II. Autogenous Modernity and Liminality

Indigenous Modernity and Liminality

Modernity and Indigenous Modernity

Modernity and the Encompassment (Tongsŏp) of the Sacred (Seong) and the Secular (Sok)

The concept of 'Modernity' is a characteristic that allowed humanity to escape the shackles of darkness and regain the power of reason, and it has been revered as a symbol of civilization across both East and West. 'Modernity' can be defined as a mode of life that takes science and technology as the foundation for understanding the world, combines it with capital and the state, and objectifies and efficiently manages nature and humans. Modernity was a universal value discovered by humankind through the long trial and error of human history, and accordingly, "modernity" became a goal commonly pursued by the world. Before the modern era, humanity was under the domination of power, and only after being liberated from absolute power through collective effort did they find modernity. Lee Do-heum expresses the power of the modern era as follows.1)

Humanity escaped the Middle Ages, the 'garden of magic,' and opened the modern era dominated by reason and science. The power of the modern era was truly immense. It demolished the world governed by ignorance and barbarism through reason and science, and redesigned it based on the principle of rationality and science. In the history of human evolution spanning over a million years, the modern era was an unprecedented period that, for the first time, freed humanity from the fear of nature and starvation, allowing ordinary citizens to enjoy material abundance comparable to that of past emperors, even if relative deprivation existed. The human lifespan, which was less than 30 years, has extended to 80 years today since the modern era, and humans, having risen to a god-like status, have finally become mostly atheists and materialists instead.2)

Modernisation, modernity, and modernism are areas treated as central themes of contemporary society, and it is said that modernisation and modernity, compared to modernism, have few disagreements regarding their definitions. Modernisation refers to a series of technological, economic, and political developments related to the Industrial Revolution and its effects, and modernity can be said to be the social conditions and modes of experience that emerged as a result of such developments.3)

However, as a result of unrestrained desire, the modern era has again brought humanity to an unprecedented crisis of extinction, and post-modernism, a critical theory of modernity, has become highly prevalent. Although criticism of modernity is fierce, this is because the modern era was a time that gave humanity unprecedented benefits; however, research is still ongoing as to why these benefits were given.

First, Weber, known as a representative theorist of classical modernity, compressed modernity into the 'rationalization of all society' and subdivided it into ① rational capitalism, ② a rational legal-administrative system (Rechtsstaat), and ③ rational social differentiation.4) In Weber's writings, modernity is compressed into "rationality." In response, post-modernists, who are critical theorists of modernity, identify this rationality as the core problem of modernity. Post-modernists pointed out that the rationality of modernity is summarized as reason-centrism based on the methodological skepticism of Rene Descartes' (1596-1650) "I think, therefore I am" (Cogito, ergo sum), and that this rationality is the cause of modernity's numerous problems. Post-modernists argue that modernity as a narcissistic 'Same,' which denies Idea or God and re-establishes all laws concerning cognition, existence, and value from the self, must inevitably lead to a conclusion like that of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), that "hell is other people." Therefore, they say, an interrelative, generative, processual, and deconstructive rationality that accepts the 'Other' is necessary.5) Post-modernity can be defined as the trend that has resisted this modernity and pursued its alternatives.6)

The critique of Descartes' reductionist rationality begins far back with the expressionist metaphysics of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1675) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), and its modern momentum developed from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941), and Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) in different fields, leading to representative post-modernist theorists such as Foucault, Deleuze, Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), and Lacan. Postmodernism was introduced to the United States by Rene Girard (1923-2015), sometimes called the savior of Christianity today, and became exceptionally activated even in the US, where analytic philosophy is dominant, becoming a major trend in European and American humanities and social sciences today.7) Consequently, criticism from existing Anglo-American philosophy and the orthodox modernity position is also growing.8)9)

The developments achieved by the modern era compared to the previous era and the changes after modernity—that is, the difference between 'modernity' and 'post-modernity' as argued by post-modern theorists—are said to be summarized as in <Table 1>. In this dissertation, 'post-modernity' is used interchangeably with 'post-contemporaneity' (Tal-hyeondaeseong).

