internal. According to Coward, Kant believed that a thing perfects itself “only when it attains an end inhered in the thing itself, what it has in itself to be, not merely an end which someone has chosen to set up as its objectives.” 24 It means that the quality of reality, particularly our political reality, depends on the maturity of our reasoning and the way it is expressed in institutional forms. Kant’s cosmopolitan community is a product of the moral and intellectual enlightenment of the individual; he assumed the natural translation of the enlightenment of the individual into a virtue of the nationstate interaction. While agreeing on the perfectibility of human nature, Ham would, like Derrida, emphasize intentionality, a force to defy nature. His definition of saengmyeong, which is a metaphysically broadened concept of ssial, would explain it. Saengmyeong is something in abrupt shift (비약성) and something defiant (반역성): that which comes from darkness but swallows it: that which comes from earth yet defeats it (생명이란 비약성을 가진 것 . . . 반역 성을 가진 것, 암흑에서 나와 암흑을 삼키려 하고 흙에서 나와 흙을 이기 려 하는 것). 25 It has the intention to go beyond its natural state and its expected direction. According to Ham, engaging in finding a common narrative of life with others and building a transnational community are not a natural process. Similarly, the human growth, including the growth of our civilization, are not naturally given because “we are a cosmic outcome, rep-

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resenting the cosmos, but challenge it at the same time.” 26 We defy and transcend the cosmos, of which our being is a part, and, by which we are physically influenced. We are both the interpreted and the interpreter; we are not the foolish starving in the food storage but the wise that constantly develops a recipe and cooks; we are not a being always bound by the law of nature but a being that can seek meaning and purpose, interacting deeply and closely with other beings and the surrounds; 27 we are the pulbyŏnja (불변자, immutable, invariant) in the sense that we share common attributes with other beings as part of the cosmos, but we are the creative, growing pulbyŏnja. Only having the rational faculty and shared moral desire and potential is not enough to realize a cosmopolitan community. We need to transcend our nature, the nature that Kant premises for his political vision. Nature here means the way things are supposed to work, driven by their innate telos. For Ham’s theological and sociological use, nature rather refers to a corrupt reality because of our sin. It is the way things move only with physical principles and desire. Thus, to retrieve the true nature, which is the ssial for Ham, we need to recover the awareness of our universal origin and put intentional effort to bring back our original identity. Like singularity, the idea and feeling of ssial that dissolves individuality and separateness demands our effort to defy the naturalness constructed by collective ideas and consensus for parochial concerns and interests. It demands a new perception of and a new sense of moral responsibility for others. Ham argued that to build a genuine sense of community, we have to return to the original self, forgetting our social self and giving up the ensuing glories. 28 This ssial awakening is abnormal, abrupt, transformative, and revolutionary experience for both ontological and sociological change. For the problem of reason and reasoning, Vaughan-Williams’s analysis of singularity points out the elusiveness of truth particularly in the sociological context. For a cosmopolitan idea to be shared by people of different or conflicting ethical and political platforms, there should be at least a shared foundation and process of reasoning. Differing from the natural world, the socio-political and ethical world does not easily allow the individuals to stand on a common ground. In particular, the postmodern era having been shaped by the scientism with hypothetical views of the world cautions against our persistent ethical desire seeking absolute truth. Our traumatic historical experiences, including colonialism and the two World Wars, have deepened our pessimism about objective reality and universal reasoning of political justice in international relations. This twentieth century’s challenge to objectivism was expressed by the Continental philosophy of anti-reason and the Anglo-American philosophy’s skeptical form of pragmatism 29; this challenge was an inverted side or a shadow of the liberation of reason. Derrida’s notion of singularity effectively responds to the challenge that the modernists faced on the elusiveness of reason. Taken as a perspective or

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virtue, the notion of singularity allows us to make the conceptual boundary of our personal identity malleable, ambiguous, indeterminate, and even suspended while keeping the uniqueness as an individual being constantly thinking and perceiving at every moment it encounters with the other. It is an aporia, in which singularity and plurality coincide and co-determinate each other and in which the singular becomes meaningful in the context of the plural, and vice versa. 30 Nancy said, “The singular is primarily each one and, therefore, also with and among all the others.” 31 Put in relational context, the conceptualization of I not only premises but also demands the presence of thou to have any meaning. I and thou are different and separate beings in that they are physically set apart; they are, however, ontologically linked and reciprocal in that their identities are shaped by every narrative in which they are engaged. It resembles a natural phenomenon in which two or more sub-atomic particles in the quantum states mirror and affect each other no matter what distance separates them. We live, think and reason together with the other. With this notion of singularity, Derrida questions the fundamental problem of the modernist’ confidence in reason: the impossibility of the generality and naturalness of reason. He suggests an open-ended reasoning: the process that I and thou reason together at every moment over shared experiences, feelings, and objectives. Ham’s ssial philosophy reflects this open-endedness of reason. For him, reason is not just an ability or instrument to understand and utilize the world but part of the essence of life. Reason exists as the cosmic, divine principle in the beginning of creation, serves for our animalistic needs in the pre-civilized world, and expands into a sophisticated political skill to maximize our interests and give a temporary order to the chaos of our animalistic pursuit. However, it does not stop there; it can and should reach the level of Derridean singularity. Ham believes that reason is more of impulse, perspective, approach, and attitude than of capacity, toward the world. Reason is born with the creation of the universe and evolves with its change, and it ultimately becomes in tune with the universe. It is not a natural faculty but an epistemological process that we intentionally and purposefully operate to realize our whole being. The whole being here means the final destination of our being, which might not be able to be reached in historical life but ought to be ceaselessly pursued. Ham believes that the awareness of and attention to this destination challenge our uncritical trust in the generality of reason and the normativity of reasoning, and they guide us to the cosmopolitan idea and vision. This notion of the whole being implies that we are not where we are supposed to be. As argued in most religious teachings, we have been estranged from God, our original nature, and fellow humans, but we have the divine calling and capability to reconnect with them not only to recover our original gift but also to complete the salvific narrative encoded in the DNA of humanity.

