[KS] Yu Kilchun

[Frank Hoffmann]

Thanks Vladimir:

*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.

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.

Quote:
>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 is a right thing to do?

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.

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)?

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.

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 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 
(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 Geist, 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 The Protestant Ethic and 
the Spirit of Capitalism, 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, Wirtschaft und 
Gesellschaft, 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 The Protestant Ethic and the 
Spirit of Capitalism 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.

Quote:
>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...

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.

Frank

-- 
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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