The postmodernism debate was triggered by the May 1968 student movement in France and became highly activated in Korea in the 1990s. The postmodernism debate began in Europe, especially France, with the debate between Sartre's Existentialism and Claude Levi-Strauss's (1908-2009) Structuralism, but this debate later led to a critique of modern rationality and communism, represented by Sartre's existentialism, and formed a huge current in contemporary philosophy, such as post-structuralism.10)

<Table 1> Overview of Medieval, Modern, and Postmodern11)

The reason the discussion of post-modernity is becoming increasingly important is that the modern era, which achieved groundbreaking development, has conversely approached humanity as an even greater danger. Consequently, much research has been conducted not only on post-modernist theories focusing on the critique of modernity but also on alternative modernities. Research on alternative modernities, like post-modernist theory, has been centered on the concept of 'multiple modernity,' which focuses on the history of modernity appearing in cultural spheres different from the West, rather than on theoretical exploration. Multiple modernity is distinct from alternative modernity. It is said that the theory of multiple modernities first revealed its lineup in the 1998 special issue of the academic journal Daedalus titled "early modernities." Comparative-historical sociologists such as Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (1923-present), Bjorn Wittrock (1945-present), and Johann Pall Arnason (1940-present) are said to represent this position. Meanwhile, the theory of alternative modernities is said to be raised in various fields such as cultural theory, literary-political criticism, and anthropology.12)13)

Furthermore, they argue that modernity today should be understood as a global modernity that includes Western modernity, and that this is a Multilayered Modernity resulting from the interaction of various civilizations, as seen in the case of Song Dynasty China. In other words, it is said that there was a proto-modernity before Western modernity, and after Western modernity, there was a colonizing-colonized modernity, which then became the multilayered modernity of today's global modernity. The argument is that the 'fetishism of European modernity,' which views modernity as having started only in the West, is a major obstacle to constructing alternative modernities today.14)

Proponents of alternative modernities propose the 'encompass' (Tongseop) model as an alternative to Western modernity, which is centered on Cartesian rationality. 'Tongseop' (encompassment) is not the biological consilience proposed by Edward Osborne Wilson (1929-2021), but a religious-sociological model of modernity that shifts the boundary between the sacred (Seong) and the secular (Sok). Encompassment is when the center includes, rather than excludes, the periphery, but controls it. Modernity means the transition from 'Encompassment 1,' where the sacred (Seong) encompassed the secular (Sok) after the Axial Age, to 'Encompassment 2,' where the secular (Sok) encompasses the sacred (Seong).15) In Encompassment 2, as well, the sacred (Seong) has merely stepped back from the position of control in the process of encompassment; it has not disappeared but has rather become more important. This theory of encompassment can well explain Weber's description of Western modernity, such as Calvin's predestination, as well as the early modern development of the Song Dynasty through Neo-Confucianism, which was not Western modernity. This is because the encompassment relationship between the sacred and the secular—which is the strengthening of divinity (Sinseong) through the rearrangement of the sacred and the secular—is a universally human phenomenon, as explained in the sociology of religion.16)

Encompassment explains the 'religionization' behind rationalization, and thus well explains the contradictory role Confucianism played in Eastern and Western modernity, which is still not fully understood. The reason for the failure of Liang Qichao (1873-1929), a representative Chinese modernization theorist who lived contemporaneously with Weber, in his attempt at Chinese modernization through Confucianism is a prime example. Weber's point—that the reason for the failure of Liang Qichao's Confucian modernization was his attempt to achieve modernity with a Confucianism stripped of religiosity, not knowing that Western modern rationality was a modernity that encompassed religiosity within it—is said to have been accurate.17)

It is said that multiple modernities can also be applied to Donghak. Donghak can be interpreted as the definitive edition of the "whole country becoming Yangban" trend in Joseon, which lasted from the Imjin War to Jeong Yak-yong. The similarity between Donghak and the Reformation, which was the dawn of Western modernity, has been pointed out by various scholars. If modernity is the transition of encompassment where the secular (Sok) encompasses the sacred (Seong), then Donghak Thought can be understood as an alternative modernity. In fact, in Daesoon Thought, which appeared after Donghak Thought about 120 years ago, it was predicted that this modernity would instead become a great threat and disaster to humanity.18)

About 120 years later, modernity was actually identified as the cause of the contemporary crisis of human extinction, and numerous studies were conducted to find a solution for its re-establishment. The discussion of post-modernity is now also discussed as reflexive modernity, which emphasizes reflection on modernity, such as by Beck, or as the Liquid Modernity of Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017), which emphasizes the processual and fluid characteristics that hinder decision-making.19) Postmodernism has now become one of the mainstream ideologies in the intellectual circles of continental Europe and the Anglo-American world.20) However, as Jurgen Habermas (1929-present), a representative intellect of world social science, has said, despite much research, the modern era is still an unfinished project and an object of re-establishment, one about which a post-modern era cannot yet be discussed.21) In fact, if one traces the etymology of the word "modern," modernity itself can have the meanings of both modern and post-modern simultaneously.