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Here Ham argues that the way that reason is formulated and exercised shows each milestones of our journey to the divine source and imperative. Ham’s three stages of history 32 is a good example to show the singularity toward which our reasoning has to move for the journey to the whole being and cosmopolitan community. In the volume 7 of Voice of the People (씨알 의 소리 통권 7호), Ham discusses the function of reason and its growth. As a growing being (자라는 인간), humans take three different stages in their use of reason: saengmulchŏk tan’gye (생물적 단계, biological stage), in’ganjŏk tan’gye (인간적 단계, human stage), chŏngshinjŏk tan’gye (정신 적 단계, spiritual stage). In pre-historic times, humans were driven by biological impulses and desires. Reason existed, but it was wrapped by instinct. 33 When reason, which was immanent as a seed, cast the shell of instinct in due season, it not only saw the limit of the body but also began to feel to go beyond and think high. This disparity generated religion. In the human stage or the statist stage, reason existed mainly as collective reason; reason was enslaved and manipulated as a puppet by the political power of the community in both ideological and territorial sense. It lost the essence, the essence that makes reason continue to be reason. Ham believes that the essence is the universal conscience, which emanates from both vertical and horizontal sources. Humans have the innate calling and ability to exercise their cognitive ability to fulfill the principle of hongigin’gan (홍익인간, 弘 益人間, the devotion to the welfare of mankind), which is horizontal, and to harmonize with the cosmos, which is vertical. This sublime calling is what makes a human a human. While free from the biological and animalistic fetter, the humans of the statist stage lost the desire and dream to go and think high. Ham states that if reason is not with the will to ascend, it falls. 사람은 이성 이상의 것을 추구하면 이성적임을 유지할 수 있으나, 그 올 라가려는 생각을 그치는 순간 이성에 머물지도 못하고 이성 이하로 떨어 져 내려간다는 것이다. 34 If humans pursue more than reason, they can still keep being rational. If they stop thinking of going beyond (thinking high), not only can they not be rational but they will also fall.

It means that reason is anchored in the feeling of transcendence. With reason, we do not just sense internal and external stimuli but objectify them from a transcendent position, which means an author’s, creator’s, or appraiser’s view. We reason in a higher ground, the ground in which we transcend our cognitive and axiological boundary and limit. This third stage represents the right place of reason. For Kant’s grounding of universal hospitality for cosmopolitanism, Derrida’s concept of singularity suggests a boundary-breaking moral possibility. For Derrida, the nation-state system is not the right infrastructure to build,

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sustain, and grow the type of moral impulse that the cosmopolitan community would demand. It operates with a defensive mode of legal structure and a settled or fixed identity of the constituents. The type of political community that Derrida envisioned, characterizing it as ‘democracy to come, through his philosophy of singularity, is neither a territorially fixed entity nor a community with established principles. His democracy is rather a concept of promise; promise that a better form of community and human relations is always on the way. Derrida said, “This democracy we dream of is linked in its concepts of a promise. The idea of a promise is inscribed in the idea of a democracy: equality, freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. . . .” 35 It means that democracy is not just an institutional, ideological form of government but a particular human attitude toward fellow citizens and political community and process. It is a system or an event that makes the character of the political community, the identity of its members, and even the notion of sovereignty constantly malleable and changing. No state system that we know of can perform these profound tasks. His political vision would be more in tune with cosmopolitanism, particularly German Romantic cosmopolitanism, which promoted “an ideal of worldwide non-coercive republic.” 36 For instance, his notion of the political agent with political creativity and flexibility resembles Novalis’s “perfected human being (vollendeter Mensch)” that perceives the world as an organic entity and pursues a harmonious social whole that does not operate with fixed social contracts or law but with familial affection coming out of a genuine recognition of the singularity of the individual. According to Fritsch, Derrida not only affirms “the absence of a pre-given (natural, theological, or transcendental-pragmatic, procedural) universality of norms that could support democracy” but also envisions a radically, structurally open-ended future. 37 Both the identity of the community and its operation are constantly reflected, reassessed, and reconfigured to better respond to new situations and challenges. This notion of open-endedness and infinity in forming and operating the political community naturally and bluntly denies the state system as the platform of cosmopolitan community because “all institutionalized power owes itself to an ultimately unjustifiable instituting violence, a power that will always have had to exclude some in favor of others.” 38 The following statement shows that Derrida rejects any sense of structured belonging. I want to keep my freedom, always, this for me, is the condition not only for being singular and other, but also for entering into relation with the singularity and alterity of others. When someone is one of the family, not only does he lose himself in the herd, but he loses the others as well; the others become simply places, family functions, or places or functions in the organic totality that constitutes a group, school, nation or community of subjects speaking the same language. 39

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Just as Novalis said, “The state does not consist of individual humans, but of couples and societies,” 40 Derrida did not believe in the capability of the state in building a community of singularity. For the community of singularity to be activated, the creative tension or paradox between being-in-relation and respect of singularity should be present. It is something that the state system sustaining with fixated norms and identity cannot show. He believes that the platform that can actualize cosmopolitan community is not an institutional setting but a process or dynamic, which constantly updates the inner and outer structures of the community and constantly expands the political imagination of the people to accommodate them for new environment and challenges. Cosmopolitan individuals thus connect with each other not through Kantian rationality or social contracts but through the genuine respect for each individual life and life events and our creative effort to co-prosper with each other, which is an expected outcome of the politics of singularity. Like Derrida, Ham saw fundamental flaws of the nation-state system and envisioned a boundary-breaking moral possibility. The nation-state system is simply a mode of political system constantly on the move. It is effective particularly in the early stage of modern politics when the political role and meaning of the masses was recognized for the first time. However, the social solidarity that this system can bring is limited primarily to the political community whose clear geographical, linguistic, and cultural boundary is demanded. Like other political modes, this system is vulnerable and subject to change and extinction. Under the Japanese colonialism, national independence through mass enlightenment was a divine duty for Ham. After the liberation, building a nation state was the collective goal of the Koreans. However, during the worst point of the nation state system by a series of military regimes, Ham felt the necessity of a new political model, which could keep pace with the growing political consciousness and aspiration of the masses. He believed that as our spirit grows, our political consciousness and ideals need to transform as well. Spiritual growth refers to an expanded and deepened notion of self and others. As this growth continues, the chasm between self and other gets narrow and the boundary of our community recedes. As we become spiritually mature, the anchor of our thought, which is conventionally the individual self, is moved to the communal self. It means that our pattern of thought is initiated and formed through the viewpoint of the community rather than the individual. Ham said, “we ultimately have to eradicate our old habit to view the individual self as the thinking agent and move to a place where to think as the whole (생각하는 주체를 개인이라 하 던 전날의 생각을 청산하고 ‘전체로서 생각하는’ 자리에 가야 한다고)” 41 because “the era for the individual has gone.” 42 This expanded notion of the self naturally affects our view of history as well. History should be created, written, interpreted, and evaluated by the individual, which has been melted into the whole (지금까지 개인이 생각하

