Presented by Sang-ho Ro, Ewha Womans University

The event will take place on August 16, 09:00am Korea Standard Time / August 15, 5:00pm Los Angeles Time.

Individual Zoom link will be sent after registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtcOutrjMtHdQqo9MrKXyKSsibovQijfOW

Abstract:

Korean intelligence has a long and complex history. Given its location next to China, it had received significant influences from its continental neighbor. At the same time, Korean thinkers for many centuries had endeavored to find a way of reckoning their Self between the universal and the local. In my book, Neo-Confucianism and Science in Korea, I wanted to unveil how the long-lasting tension between two bipolar, the universal and the local in Korean mentality, made an intriguing turn in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By doing so, I attempted to explore Korean epistemology beyond the pre-existing horizons of Practical Learning (Sirhak) and Western Learning (Sŏhak). Instead, I reinterpreted the discourses and the methods of Korean intellectual society in terms of reason and sense experience. Neo-Confucian rationalism and Korean empiricism, in my opinion, may better describe their mentality at the dawn of the modern era.        

Presenter:

Sang-ho Ro is an associate professor of Global Korean Studies at Ewha Womans University. Ro writes a history that examines the evolution of Korean intellectual tradition and philosophy in the late Chosŏn period and the twentieth century. His latest monograph is Neo-Confucianism and Science in Korea: Humanity and Nature, 1706-1814 (Routledge, 2021). In the book, he analyzes the intellectual dynamism that Neo-Confucianism and Western science brought in Korean epistemology. He highlights how Korean intellectuals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reformed Neo-Confucian rationalism with a new method of empiricism. Also, he contributed to two edited books; Myongdong kilgori munhwasa (Han’gukhak chungang yon’guwon ch’ulp’anbu, 2019) in Korean and Kanryu Nichiryu (Bensei shuppan, 2014) in Japanese. In the books, he worked on inter-connectedness of Korea and her neighbors, China and Japan, in intellectual tradition and daily experience. And, his other articles cover broad topics, from the history of science and technology to the history of ethnic and cultural minorities in Korea. Ro earned his Ph. D. from Princeton University and M.A. and B.A. from Seoul National University.