The Oxford dictionary defines "mode," the etymological root of Modernity, as "now, here." Despite long debate, the origin of its etymology is still unclear. Although there have been many theories about modernity, it has not yet been clarified why the new trend responding to the Middle Ages was named "Modernity." However, there is a theory that "mode," meaning "now, here," which had been used since before the Roman era, is related to the pre-Christian Gnostic tradition, which is also related to the Chinese character "巫 (mu)"; therefore, the modern era, which started as a counter-culture to Christianity, adopted it to emphasize its counter-nature. Since modernity and post-modernity appear overlapped in today's reality, "now, here" can mean both modernity and post-modernity. At any rate, the etymology of Modernity shows that modernity itself can simultaneously have the meaning of 'modern' and 'post-modern.'22)

This dissertation intends to focus on 'Indigenous Modernity' (Autogenous Modernity) as a concept of modernity that can synthesize alternative modernity, multiple modernities, post-modernity, multilayered modernity, reflexive modernity, and liquid modernity. Indigenous modernity means that there was modernity in our tradition, and that there was a modernity that revived our tradition in response to Western modernity. If one overcomes Weber and abandons a Western-centric perspective, indigenous modernity can be discovered in Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought from an objective viewpoint based on history. In the cases of Japan and China, this has been attempted by the Kyoto School (Kyōto-gakuha) and Wang Hui, among others, and is widely known.23)24)

In the West, modernity was a concept that enabled industrialization by reclaiming individual freedom lost to church power through the secularization of religion, such as the Reformation; in the East, modernity was a concept that liberated the populace from irrational oppressions, although much damage was inflicted by the West. Therefore, when discussing modernity, the West has mainly emphasized dis-enchantment through the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution, while the East has mainly emphasized indigenousness, that is, nationalist movements.25)

Indigenous modernity also simultaneously reveals the two characteristics of modernity and post-modernity. Just like the material modernization achieved through compressed modernity in non-Western regions, alternative modernity also compressively constructs modernity and post-modernity. Post-modernist theorists suggest that the indigenous modernity found in non-Western regions may be more suitable as an alternative modernity than the post-modernity sought in the West. This was termed "thought from the outside" (pensée du dehors) and became a major basis for post-structuralist post-modern theory. Furthermore, the recently emphasized Eastern origins of Western modernity draw more attention to multiple modernities as post-modernity, namely, indigenous modernity. Since the New Science movement, many researchers have actually sought alternatives to modernity in Eastern thought. Since the emergence of postmodernism, this has expanded not only to the field of science but also to the humanities and social sciences, and modernity and post-modernity, in particular, have formed an intersecting point where Eastern and Western religious thoughts meet. Modernity's characteristics always appear clearly when compared with the Middle Ages and post-modernity.

Like the encompassment theory of multiple modernities or the theory of reflexive modernity, modernity today becomes a matter of reflection—that is, the power to try to overcome limits, the boundary between the sacred and the secular, namely, liminality. Especially in the case of the East, it becomes a problem of the liminality of correlative thinking, which is the methodology of Eastern philosophy. Ultimate liminality becomes the will to choose the sacred over the secular. Humans constantly seek to escape the secular and find the sacred, thus giving rise to religion, which seeks ultimate reality.26)

In this regard, Korea's modernity today is being sought from Donghak. The idea is that the concept of the nation-state first emerged in Korea from Donghak.27) However, this concept of modernity beginning from Donghak is highly controversial. Colonial modernization theorists regarded Donghak as an ideology. To colonial modernization theorists, Donghak is merely the resistance of the powerless populace. To intrinsic development theorists, Donghak is an expression of the sprouts of modernity, but it lacks an ideological background.28) However, Donghak is related to the immanence of Eastern thought—that is, the indigenous modernity of the East based on the idea that 'the principles of the universe are equipped in the body, so the mind of the people is the mind of Heaven'—namely, the liminality of correlative thinking.29) Just as with tradition, a balanced perspective is needed in modernity as well.30)

Paying attention to this point, this dissertation is an attempt to understand the philosophical methodology of Donghak Thought in an in-depth manner by diachronically presenting previous research—which studied Donghak Thought as a philosophical method of thought—from the perspective of "continuity and change of tradition," and through this, to understand the context and validity of the indigenous modernity presented by Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought.31)

Daesoon Thought predicted, over 120 years ago, the crisis of human extinction resulting from a distorted concept of Western modernity that excluded the East. The concept of 'Haewon-sangsaeng' (Resolution of Grievances for Mutual Beneficence) modernity, which fuses East and West as presented by Daesoon Thought, is gaining attention as a new solution to the problem of re-establishing the concept of modernity.32) The true meaning of the concept of modernity presented by Daesoon Thought, like other Eastern thoughts, is only being revealed today, after Western science has reached an advanced state of development.33) At that time, obscured by the Western modernity splendidly packaged with Western material civilization, the modernity presented by Daesoon Thought, which synthesized Eastern and Western thoughts, was almost completely misunderstood. As Western modernity became the epicenter of the modern crisis, and numerous efforts to re-establish modernity, such as postmodernism, led to a 'New Science' shift in ontology, epistemology, and axiology across the entire spectrum of Western humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, a clue to understanding emerged as Eastern studies (Dongyanghak) was proposed as the next stage after New Science.34)