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는 역사였지만 이 앞으로는 전체가 생각하는 역사를 만들어야 한다). 43 The divine calling to embrace all lives as my life and the sublime political imagination to think every human being as a citizen of the world are getting louder and clearer because of our spiritual maturity and the advancement of our political institution and techniques respectively. Ham believed that the cognitive and moral abilities of the humans in his time were mature enough to dream, hope, and try to realize a cosmopolitan community. For Ham, it was time to fight statism, which was becoming a leviathan trying to perpetuate territorial and ideological boundaries, competitions, and hostilities for its own selfish survival. He urged that the minjung fight the kukkajuŭi (국가주 의, statism). Although nationalist spirit that Ham once entertained creates common goals and values and a shared identity for those who are desperate to seek a basic-level of belonging, it naturally becomes an exploitative means of the powerful once a community with an exclusive territory in all dimensions such as cognition, ethics, and even ethics is formed. Thus, Ham argued that the minjung, which have genuinely acknowledged their identity as the historical agent cannot remain in the nation-state system because their enlightenment pushes them to go beyond the nation-state system, breaking the slave-mentality. This mature political consciousness is not a historical reality built by an institutional effort but a transformation of our attitude toward others and our vision of community. It is a turn, elevation, and leap of our consciousness that should happen through a heightened, creative spirituality and political consciousness of the masses. For example, when Ham quoted, to make his point, Jesus’ words on the kingdom, “My kingdom was not of this world,” 44 he did not translate it as an apolitical attitude. He rather heard Jesus’ urgent calling for political transcendence to turn our attention to the true sense of community and to recover the original foundation of political community, which is the natural desire for the coexistence and co-prosperity of humanity. Although it was never Jesus’ intention to establish a kingdom on earth, the genuine political thinking itself was not completely discouraged because politics is about building and maintaining a just social relation and community. In Ham’s commentaries, Jesus was thinking of politics of love without the territory and without the power relation of the ruler and the ruled. For Ham, the politics of love that creates and sustains a just relation and a world/ cosmopolitan community, which was the kingdom of God for Jesus, should take place within our hearts and minds rather than in a competitive, combative, and contractual arena. 하늘나라 너희 안에 있다 하신 그 나라는 맘의 나라다. 안이란 맘이다.맘 의 나라는 없음의 나라다. 안(內)이란 모든 것이 다 아니(否)인 것이다. 아 무 것도 아니 가진 때가 맘이요, 그 때가 왕이요 그 맘이 온전히 왕 노릇 하는 맘 즉 제 노릇을 하는 맘이다. 무엇에 붙은 맘은 맘이 아니다. 45

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The kingdom said to be within you is the kingdom of the heart. The kingdom of the heart is the kingdom with nothing. Being within (內) means that everything is nothing (否). The moment when nothing is owned is the heart, and that moment is the king and the heart, which fully performs the kingly role. A heart attached to something is not the heart. 맘의 나라는 하나님의 집 문간에 있다. 인생과 세계의 왕좌는 하나님의 발 밑에 있다. 아무도 하나님의 종이 되지 않고 맘의 나라의 왕이 될 수는 없다. 하나님의 포도원에서 일을 하는 순간 나는 모른 것을 잊고 나는 왕 이다.” 46 “The kingdom of the heart is on the doorstep of God. Life and the throne of the kingdom are under God’s feet. No one can become the king of the heart without becoming the servant of God. At the very moment when working at God’s vineyard, I am the king, leaving everything behind.

Ham claims that the place where the politics of love has to sprout and grow is the heart; the place where the politics of love has to manifest in full bloom is where we experience conflict and crisis, which is our socio-political reality. The nation-state system, which premises exclusiveness and wariness on communal identity, territory, survival, and prosperity, cannot build the community of humanity because it is maintained by the ceaseless work of defining I/ we and thou/others and defending mine/ours from yours/others. Although the state system has made a great contribution to the well-being and advancement of human life, as Ham admitted in A Prospect for a New Era (새시대의 전망), its efficacy to sustain the value is being emasculated. This system was a political project of the old civilization that sought security and belonging mainly with a boundary-drawing mentality. Like Locke on the state of nature, Ham argued that the state is not natural. The original human nature did not demand the state in the natural state. It was the state of emergency that had created a governing regime. Ham said, “The state and the monarchy were brought by an extraordinary circumstance: 47 the circumstance in which the innate goodness could not prevail over the hostile material conditions demanding a social hierarchy and defensive mechanism. Nevertheless, the human conquest of physical adversities through technological advancement and enlightenment has made the state-system outdated. We are now capable of feeling, thinking, and acting beyond the political community built on regional, racial, linguistic, cultural, religious, and other categorically limiting cornerstones. Ham argued that the 20th century world was experiencing the dissonance between the existing political systems and our enlightened political consciousness. 그런데 지금은 그것이 달라졌다. 문명이 발달하고 더구나 교통 통신이 편 하여져서 거리가 짧아지자 국경과 민족의 다른 것이 절대적인 것이 아니 게 되었고, 민권의 발달을 따라「세계의 시민」이란 생각이 일어나게 되

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Chapter 7 었다. 경제에 있어서는 사람의 살림은 벌써 세계적으로 됐고, 정치에 있 어서도 국제간의 협조를 중요하게 생각하는 사상이 늘어가고 있다. 그러 므로 옛날같이 피의 신성, 전통의 신성만을 부르짖어 가지고 국민을 단속 하고 힘이 나게 하기는 도저히 불가능하게 되었다. 48 However, things have changed. As the civilization is developed further and the distance is shortened by the advances of transportation and communication, differences of territories and people have become insignificant and the improvement of civil rights has brought the idea of the citizen of the world. In economy, life is already getting global. In politics, thoughts emphasizing international cooperation are getting more attention. Therefore, it is impossible to control and empower the people only with the sacredness of blood and tradition.

The driving force of the new political model, which was the cosmopolitan community for Ham, should be the people empowered as the authentic, independent, creative, and active political agent. It is not the system but the people. For Ham, the idea of the cosmopolitan community is a divine calling and duty, which should be revealed and fulfilled by the ch’ŏrin (철인, the person of great character). The ch’ŏrin is not the sage, which is normally understood as the ruling elite in the Confucian system. It is the people whose enlightenment rather came from the experience of the bottom of social reality such as political oppression, economic exploitation, and cultural marginalization. It is the people of great character that can cast away the shadow of the nation-state and elevate our sense of political community to the next level. Below is Ham’s emphasis on the power of persons. 일제 말년, 2차 대전시부터 나는 새 말씀, 새 계시 기다립니다. 영원불변 하는 진리지만 이 시대엔 이 시대가 살 수 있도록 새로 언표 되는, 새로 임 하는 계시가 있어야 합니다. 그러나 계시는 공중에서는 아니 옵니다. 반 드시 구체적인 인격을 통해서 오지. 그래 사람 기다립니다. 누가 오셔야 합니다. 교회 같은 것 천만 개가 늘어도 일푼 무용입니다. 한 철인이 와야 지.한 인격이, 한 산 입이 나타나야지. 간디의 한 입이 3억의 인도를 살렸 고 대영제국의 백만 군대를 무용케 했고, 또 영국을 구원했습니다. 그런 사람 우리게는 아니 오나요? 나는 한 사람만이 원 입니다. 교회거나 학교 거나 기관, 운동 소용없습니다. 최소한도의 조직이 있을 수밖에 없다고 했지만 부득이해서 하는 말입니다. 사람 있어야지. 한 사람이면 되지요. 그러나 사람은 그저는 아니 옵니다. 기다려야지. 49 Since the Second World War broke out and the Japanese colonialism was about to end, I have been waiting for new word and new revelation. Although eternal and unchangeable, this revelation should come as a new expression in a new fashion to save our age. The new revelation does not come from the above. It comes through a concrete character. I have been waiting for the person. There is someone to come. No matter how much the church grows, it is useless. A ch’ŏrin, a character, and a living mouth has to manifest. It was Gandhi’s mouth that had liberated 300 million Indians, rendered the military

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of the British Empire useless, and ultimately saved the empire. Why does such a person not come to us? I beg for a person. Churches, schools, organizations, or movements, they would be useless. Although a minimum level of organization is inevitable, I have to say this. Persons should precede. Even one person would do. However, he would not just come. We must look forward to him.

