A Way of Becoming Human in the East Asian Tradition: the Educational Role of Ritualized Body

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 11:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Culture and Tradition Across Societies

Abstract

This paper explores how Confucian humanism used ritual (禮, li) to shape social life and cultivate morality in younger generations. Modern Korean educationalists often dismiss these rituals as outdated tools of social control, reflecting a modernist bias. Such prejudice obscures how Confucian proprieties have actually formed and reproduced Korea’s modern social body through schooling. By proposing a “reality-thesis” as an alternative to the “social control-thesis,” this paper challenges politically charged critiques and reconsiders whether Confucian ritual, rather than repressing modern subjectivity, may have been its very source.

Author

• Duck-Joo Kwak, Seoul National University