The Eastern Common Origins of Western Modernity and Autogenous Modernity

Today, as the three East Asian nations are the only non-Western civilizations to have achieved economic growth surpassing the West, research is proliferating, contrary to past assessments of East Asia as a stagnant civilization, suggesting that the Western modern era was instead influenced by the East. In accordance with recent research results on East Asian culture, the indigenous modernity of modern and contemporary Korea, which had previously been regarded merely as a unique legacy of a bygone era, is also being re-evaluated.35)

Unlike Weber, who did not know Chinese characters, if one examines the research of Thomas A. Metzger (1933-present), who knew Chinese characters and applied Weber's method to derive the opposite conclusion, it seems an understanding of East Asia's "indigenous modernity" has begun. The sprouts of Eastern modernity, being revealed recently in relation to the theory of Eastern influence on modern Western culture, are a factor causing the reconstruction of Korea's indigenous modernity and tradition.36) Furthermore, the interpretation of the modernity of Eastern culture from an Eastern perspective by Western scholars such as Jullien, Frank, Hobson, Creel, and Alexander Woodside (1938-present) is also a factor prompting a reconsideration of Korea's indigenous modernity and tradition.37)

The characteristic that distinguishes Donghak-related thoughts from other religious movements in the world at that time is that they asserted the Eastern origins of Western modernity. The Eastern origins of Western modernity, which appeared in indirect expressions in Donghak such as "Donghak" (Eastern Learning) and "Dasi Gaebyeok" (Re-Opening), appear clearly in Daesoon Thought—which claimed to be the True Donghak—through the cases of Matteo Ricci and Great Master Jinmuk, who were said to have respectively moved Eastern civilization gods and Dao-mastery gods to the West.38) Even at the time Donghak Thought was established, the 'Seohak-jungwon-ron' (theory that Western learning originated in China) was dominant in China, and in Korea, it had been developing further since Seo Myeong-eung.39)40)

Since China's May Fourth Movement, traditional Eastern scholarship has been condemned as irrational, pre-modern scholarship; however, even in Europe at that time, the negation of traditional Eastern scholarship was a phenomenon less than 100 years old. Rather, in Europe, from Matteo Ricci until the Enlightenment period, during the so-called "Chinoiserie" (Chinese craze), scholars who formed the origins of modern thought today, such as Voltaire (1694-1778), Adam Smith (1723-1790), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), unanimously found the basis for their arguments in the Chinese thought transmitted by Matteo Ricci. It was only after the Enlightenment, with the beginning of colonial rule, that Europe viewed Chinese civilization as pre-modern. The records from that time, disclosed today, clearly show the concealed Eastern origins of Western modernity.41)

According to the records of the time, Chinese society, which was more moral than Europe despite having no religion, appeared as an excellent alternative to European society, which had not shrunk even from internecine religious wars under the justification that the absence of religion leads to moral decline. In Europe, with its strong Christian tradition at the time, which lacked even the basic opportunities for freedom and equality found in the civil service examination system (Gwageoje), there was fertile ground to accept China's secularized, rational traditions without the negative side effect of the emperor's despotic attributes.42) In fact, it is said that Smith's "invisible hand" and Rousseau's "Natural Rights," which represent modernity today, were concepts developed by European intellectuals studying Chinese civilization at the time, inspired by Eastern thought.43)

The starting point for Weber defining rationality as modernity, a universal value of humanity, seems to be Hegel's Absolute Geist (Absolute Spirit/Reason). As the etymology of the word "universal" (bopyeon-jeok) derives from "catholic," this seems to have been a very traditional issue in the West. The West regarded Christianity as "catholic," making it the universal truth, but it experienced numerous contradictions during the Middle Ages. It can be said that Western modern thought, starting with Descartes, was the West's effort to re-establish universality upon reaching the modern era. Hegel is in the lineage extending from Descartes and Kant.

The rationality Weber discovered seems to have been mindful of Hegel's universal value or Absolute Reason, which develops itself through dialectics. Hegel assumes modern Western society is the most developed modern society, places Eastern society and others below it, and dialectically explains the process from primitive society to modern Western society. Weber adopted Hegel's perspective of viewing Eastern society as a society where the Absolute Spirit had developed less than in Western society, designating Eastern society as a pre-modern society or a patrimonial bureaucracy, and this became Weber's theory of Eastern society.