Like Jesus, Ham encouraged to build the kingdom of God in our hearts: the kingdom stronger and more practical than an institutional entity. The kingdom of God that he envisioned was not the kingdom of a theology or an ideology, nor the kingdom of an abstract, mystical state of mind. It is the powerful source of the inner perspective and will to view all humans as divine and equal and to go beyond the selfish or defensive mode of human relation and community. It is the kingdom in which the unified heart and will of the ssial drives the destiny of humanity. NOTES 1. Gerardo Zampaglione, The Idea of Peace in Antiquity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), 40. 2. See Plato and Robert Gregg Bury, Plato in Twelve Volume (London: W. Heinemann, 1967) or “Plato, Protagoras,” Plato, Protagoras, Page 337, accessed July 13, 2019, http://www. perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plat. Prot. 337&lang=original. 3. Eric Brown, “Socrates the Cosmopolitan,” Stanford Agora: An Online Journal of Legal Perspectives 1, no. 1 (2000): 74, https://philpapers.org/archive/BROSTC-2.pdf . 4. Ibid. 5. Jacques Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 15. Derrida notes that Socrates in the Apology presents himself as a foreigner to foster an amicable atmosphere in the court and to take advantage of the duty of hospitality for Athenian juries. “He(Socrates) declares that he is “foreign” to the language of the courts, to the tribune of the tribunals: he doesn’t know how to speak this courtroom language, this legal rhetoric of accusation, defense, and pleading; he doesn’t have the skill, he is like a foreigner.” 6. Sophocles, H. D. F. Kitto, and Edith Hall, Antigone; B Oedipus the King ; Electra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 16–7. 7. Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations 4.4,” Lexundria, https://lexundria.com/m_aur_med/4.4/ lg. For a longer version of these ideas, see Cicero’s De Legibus 1.22–39. 8. Leonidas Konstantakos, “On Stoic Cosmopolitanism: A Response to Nussbaum’s Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” Prometeus, Filosofia em Revista 8, no. 17 (2015): 54. 9. See Zygmut Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2000). 10. See Alberto Melucci, Nomad of the Present (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989). 11. Immanuel Kant and Hans Siegbert, “Reiss,” Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 105, quoted in Nick Vaughan-Williams, “Beyond a Cosmopolitan Ideal: The Politics of Singularity,” International Politics 44, no. 1 (2006): 107–24, 110, doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800161. 12. Vaughan-William, 110. 13. Kant (1991), 51, quoted in Vaughan-Williams, 112. 14. Ibid., 112. 15. Ibid., 114. 16. Vaughan, 115. See Daniele Archibugi and David Held, Cosmopolitan Democracy: An Agenda for a New World Order (Cambridge, MA: Productivity Press, 1995).

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17. See Jean, Piaget, Studies in Reflecting Abstraction (Sussex: Psychology Press, 2001). 18. Vaughan-Williams, 118. 19. Ibid., 117. 20. Ibid., 119. 21. Matthias Fritsch, “Derrida’s Democracy to Come,” Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 9, no. 4 (2002): 574–97, 2. 22. Jü rgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, and Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jü rgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 121, quoted in Vaughan Williams, 120. 23. Alex Thomson, “What’s to Become of ‘Democracy to Come’?” Post Modern Culture, accessed July 13, 2019, http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.505/15.3thomson.html. 24. Coward, 10. 25. World History, 48. 26. Ibid., 7. 27. Ibid., 8. 28. Voice 3-Collection, 373. 29. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 25, quoted in Rodolphe Gasche, “Postmodernism and Rationality,” The Journal of Philosophy 85, no. 10 (1988): 528–38, 532. 30. Vaughan-Williams, 117. 31. Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 32. 32. Voice 7, 18. 33. Ibid., 19. 34. Ibid., 20. 35. Jacque Derrida, Politics and Friendship, trans. G. Collins (London: Verso, 1997), 5. 36. Kleingeld, 270. 37. Fritsch, 3. 38. Ibid., 7. 39. Jacques Derrida et al., A Taste for the Secret (Malden, MA: Polity, 2001), 27. 40. Kleingeld, 282. 41. Sok Hon Ham, 세계의 한 길 위에서 (On a Road of the World, hereafter On a Road), Collection, 113. 42. On a Road, 114. 43. One Nation, 22. 44. John 18:36. 45. Sok Hon Ham, 맘의 나라 (Kingdom of the Heart), 말씀 말 (Logos, the Words, hereafter Logos), Collection, 147. 46. Ibid., 148. 47. New Era, 312. “국가와 군주는 비상시 기관으로 생긴 것이다.” 48. Ibid., 313. 49. Sok Hon Ham, 서로의 靈이 살기 위해 주고받는 것 (Sharing for Each Other’s Spirit to Live), 진실을 찾는 벗들에게 (To the Fellows Seeking the Truth), Collection, 37.

Conclusion

Ham Sok Hon was a forerunner of the Korean liberal theology and hermeneutics, democratization movements, human rights activism, and non-violent movement. His impact on the intellectual and political community of Korea was immense. What made Ham more special was the fact that he had grown into a cosmopolitan activist, who tried to find a universal ground on which the heart of love and care can reach every corner of the world without the discrimination of any labeling, including race, language, culture, and nationality. Even in the middle of the building of his nation, Korea, Ham already thought that like other old systems, the nation-state system had severe limits to continue. He saw the flaws of the nationalism in his later life and strongly censured the misguided patriotism and the repressive politics of the statism. Ham believed that a legal and institutional change and transformation could not be the answer. It was the transformation of people’s minds and hearts that Ham argued would ultimately inspire our institutional ideas and effort to produce a better system to live together both nationally and globally. His insight into the problem of the nationalism and the statism is still relevant. The liberal constitutional democracy is being challenged everywhere. Multilateralism, which has been the norm in international relations since the age of Enlightenment, is being abandoned. For instance, the Trump administration’s America First ideology is disrupting the liberal world order. The United States withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2018, ended its aid for the UNRWA (the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees), rejected the negotiations on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, and pulled out from the nuclear agreement with Iran (known as the JCPOA) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed in 1987 with the Soviet Union. 1 The state system in many parts of the world, particularly the Middle East, is not 155

