Confucianism and Becoming-in-the-World: A Transnational Modus Vivendi

Kevin N. Cawley examines how ideas both philosophical and religious have historically shaped the cultural traditions in East Asia through transnational iterations, not delimited by territorial borders. It discusses the different ways in which philosophy and religion were traditionally interrelated and intellectually intertwined in the region, unlike in the West where they still remain quite separate (diverging) disciplines. Next, the trajectory of Confucianism from its origins in China to its transplantation in Korea are outlined, leading to the emergence of Neo-Confucianism, later used de rigueur in Korea for political purposes to overturn the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) and to found the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910). Cawley under- scores how this philosophy transformed and hierarchically curtailed social and gender relations, an effect which still reverberates in modern Korean society, and across the entire region.