The reason Weber's theory of Eastern society is important today is that his theory can be said to be the fundamental perspective from which Westerners view contemporary Eastern society, or from which Eastern intellectuals in Eastern societies—where Western influence is dominant—view their own societies, even to this day. Although it has been about 100 years since Weber proposed his theory of Eastern society, the fact that there is still no counterargument centered on the methodology of thought regarding Weber's theory must be the first starting point when discussing indigenous modernity.

Metzger applied Weber's theory, but unlike Weber, he argued that it was the East Asians who possessed a Protestant-like tension. The tension of East Asians toward the world, manifested as an 'anxiety consciousness' (uhwan-uisik), can be seen in the profiles of those who devoted themselves to the realization of democracy when Western democratic ideas were introduced. From an Eastern perspective, democracy is less a revolution from below and more an expansion of bureaucracy; since the expansion of bureaucracy is the process of 'inner sageliness and outer kingliness' (naeseong-oewang), the expansion of bureaucracy is truly genuine historical development. The unique development of East Asia today proves the validity of the East Asian perspective. In fact, Donghak Thought has the character of a religious reformation against Neo-Confucianism, and there is also research suggesting that Joseon society actually had stronger civil society characteristics than Western civil society.44)

Applying Metzger's theory, Eastern society becomes a society closer to modernity. If so, why did Eastern society not modernize before the West? It becomes crucial to examine why modern thought could sprout earlier in the East than in the West. The reason why the East modernized later than the West, even though—as Metzger suggests—the 'anxiety consciousness' (uhwan-uisik) mentioned by Weber was more advanced in the East than in the West, is related to the emphasis on 'empathy' (gonggam) in Eastern culture. Eastern culture was ahead in modernity through empathy, but it fell behind the West in modernization, which industrialized modernity.

If we condense Weber's theory of Eastern society further, it is summarized as the East lacking rationality; in other words, lacking consistency. The consistency Weber refers to here is Kantian consistency, as spoken of in German society where Kant's influence was dominant. In Weber's view, Neo-Confucianism, first of all, emphasizes 'Li' (principle) but has no argumentation. Since there is no argumentation, the 'Li' of Neo-Confucianism does not constitute rationality as Weber defines it.

However, it is recently being revealed that Weber's theory was influenced by Kant at the time and thus excluded pre-Kantian discussions. In the pre-Kantian West, Eastern thought, unlike in Kant's view, was rationality itself. Rather, during the Enlightenment period, the doctrines of Christianity, the Western religion, symbolized superstition; therefore, they sought to eliminate the irrationality of Christian doctrine by accepting Chinese rationality under the name of Enlightenment.

As represented by the May Fourth Movement, China at the time of Donghak Thought's emergence, like Meiji Japan, mostly took Westernization as the model of modernity; however, Donghak-related thoughts grasped the Eastern origins of Western modernity and sought East-West integration. In particular, both thoughts sought to find countermeasures for the global crisis brought about by Western modernity. Therefore, Korea's modernity can be an alternative modernity for the crisis of modernity. Contrary to common sense, modernity actually began in the East, and Korea, where Neo-Confucianism was more developed than in China, was an advanced modernity even among them.

In the 18th century, Hume and Adam Smith interpreted the Confucian thought of Confucius, transmitted by Matteo Ricci, as 'empathy' (gonggam) and sought to lay a new foundation for Western moral theory. The commonality between Confucianism and the Enlightenment had already been noted, leading to the theory of multilayered modernity, which views the commonality of the two theories as a coincidence; however, it is recently being revealed through the development of empathy theory and the rediscovery of historical materials that it was a direct influence.45)

The West, after learning from the East that ethics through empathy is possible, developed modernity from a reflection on unilateral obedience to God. However, Western modernity soon became skewed toward materialism and caused human arrogance, leading to many problems. Consequently, reflexive modernity and post-modernity, which reflect on the modern era, were sought. The reason East Asia's indigenous modernity is important is that Eastern modernity is a reflexive modernity that emphasizes reflection more than Western modernity does. In particular, empathy, said to be the origin of Western modernity, gains significance when combined with reflection.

The background against which indigenous modernity is presented includes the debate on modernity and post-modernity raised by postmodernism. Although modernity achieved numerous developments compared to the Middle Ages, it also caused many serious problems, leading to the search for alternative modernities.