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stable. Since 2011, the heads of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, were ousted from power. Yemen and Syria are going through a similar crisis. The American continent is suffering an unprecedented refugee crisis. According a UNHCR report in 2014, asylum applications had significantly increased in Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama due to the social instability represented by Gang-related murders, kidnappings, extortion, and sexual violence. 2 Climate change, which is the result of human activity and demands the world’s collective effort for cure, is also worsening at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia. 3 All of these problems demonstrate the fragile foundation of both national and international political cultures. The conventional anchor of rationalism and utilitarianism to keep the selfish, chaotic nature necessarily creates a defensive mode of viewing everything outside the drawn boundary. Ham suggested a deeper dimension of the state of nature with his notion of ssial in which every human being is treated equally and in dignity. While the traditional model to build a community is based on the capacity of reason and the value of fairness, Ham’s ssial consciousness is based on the universal feelings and memories that the majority of people in the world, who have not yet drunk the poisoned chalice of power and pride, share in common. This consciousness comes from people’s experience of political oppression and persecution, human rights violations, economic inequality, and social discrimination and from personal enlightenment of the duty to fix those challenges. It is a bottom-up social transformation through character cultivation rather than a top-down institutional revolution. The quote below poetically expresses Ham’s emphasis on the role of the powerless: 그러나 세계 사람들이여, 이 하수구에 감사하라. 그대들로 하여금 즐거움 의 궁전에 놀게 하는 것은 이 하수구 아닌가? . . . 그대들의 눈에 보기 싫은 것은 언제나 달게 받아 치워 주는 것이 이 하수구 아닌가? 그리고 그대들 의 그 살찐 육체와 그 문명한 머리를 길러주는 곡식과 채소를 만들어내는 것까지 또한 이 하수구 아닌가? 아, 너 위대한 세계사의 하수구여! 4 However, people of the world, thank this sewer. Isn’t it this sewer that lets you enjoy your feast in the palace of pleasure? . . . Isn’t it this sewer that is always happy to clean up what you see as distasteful? Isn’t it this sewer that produces even crops and vegetables to nurture your fat body and your erudite head? Alas, you the sewer of the grandiose history!

Ham believed that as our spirituality understands the divine origin of life and embraces the ontological and moral duty to love and connect to every other life, our political reality would better embrace a cosmopolitan vision. Although, as Pak Sŏnkyun (박선균), one of Ham’s beloved students, noted, his weakness in organizational and business skills contributed to the failure of the practical application to the ssial community, 5 there is no doubt that he

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greatly inspired the progressive movement in Korea and that he was one of the early Korean pathfinders of the philosophical and political conversation on transnational cooperation and community. Concluding the book, I want to admit that my discussion covers only a small portion of the footprints that Ham left in his literature on cosmopolitan vision. I personally hope that this book would invite more conversations and studies on Ham’s philosophy, including constructive criticism and new interpretation, evaluation, and English translations of his works. NOTES 1. Eduard Soler Lecha, “The World in 2019: Ten Issues That Will Shape the Global Agenda,” CIDOB, accessed July 13, 2019, https://www.cidob.org/en/publications/publication_ series/notes_internacionals/n1_208/the_world_in_2019_ten_issues_that_will_shape_the_ global_agenda. 2. “Humanitarian Crisis in Central America,” Doctors Without Borders—USA, accessed July 13, 2019, https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/humanitarian-crisis-central-america. 3. “Evidence,” NASA, accessed July 13, 2019, https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ . 4. Chŏnjip 1, Spiritual History of Korea, 327. 5. Sŏnkyun Pak, “함석헌 붓 꺽은 전두환, 씨알의 소리가 남았다면 (Chŏn Tuhwan, who snapped Ham’s Pen, What if Voice of the People were alive),” OhmyNews, April 9, 2018, accessed March 24, 2019, http://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/view/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_ CD=A0002420892.

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Index

actualization, 18, 52, 73 Adam, 56 agape, 18, 72, 73, 75, 78, 116 ahimsa, 127 al, 101 Albert Einstein, 115 amour de soi, 33 amour proper, 33 An Ch’angho, 6 Anh Byung-Mu, 9 animal instinct, 16, 17, 50 ansajikshinja, 107–108 April 19 Revolution, 7, 77 a priori, 30 arête, 39, 94 artificiality, 43, 74, 104, 105, 114, 118, 124 ashram, 7, 129, 132, 134 assimilation policy, 7 atman, 13, 101, 127 authority, 7, 12, 13, 17, 25, 28, 30, 69, 86, 90, 107, 132, 140 authorship, 72, 76, 143 awakening : intellectual, 11; spiritual, 2, 5, 7, 59, 65, 101, 102, 119, 121; to the sisal, 18, 104, 145 awareness: of divine nature, 16, 39, 43, 104, 108, 110, 124, 126, 145; of moral responsibility, 35, 39, 59, 90, 146 axiology, 50, 84, 98, 144, 147 baptism, 117

behavior, 19, 34, 37, 87, 93, 95, 110 bellum omnium contra omnes, 28 belonging, 2, 16, 18, 19, 20, 34, 37, 107, 108, 113, 118, 122, 128, 129, 132, 139, 141, 148, 150, 151 Benedict Anderson, 39, 90, 126 Bertrand Russell, 52, 96 Bhagavad Gita, 13, 133 Bible, 2, 11, 12, 13, 56 biological evolution, 14, 46, 66, 113 boundary, 35, 41–42, 43, 46, 83, 94, 107–108, 109, 132, 142, 146, 147, 149, 151, 156 Brahman, 72, 75, 101, 127 capability, 7, 16, 37, 40, 43, 45, 50, 56, 57, 58, 70, 71, 73, 101, 115, 146, 149 categorical imperatives, 17 Chang Chunha, 9 Chang Myŏn, 7 character, 2, 7, 11, 15–16, 19, 33, 51, 55, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 67–68, 71–72, 94, 95, 97–98, 98, 106, 109, 115, 117, 118, 119, 148, 152, 156 che, 38, 39 chi, 44 chijisŏn, 122 ch’inmin, 53, 122 chŏhangŭisik, 54 ch’ŏlligwan, 14 Cho Mansik, 6

