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<div>Thanks Vladimir:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>*Most certainly* isn't Social Darwinism the highlight of Korea's
modern intellectual history. I very much hope I did not write anything
giving such impression. It played, however, a very important role
before and after 1900 -- and that is the period I was trying to talk
about.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>By the way, when looking into the history of translations during
the early colonial period (mostly 1910s and early 20s) I was
astonished by the unexpected number of works translated from French
and Russian -- not just via Japanese but also from directly from these
languages. One really should not underestimate what was available to
Korean intellectuals at that time.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Quote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>So, the question has to be formulated in
a bit other way, I guess - while the quest for secrets of "wealth
and power" led Katoo Hiroyuki, Tokutomi Soohoo, Liang Qichao, and
their Korean followers - that is, a large, almost dominant group of
East Asia's early modern intellectuals - to embrace the belief that
the life is a zero sum game, and to eat up the others in order not to
be eaten up yourself<u> is a right thing to do</u>?</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>Okay, but this is a bit over my head. The right thing to do?
Isn't this a moral question, maybe a religious question, and maybe a
question about political effectivity if extended somewhat. Right or
wrong? How would this get us any further when looking at how societies
advanced? The question I was trying to address earlier is how Social
Darwinism in Korea is being depicted today? And why it is depicted the
way it is.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>When referring to the inevitability in which histories have
recorded Korea's embracing of such ideology, what I really had in mind
is the question of power, legitimacy, and historical truth. One of the
first things we learn in East Asian History 101 is that one of the
first tasks of each new dynasty was the rewrite of dynastic history,
creating a legacy. Isn't that what happened (the U.S. and Japan being
the winners)?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Aidan wonders "how Weberians can be Darwinists" --
well, is America not fundamentally Darwinist? Whatever else you add to
this, it is not going to go away. In that sense I am not speaking of
Social Darwinism as something that can be separated into some school
of thought but as an inherit part of the country's ideological
foundation and lifestyle.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>In the U.S. the popular interpretation and utilization of Weber's
capitalism theory had been dominated by Talcott Parsons who was also
the translater of<i> The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism</i> (1904-05, 2nd rev. ed. 1920, first English edition
1930). His reading of Weber is very well Social Darwinist in its
roots. By directing all your attention on certain aspects of a work
with the depth of that of Weber's it is easy enough to serve existing
ideologies rather than challenging them. Then again, both Weber and
Parsons are so complex that I do not see how to discuss this topic on
a message board without simplifying to a degree where nothing is
accurate anymore.... Weber works with what sociologists call ITM
(Ideal Type Model). Weber's 'community' is such ITM, and in his terms
it equals Protestant ethic. His conceptualization is not about
"real type" history but about "ideal type"
community in a sociological sense. Other than Marx, for example, he
does not understand capitalism as a system per se but focuses on
the<i> Geist</i>, the spirit of a community in a certain historic time
and a certain historic setting that drives capitalism. That's the
theory he develops in<i> The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism</i>, where he explains how northwestern Europe enabled
itself to go ahead with its modern economic revolution, leaving behind
the formerly rich Catholic South that had dominated Europe culturally
and economically for so many centuries. It is noteworthy here that
this is indeed the book that made Weber famous in the United States
while his main work,<i> Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft</i>, and other
important works never really got that much attention -- quite the
opposite to the perception in continental Europe. As a personal note,
to illustrate this a little: the first time I heard about Weber's
capitalism theory was in Carter Eckert's class at Harvard. It was a
real eye-opener (thanks!). We did read quite a bit of Weber in the
three years of Sociology at my neo-Marxist dominated high school,
nicely packaged into bite-sized digestable 5 or 10 page portions ...
Weber served a minority non-Marxist teacher as a tool to oppose the
hard core stuff brought in by his colleagues, everything from Marx to
Adorno and Habermas, from Rudi Dutschke to texts about city guerilla
tactics. But that was a different Weber, a whole different context, a
different reality. It took me till last year to actually read<i> The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism</i> rather than just
summaries of it. In Germany it's now being sold by 2001, that's a very
successful discount bookseller, a Barnes & Noble kind of chain
store, mostly feeding the needs of high school kids and university
students. Weber for 5 bucks. The book is getting popular here for the
same reason Walter Benjamin's works have seen a revival -- because
American students read them. In the 80s we would read Benjamin in art
history and say "so what? -- anything new under the sun?"
Cult wasn't yet his middle name at the time. While Benjamin is popular
the postmodern packaging in which he was redelivered back to Germany
is not really that hot. The icon travels, the wider intellectual
context does not, not necessarily. In the case of Weber the same is
true. In British and the U.S. academia we see that the somewhat
technicist neo-Weberian view of social class seems to predominate in
the social sciences. In Germany, I think, that aspect had always been
replaced my Marxist analysis, even within conservative circles.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Quote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Other thing is that (Neo)-Darwinist
explanations of the workings of the world and society looked almost as
holistic and all-encompassing as Neo-Confucian ones, but that is
another story...</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>That "other story" is what I think is really
interesting! "Holistic and all-encompassing as Neo-Confucian"
-- this seems a wonderful observation and almost convincing.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Frank</div>
<div><br></div>
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<div>--------------------------------------<br>
Frank Hoffmann<br>
http://koreaweb.ws</div>
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