Hak (학) as the Formal System of Autogenous Modernity

As the crisis of Western scholarship became apparent, voices of reflection are rising even within the philosophy of science, which had dogmatically asserted that only Western scholarship was science. Today, in Western philosophy of science, science is also used in the sense of science based on methodological anarchism (Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge), like Feyerabend. Methodological anarchism in science refers to the contemporary philosophy of science which states that, like Deng Xiaoping's 'Black Cat, White Cat Theory' (it doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice), as long as there is consistency and the prediction matches the result, it can all be called science, regardless of the theoretical framework of normal science, which is the standard of academia.46) This dissertation also uses the meaning of the scientific nature of Eastern scholarship from the perspective of methodological anarchism, but uses it more restrictively.47) The scientific nature of Donghak that this dissertation seeks to assert includes not only the methodological anarchism that existing Eastern science also possessed, but also the falsifiability that allows Eastern science to be comparatively explained through the theoretical structure of analytical, institutional science.48)

The most prominent feature distinguishing Donghak as a religious thought from other religions is that it expresses religion with the academic term "Hak" (Learning). Expressing religious thought with the term "Hak" aligns with the East Asian tradition of referring to Confucianism as "Seongrihak" (Neo-Confucianism) for a long period. In fact, Catholicism was also called "Seohak" (Western Learning) in East Asia, expressing other religions with the academic term "Hak." One of the reasons religion was traditionally expressed as 'Hak' in the East is that Eastern religions have a natural science background in astronomy and geography (Cheonmun-jiri), and, as in the case of Dong Zhongshu (BC 176?-AD 104) who advocated the 'theory of disasters and anomalies' (Jaei-seol), there was a tendency to prioritize astronomy and geography over religion, and it also possessed holistic attributes inseparable from natural science.

The "Nonhangmun" (Discussion on Learning) in the Donggyeong Daejeon, where the term 'Donghak' first appears, explains that the difference between Eastern and Western religions lies in the methodology of thought, such as Seohak's "Gakja-wisim" (Each acting for oneself).49) In Donghak Thought, the presentation of Donghak in response to Seohak is sometimes considered a response made with Matteo Ricci's Cheonjusilui (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven) in mind, which argued for the superiority of Seohak's methodology over the East's.50)

The task that must first be methodologically settled in studying East Asian religions is the establishment of the phenomenological meaning of "Hak" (Learning) in religion. It was discussed early on that studying Eastern religions using the phenomenology of religion, a major methodology in religious studies today, requires a phenomenology unique to East Asia.51)

In fact, various attempts are being made in recent research focusing on the "Hak" of Donghak. However, existing research focusing on "Hak" has been conducted at the level of Donghak's "theory of self-cultivation" (Suyang-ron), which is prominent today, and studies focusing on the phenomenology of religion and religious-anthropological research as a philosophical methodology unique to Korean religion have been rare.

Today, the philosophical methodology of "Hak" belongs broadly to the domain of worldview, phenomenologically speaking, in terms of religion. The emergence of worldview as a full-fledged subject of research in the phenomenology of religion today begins with Roderick Ninian Smart (1927-2001).52)

Ninian Smart developed a "cross-cultural" phenomenology by compromising between Eliade's archetype-theoretical phenomenology of religion and Van der Leeuw's "power"-centered phenomenology. "Cross-cultural" phenomenology broadly divides worldview as an object of religious studies research into two categories. In Ninian Smart's cross-cultural phenomenology, religion can be seen as a system necessary for humans to understand and live in the world, and this is further divided into a 'world-explanation system' (Welterklaerungssystem) and a 'life-problem overcoming system' (Lebensbewaeltigungssystem). Ninian Smart further divided this into 7 dimensions, and these two classifications are useful from the perspective of the religious methodology of "Hak."53)54)

If religion is thus divided into a 'world-explanation system' (Welterklaerungssystem) and a 'life-problem overcoming system' (Lebensbewaeltigungssystem), the phenomenology of religion can be connected with the anthropology of religion, which studies religion as a human problem-solving process. In the anthropology of religion, human problem-solving through religion has been studied from three main directions: principle, process, and structure.

First, looking at principle, one can cite Arnold Van Gennep's (1873-1957) theory of the "rite of passage" and Turner's theory of "Liminality," which originated from the "rite of passage" theory.55) The theory of rites of passage, which explains the process of an individual's transformation into an adult, becomes, macroscopically, the theory of liminality, which transforms a society. Applying this to the study of Donghak Thought, one can regard the span from Donghak Thought to the subsequent Daesoon Thought as a single rite of passage. In the case of Kim Ji-ha, he expressed the liminal character of Donghak-related thoughts as the 'aesthetics of white shadow,' and in Daesoon Thought, there is also research that conducted the Cheonji-gongsa (Reordering Works of Heaven and Earth) from the ritual perspective of liminality. Kim Tae-soo focused on the formal aspects among the ritual aspects of the Cheonji-gongsa, which had not received attention, and conducted detailed research based on liminality theory.56) This dissertation, based on Kim Tae-soo's research on the formal aspects, intends to focus on the content-related aspects related to modernity by utilizing the latest research achievements on liminality.57)