165

166

Index

chŏnch’erŭl irunŭn kŏt, 64 chŏnch’ejŏk community, 43 chŏngshinhwaŭi charam, 50 chŏngshinjŏk tan’gye, 147 ch’ŏninhabilsasang, 14 chŏnirhwa kwajŏng, 74 ch’ŏnmin, 108 ch’ŏnsangch’ŏnhayuadokchŏn, 14 ch’ŏrin, 152 Chosŏn, 2, 7, 13, 75, 104 Chosŏn History Seen through a Will, 7 Chosŏnsŏngsŏyŏn’guhoe, 6 Christianity, 6, 11, 13, 29, 39, 56, 68, 72, 86, 87, 102, 117 Chuang Tzu, 6, 13, 39 chŭkchajŏk minjung, 54 chun tzu, 14 civilization, 2, 12, 13, 22, 34, 42, 46, 50, 51, 57, 58, 97, 102, 114, 115, 115–116, 117, 120, 121, 123, 144, 151, 152 civil disobedience, 26, 124 civil society, 25, 34, 36, 125 civitas dei, 39 civitas terrena, 39 Cold War, 98, 99, 127 colonialism, 5, 7, 54, 87, 94, 124, 132, 141, 145, 149, 152 community : of humanity, 2, 7, 131, 133, 151; political, 25–26, 27, 27–29, 30, 32, 33, 36, 59, 66, 68, 75, 88, 91, 100, 101, 107–108, 108–109, 115, 118, 119, 122, 128, 140, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152; sense of, 11, 30, 33, 41–42, 45, 86, 92, 102, 118, 129, 142, 145, 150; sisal, 2, 7, 105, 127, 129, 130–131, 132, 133, 155, 156 compassion, 19, 31, 33, 34, 127 conceptual device, 26, 44, 83 confluence, 2 constitution, 9, 26, 37, 69, 91, 155; of sisal, 60, 61 contractarian, 2, 15, 25–27, 28, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42–43, 43, 44, 49, 89 cosmic self, 122 cosmic unity, 13, 104, 108, 121 cosmopolitanism, 6; as consciousness, 109, 114, 125, 126; Derridean theory of, 142–143, 147–148; of Ham Sok Hon, 6, 7, 22, 54, 94, 95, 96, 97, 109, 114,

125–126, 129; history of, 81–93, 139–142 cosmopolitan vision, 2, 6, 7, 11, 15, 19–20, 22, 25, 36, 69, 84, 88, 91, 97, 116, 119, 121, 122, 126, 127, 127–128, 140, 140–141, 142, 156–157 Crates of Thebes, 83 creativity, 1, 6, 72, 86, 91, 97, 98, 144, 148 cultivation, 32, 34, 65, 67, 74, 106, 109, 156 Cynics, 83–84, 140 cynicism, 82, 85 danche, 43 Dandi Salt March, 124 Dangun, 66 Dao, 65, 108, 121, 127 Darwinism, 50, 113–114 David Held, 91, 141 democracy, 2, 5, 7, 9, 37, 44, 59, 60, 82, 89, 90, 91, 93, 143, 144, 148; liberal, 89 Democracy to Come, 21, 91, 143, 148 Democritus, 139 deontology, 28, 49, 73, 90 dialogue, 12, 15, 91, 96, 139 Diogenous, 83, 140 discourse, 32, 33, 90, 109 discrepancy, 5 distributive justice, 89 divine duty, 5, 15, 31, 114, 149 doctrine, 7, 11, 65, 93, 102, 117 duty, 1, 5, 7, 15–16, 17, 28, 30, 31, 58, 71, 91, 101, 108, 114, 124, 149, 152, 156 eastern thoughts, 2, 12, 13, 14, 108 education, 6–7, 54, 59, 66, 68, 92–93, 96, 129, 130, 131–132 educator, 5, 96, 119 egotism, 17, 28, 46, 50, 93, 100, 109 Elements of Law, 28 Emil Durkheim, 39 Emile, 33 enlightenment, 7, 14, 15, 17, 59, 60, 68, 85–87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 97, 103, 106, 108, 109, 120, 124, 126–128, 142, 143, 144, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155, 156. See also awakening environment, 19, 35, 44, 45, 46, 50, 54, 69, 82, 86, 92, 108–109, 113, 125, 129,

Index 131, 141, 143, 149 Epicurianism, 17 equality, 30, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39, 43, 86, 99, 112, 124, 148, 156 equilibrium, 33 eternity, 38, 45, 106 ethics, 1, 6, 7, 77, 141, 150 eudaimonia, 31, 37, 39 Eve, 56 evolutionary process, 17, 18, 50, 74, 106, 113, 125 exegesis, 11, 16, 20 exploitation, 5, 7, 31, 152. See also colonialism; Japan factionalism, 34 fairness, 27, 32, 89, 96, 141, 156 faith, 1, 2, 6, 42, 45, 62, 64, 66, 67, 102, 105, 117 farm, 56, 129, 131, 132–133, 133 feudalism, 54, 86, 90, 107–108 foreign policy, 89, 91 freedom, 7, 29, 31, 87, 96, 111, 125, 140, 148 Gandhi, 6, 7, 78, 124, 127, 129, 132, 134, 152 Garden of Eden, 57 generality, 2, 142–144, 146 God, 12–14, 18, 26, 31, 34, 38, 39, 43, 45, 52, 53, 56, 57, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 83–84, 85, 87, 100, 101, 102, 103, 114, 118, 119, 126, 130, 140, 146, 150, 151, 153 great man, 14, 103, 104, 106, 108. See also chun tzu Greek philosophy, 27, 86, 92 government, 7, 25, 26–27, 30, 40, 41, 65, 66, 67, 68, 92, 124, 128, 148 Guyau, 2, 16–17, 18–19 Habermas, 89–90 Ham Sok Hon Memorial Foundation, 9, 22 Ham Sŏkkyun, 6 han, 5 hana, 43, 103, 110, 121, 130 hanaŭishik, 121 hansaram, 106 happiness, 17, 18, 35, 108, 127

167

harmony, 1, 35, 103, 121, 122, 126 have-nots, 5 hegemony, 127, 128, 141 Henri-Louis Bergson, 2, 6, 18–19 hermeneutics, 1, 5, 155 H. G. Wells, 6 Hinduism, 58, 101, 114 historical reality, 12, 75, 126, 150; agent, 10, 12, 16, 150 Hobbes, 2, 26, 27–29, 30, 31–32, 35, 37, 42, 88 hon, 37, 101 hongigin’gan, 147 horizontal dimension, 44, 72, 147. See also ipchejeok ingan hospitality, 2, 88, 142, 143, 147 human community, 7, 16, 18, 31, 44, 84, 86, 91, 93, 97, 104, 114, 115, 117, 120, 123, 128. See also community of humanity human nature, 25–26, 28–29, 31, 33, 36, 38, 41, 49, 51, 68, 76, 82, 93, 95, 101, 144, 151 human relation, 16, 26, 27, 30, 34, 36, 50, 65, 82, 108, 119, 131, 148, 153 human rights, 5, 7, 44, 59, 87, 91, 142, 155–156 humanities, 11, 14–16, 18–19, 157 humanity, 15, 19, 46, 56, 58, 60, 61, 65, 69, 76, 77, 92, 95, 97, 98, 100, 102, 103, 105, 109, 112, 114, 115–116, 120, 121, 124, 132, 146, 150, 153, 156–157. See also community of humanity I and thou, 30, 94, 143, 146 idealism, 31, 65, 133 identity, 2, 6, 7, 12, 13–14, 107, 108, 118, 146; of community, 148; of people, 41, 71, 72, 101, 103, 148; of the sisal, 38, 61 ideology, 67, 75, 89, 93–94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 128, 144, 148, 150 I Kwangsu, 6 Ilmanich’ŏnbong, 61 imagination, 2, 18, 45, 87, 92, 104, 107, 110, 115, 116, 120, 140, 141, 149, 150 imagined community, 126. See also Benedict Anderson imperative, 17, 37, 53, 78, 120–121, 147

168

Index

imperialism, 87, 89, 94 individuality, 43, 145 in’gan, 2, 45, 49, 50–53, 147 in’ganjŏk tan’gye, 147 injustice, 5, 7, 9, 65, 122, 127 inmin, 55 instinct, 2, 16–17, 19, 29, 45, 50–51, 57, 115, 147 institutional boundaries, 11 institutional community, 38, 126 institutional effort, 82, 91, 142, 150 institutional entity, 91, 153 instrumentality, 108 intelligence, 15, 59, 64, 81, 91, 94, 98, 107, 113, 114, 124, 142 intentionality, 142–143, 144 ipchejeok in’gan, 26, 45 irwŏnhwa, 106 I Sŭnghun, 6 Jacques Derrida, 2, 7, 91, 139, 142–143, 143–144, 145–146, 147–148, 149 jahiliyya, 45 Japan, 5, 6–7, 40, 67, 141 Japanese colonialism, 7, 54, 149, 152 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 27, 33–35 jen, 103–104 jeongchi, 44 jeong ya, 44 Jesus, 52, 63, 73, 74, 78, 79, 117, 117–118, 119, 150–153 John Rawls, 89 justice, 5, 7, 64, 65, 66, 71, 83–84, 89, 90, 92, 96, 100, 116, 127, 140, 141, 145 Kant, 16, 73, 86–87, 90–91, 128, 139, 141–142, 142, 144, 145, 149 Kim Chaechun, 9 Kim Kyosin, 7, 12, 132 Kim Tongkil, 9 Kim Tuhyŏk, 7, 131–132 kongjon, 36 kongyŏng, 36 Korea, 5, 7, 14, 67, 71, 75, 104, 109, 122, 155, 157; history of, 2, 5, 7, 25, 101; people of, 2, 5, 13, 149; suffering of, 7, 40, 141 Korean, 41, 53–54 kosmopolitês, 81, 83, 140

kukkajuŭi, 150. See also statism kungmin, 55 Kyeuhoe, 7, 132 Kwame Anthony Appiah, 91–92 Kwangju Uprising, 77 labor, 7, 33, 107, 125, 131 Lao Tzu, 6, 13, 39, 58, 114 laos, 63 law of physics, 15, 51, 70 Le Cosmopolite, 86 legitimacy, 2, 7, 31, 143 Leviathan, 28 liberal theology, 1, 155 liberation theology, 1, 5, 64, 122 life. See saengmyeong lingua franka, 140 literature, 2, 13, 25, 49, 54, 71, 86, 93, 102, 108, 120, 123, 131, 157 Locke, 2, 30–32, 151 logos, 18, 73, 74, 84, 103 Lotus Sutra, 13 love, 7, 13, 15–16, 19, 33, 38, 60, 68, 72, 73, 84, 85, 100, 102, 104, 116–117, 118, 122, 127, 132, 151, 155 Machiavelli, 27–28 Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, 13 manifestation, 15, 34, 39, 44, 50, 55, 72, 74, 78, 95, 103 mankind, 14, 37, 74, 83, 86, 105, 139–140, 147 March 1st Movement, 6, 60 Martin Luther King, 127 Marxism, 1, 64–65, 71, 82, 125–126 materialization, 39 May 16th Military Coup d’état, 7 metaphor, 13, 15, 25, 52, 126, 131 metaphysics, 14, 32, 37, 71, 86–87, 102 micro-statism. See sogukchuŭi military regime, 9, 133, 149 min, 43 mindset, 2, 25, 29–30, 35, 41, 86, 93, 99, 107, 110, 123 minjung, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 21, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 63, 64–65, 71, 98, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 126, 134, 150 minjung-kyemong, 97 minjung theology, 2, 21, 65, 67

Index missiology, 1 modern Korea, 5 monarchy, 28, 30, 37, 95–96, 151 monkey, 109–113 Moon Taekol, 9 Mt. Geumgang, 61 multiculturalism, 91–92 myŏngmyŏngdŏk, 122 nam, 41 narrative, 19, 45, 49–93, 144, 146 National Foundation Meal, 5 nationalism, 2, 5, 44, 60, 75, 155 nationalist, 2, 5, 6, 7, 60, 141, 150 nation-state, 82, 90–92, 104, 108, 115–116, 141, 147, 149, 150, 151 naturalness, 2, 19, 37, 144–146 natural law, 27–37, 69, 84–85, 86 nature. See human nature Nazareth, 65 Neo-Confucianism, 14, 104, 127 Niche, 6 nochangkongmaeng, 6 non-church movement, 6, 7, 12 non-violence, 55, 67, 69, 78, 127 North Pyeongan Province, 6 Novalis, 2, 16, 149 Nussbaum, 92 ochlos, 63 ŏl, 75 ontological fulfillment, 46, 51, 56 ontology, 14, 38, 95, 120, 144 organism, 26, 34, 38, 72, 97, 131 original position, 89 orthodoxy, 12 Osan School, 6, 7, 11, 131 oughtness, 40 ownership, 7, 32, 66, 72 pacifism, 5, 7, 78, 120 paeksŏng, 54 palsaenggi, 115 Park Geun-Hye, 40 parochialism, 77, 81, 105, 141 pat’al, 120–121, 122 People’s Movement Headquarter to Achieve Democracy, 9

169

personal identity, 2, 12–14, 107, 146. See also identity pietism, 7 platform, 91, 95, 145, 148, 149 Plato, 27, 96, 139 plethos, 63 Plotinus, 102–103 pluralism, 2, 11–12, 120, 126 policy, 2, 7, 19–20, 40, 65, 67, 72, 75, 87, 89, 91, 143 polis, 84, 140 political activism, 2, 5, 9 political consciousness, 15, 39, 43, 86, 89, 91, 97, 101, 106–108, 108–109, 115, 117, 120, 124, 126, 141, 150, 151 political imagination, 45, 87, 149, 150 political realism, 27, 29 political philosophy, 25, 28, 30, 37, 89 politics, 2, 7–9 post-truth, 2 the powerless, 39, 41, 60, 62, 63, 65, 71, 99, 123, 125, 141, 156; suffering of, 2, 7 Prajñāpāramit Sutras, 13 primitive society, 57, 93, 115 profit, 27, 35, 40, 41 proletariat, 75, 126 promised land, 2, 112 property, 30–31, 33, 85 pulbyŏnja, 145 p’ungsok, 51 P’yŏngyangbot’onggodŭnghakkyo, 6 Quakerism, 7 Queen of Suffering: A Spiritual History of Korea, 14, 132 race, 33, 42, 87, 96, 104, 108, 140, 155 rationality, 30, 149 reasoning, 17, 50, 82, 141, 142, 142–143, 144, 145, 146–147 reconciliation, 40, 40–41 refugee, 2, 155–156 romanticism, 2, 16 romanticist, 15, 34 Sabarmati Ashram, 7, 129 saenghwal ch’ŏrhak, 98 saengmulchŏk, 50, 147