Next, from the perspective of structure, there is the theory that each tradition exhibits a unique structure, and each religion can be explained by the difference in its structure. If the aspect of principle viewed worldview as religion as a 'life-problem overcoming system,' the explanation from the aspect of structure is closer to a 'world-explanation system.' Anthropology that explains religion from the aspect of structure originates its methodology largely from the philosophies of science in the Anglo-American and Continental spheres. Both the Anglo-American and Continental spheres explain "Hak" (Learning) using the term 'paradigm.' However, its meaning is different. In the Anglo-American sphere, paradigm is related to the consensus of the community. In paradigm theory, a specific truth is merely a chain of hypotheses, so if the method is changed, something else can become truth. A paradigm is like a frame of thought, and if a new theory has a different problem-frame, existing scientists call it 'not normal science.' It took a long period of consensus among the scientific community for Einstein's theory of relativity to be recognized as science. The reason why the East's Yin-Yang and Five Elements is not currently incorporated into science can be attributed not to a problem of its scientific nature, but rather to the paradigm (norm) that recognizes only reductionism as science.58)

Viewed from the aspect of paradigm, the East's "Hak" (Learning) has 'correlative thinking' as its unique norm. 'Correlative thinking' is a term contrasted with 'analytic thinking'; unlike analytic epistemology, which holds that all things are independent and thus must be perceived by breaking them down, it is a method of thought that perceives through correlation, as all things are interconnected and cannot be broken down.

There has also been research that proved, through large-scale experiments, that the methodological differences between Eastern and Western scholarship are actually applied in the ways of thinking of modern Easterners and Westerners.59) Furthermore, there is research revealing that Yin-Yang theory, a representative theory of correlative thinking, is correlative thinking in which analytic thinking is hidden.60) From the perspective of correlative thinking, analytic thinking is also, internally, cyclical thinking, so it is ultimately correlative thinking that is just not revealed. There is the research of Jeong Woo-jin, which summarizes Eastern correlative thinking. Based on such research, what are considered today as Eastern and Western philosophical methodologies of thought can be broadly divided into two: the Eastern generative method and the Western ontological method.61) Correlative thinking corresponds to the Eastern generative method of thought, which has a deductive principle of generating from top to bottom, and this Eastern generative method of thought manifests largely as correlative thinking and synchronicity.62)

Next, viewed from the aspect of process, worldview as religion can be seen as revitalization. Revitalization is a concept argued in the revitalization model mentioned in the revitalization model of the religious scholar Wallace. Revitalization appears in the process of acculturation, in the process of accepting other scholarships, and this becomes an important method for examining worldview as religion. This is because a religious worldview that does not change despite external changes can be understood as the process of continuity and change of tradition, and this occurs through revitalization.

Considering the concept of "Hak" (Learning) as a philosophical methodology examined above, this study intends to simultaneously and three-dimensionally use three methods from the anthropology of religion—which study worldview as religion within the continuity and change of tradition—to compare Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought. The continuity and change of tradition appearing in Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought are primarily manifested in semantic changes of terms and concepts. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on the key terms of the two thoughts, seeking to three-dimensionally grasp the continuity and change in the meaning of these terms using all three perspectives: structure, principle, and process. Through this, it aims to verify whether Daesoon Thought can hold significance as 'True Donghak' (Cham Donghak) by using as an indicator the extent to which Daesoon Thought was faithful to the continuity and change of the Eastern and Western traditions inherited by Donghak, from the perspective of religion as worldview.

East-West Distinction as the Theoretical Background of Autogenous Modernity

In Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought, the concept of East-West—that is, the division of Eastern and Western—appears as a very fundamental distinction, much like 'Donghak' or 'Cham Donghak' itself. If the East-West distinction appears as a fundamental division in philosophical thought, it is necessary to examine the criteria for this distinction and the reasons why this division is fundamentally important.

Research on the difference between Donghak (Eastern Learning) and Seohak (Western Learning) has been conducted in various areas, including the differences in Eastern and Western methodologies of thought. First, empirical research in cognitive psychology on the differences in thought methods between Easterners and Westerners has recently been substantiated through experimental psychology by Richard Eugene Nisbett (1941-present). Nisbett states that in experiments, the world appears to Asians as a complex place and an object of collective control rather than personal control, whereas to Westerners, the world is relatively simple and an object of highly personal control; the two worlds are indeed different. In fact, Nisbett noted that when seeing a bird fly, Westerners remember the number of birds, while Easterners remember the background.63)

Various explanations have been offered regarding the differences in Eastern and Western methods of thought. First, Fung Yu-lan (1894-1990) explained it based on the difference between commercial and agricultural cultures. Fung Yu-lan argued that epistemology was absent in the East; the reason for this absence was that, unlike in the West where commerce developed—requiring the distinction between the essence and substance of trading partners—in the East, which had a favorable natural environment, intuitive perception was important in agriculture, thus not necessitating an epistemology that distinguishes essence and substance as in the West.64)