170

Index

saengmulchŏk tan’gye, 50, 147 saengmyeong, 2, 7, 49, 69–79 saengmyŏngŭi yulli, 77 sage, 33, 39, 69, 140 saguninja, 106–108 Sakurada Yoshitaka, 41 sallim, 102, 106, 107, 132 Samil Kyoyuk, 129 samnamansang, 103 sanctity, 14, 102, 104, 126 sangsaeng, 36 saramdoem, 15 sasang, 14, 58, 129 Sasanggye, 7, 133 sasangŭi kyerillajŏn, 58 satyagrah, 134 security, 29, 35, 41, 46, 88, 95, 100, 107–108, 113, 116, 117, 151 segyejuŭi, 2, 7, 69. See also cosmopolitanism segyejuŭijŏk shimsŏng, 2 the self, 6, 7, 16, 46, 55, 58, 104, 106, 123, 149 self-preservation, 28–29, 30, 33, 34, 51 Seoul National Cemetery, 5 Shinŭiju-ban’gong-haksaeng-sagŏn, 7 sin, 52, 56, 73, 145 singularity, 2, 38, 60, 74, 110, 127, 142–149 slavery, 40, 87, 125 social criticism, 5, 11, 133 Socrates, 83, 92, 98, 139–140 sogukchuŭi, 128 soin, 108 solidarity, 30–31, 35, 40, 44, 59, 90, 91, 104, 107, 112, 113, 149 sŏngjanggi, 115 Songsan Nongsa Hakkyo, 131 Songsannongsahagwŏn, 7 Sŏngsŏjosŏn, 7, 132 Song Tuyong, 7 sophists, 98 Sophos, 83 sovereign, 27, 28, 34, 108, 128, 148 Soviet Union, 7, 128, 155 sŏyang hangmun, 98 spirituality, 100–119; growth, 12, 114, 149; journey, 12, 116; stage, 147; transformation, 104, 115

ssial: consciousness, 2, 7, 14, 16, 34, 35, 41, 43, 44, 97, 98, 120, 122, 129; definition, 26, 37, 39, 49, 53, 55, 58, 61, 62, 69, 71, 75, 78; as enlightenment, 59, 67, 76, 94, 97, 119; examples of, 125, 129–133; function of, 64, 65, 72, 96, 122, 123, 128; goal of, 5, 39, 46, 60, 65, 68; inspired by Eastern thought, 13, 14, 58, 65, 66; as naturalness, 19, 27, 29, 36, 40, 55; as non-violence movement, 127; as people’s true identity, 7–9, 37, 56–57, 59, 66, 68, 77, 96, 98; as philosophical project, 95–100; as singularity, 142–153; as spirituality, 45, 50, 100–119. See also ssial community; ssial philosophy ssial community, 2, 7, 96, 105, 127, 129, 130–133, 156 Ssial Nongjang, 131 ssial philosophy: in comparison with minjung theology, 21, 54, 65, 67, 72; general introduction to, 2, 7, 13, 22, 54, 56, 64, 67, 75, 78, 132, 146; grounding of, 93, 96, 97, 98, 100, 114, 129; influenced by Eastern philosophy, 14, 66; as the state of nature, 25, 27, 32, 35, 37, 41 ssialized minjung, 98 state of nature, 2, 25–46 state of war, 32 statism, 6, 7, 21–22, 55, 98, 99, 100, 120, 124, 128, 150, 155 stereoscopic humans, 45. See also ipchejeok in’gan The Stoics, 84–85, 86, 86–87, 92, 140 Supra-civilization, 123 supra-reason, 50, 115 supreme reality, 13 survival, 16, 18, 28, 29, 37, 42, 50–51, 57, 99, 106, 107, 109, 110, 150, 151 sŭsŭroham, 76, 77 status quo, 13, 42, 107, 123, 127 storytelling, 2, 52, 93 student activism, 1 syncretism, 2, 7, 65, 102, 140 Taehakchanggu, 58 taein, 108 Tagor, 6

Index Takashi Shinozuka, 41 tallyŏn’gi, 115 Tao-Te-Ching, 13 tawŏnhwa, 106 telos, 19, 28, 39, 70, 84, 87, 93, 145 Thomas Aquinas, 39, 73 Tŏgilsohakkyo, 6 Tokyo School of Education, 6, 7 Tolstoy, 6, 12 t’ongsaram, 78 tongyang hangmun, 98 totemism, 45 transnational community, 86, 144 trauma, 82, 145 ttŭt, 14, 15, 52 Uchimura Kanzo, 6, 7, 12, 13 unification, 74, 77, 82, 100, 130 United Nations, 90, 112, 128, 155 universal feeling, 15 universal grounding, 11, 15 universality, 27, 36, 37, 87, 102, 144, 148 universe, 14, 18, 19, 37–38 utilitarianism, 41 Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, 13 vertical dimension, 44, 46, 72, 147. See also ipchejeok ingan

171

virtue, 2, 15–16, 31, 32, 33, 34, 77, 83, 85, 87, 91–92, 103, 107, 109, 120, 122, 128, 139, 140, 144, 146 Wang Yangming, 14, 58, 103–104, 108 wansŏnggi, 115–116, 116, 117, 118 Western thoughts, 2 the whole, 6, 33, 43, 60, 61, 62, 64, 77, 78, 79, 102, 104, 105, 110, 111, 126, 146–147, 149 wu-wei, 13, 65, 66–67, 68, 123, 124, 125 yangban, 6 Yangsi Public Elementary School, 6 Yao, 39 yeŭi, 51 YMCA, 7 yong, 39 Yongcheon, 6 yŏngsŏng, 2 yŏnjŏp, 106 Yu Sŏktong, 7 Yu Yŏngmo, 6, 45, 46 Zeno, 83 zero sum, 28

About the Author

Dr. Song-Chong Lee is associate professor and chair of the Religious Studies and Philosophy Department at the University of Findlay. He earned his PhD degree from Temple University. His scholarly and teaching interests include comparative religion, modern interpretation of Neo-Confucianism, Korean Christian philosophy (Ham Sok Hon), and religious education. His Korean translation of Leonard Swidler’s Jesus Was a Feminist came out in 2017. Serving Religions as an editorial board member, Lee has edited a special issue entitled The Role and Meaning of Religion for Korean Society. He is a recipient of the 2013 Wabash summer research fellowship.

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