Besides the difference between commerce and agriculture, Kim Pil-nyeon analyzed the origin of the East-West difference—summarized as collectivism and individualism—as the geographical-environmental differences faced by Greece and the Spring and Autumn/Warring States period, the axial age of Eastern and Western civilizations. Kim Pil-nyeon states that in the West, logic developed for clear communication because diverse races lived together, while in China, during the Spring and Autumn/Warring States period, the problems were political, leading to the development of internal ethics.65)

Park Dong-hwan, who, unlike environmental determinists, is evaluated as having developed a Korean logic, also explains the East-West difference, especially the Korean difference, using a linguistic model. He states that Korean logic is a cyclical logic of 'Heosa' (functional words) determination, where the periphery determines the center, different from the West and China. He claims that because Korean logic is a logic of 'Heosa' determinism, it has a cyclical characteristic that allows new theories to be fused indefinitely.66)

It is said that due to the East-West difference, Eastern and Western cultures can actually be typified by the relationship between the whole and the part, as Nisbett mentioned. Choi Bong-young states that each civilization can be classified according to whether it views the individual and the community from an individualistic or holistic perspective: Western religion (Seogyo) moved from a whole-subordinate worldview, viewing God and human in a relationship of subordination, to a modern individual-aggregate worldview; China is classified as having a whole-partial (Bubunja-jeok) worldview, and India a whole-dependent origination (Yeongija-jeok) worldview.67)

In the case of the West, structuralist anthropologists represented by Lévi-Strauss demonstrated through debates with existentialism that the thought of primitive tribes also possesses structural principles that are in no way inferior to Western thought, such as existentialism. In structuralist anthropology, the thought system of indigenous peoples was called the 'Savage Mind,' and it is said to consist of symmetrical thinking, like Yin-Yang.68) If the principles of structuralist anthropology are applied to the East and West, the fundamental reason for the East-West difference is that symmetrical thinking—the savage mind—was applied differently depending on the region. According to structuralist anthropology, Eastern holistic thinking is closer to symmetrical thinking, and this could be a more rational way of thinking than Western analytic thinking. In particular, Buddhism is said to achieve the symmetrical thinking closest to circulation. Because Buddhism possesses 'Emptiness' (Gong), the pinnacle of symmetrical thinking, it aligns with the symmetry of all things.69)

Following the emergence of structuralist anthropology, the West sought 'thought from the outside' (pensée du dehors) through the concept of 'Immanence,' which allows reflection on Western thought. Immanence refers to the implicit conventions shared within a specific culture, characteristics that cannot be known except from the outside. For example, in the case of a fish that lives its entire life in water, water becomes an immanence difficult to know without leaving the water. The Western immanence discovered by the West, centered around post-structuralists, was the 'substance theory' that Matteo Ricci used when criticizing the East's correlative thinking, the theory of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements. Aristotle's substance theory is the theory that for a logical explanation of change, the process of change must be explained by a substance possessing attributes—namely, atoms, the four elements (earth, water, fire, air), God, etc. According to the substance theory of Matteo Ricci, who was influenced by Aristotle, since the ultimate substance is God, theories like Yin-Yang and the Five Elements or the Li-Qi theory, which do not explain change with substance as God does, were argued to be illogical.70)

The reason post-structuralists like Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), Paul-Michel Foucault (1926-1984), and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) sought 'Outside Thinking' (pensée du dehors)—namely, Western immanence—was that they discovered traces of dogmatism in Western thought.71) The intersection in Western thought that both enabled the discovery of existence and also drove it away lay in the dogmatism possessed by substance. Although Derrida and others criticized this dogmatism, calling it 'phonocentrism' (Grammatology), etc., as Kim Ik-du argued, what caused Western dogmatism was the substance theory also present in Aristotle's theory of tragedy, and the failure to find an alternative to it in the West.72)

Deleuze, who devised the concept of immanence, criticized substantiality but did not criticize the East. Jullien found 'thought from the outside' in the East through Deleuze's concept of immanence.73) Jullien focused on Eastern immanence, which aims for the unity of opposites but does not presuppose substance. According to him, Eastern holistic thought, although lacking the concept of substance, was able to escape dogmatism like that of the West. Furthermore, Jullien shows that because Eastern immanence was completely opposite to that of the West, Mencius's concept of self-cultivation-based existence, stemming from Eastern immanence, had the same character as the moral foundation of modern Western thought and could serve as an alternative case of problem-solving for Western thought.74)

In fact, Wang Hui (1959-present), who has sought alternative modernity in Chinese thought, argues that an alternative modernity applicable to the contemporary era can be found in the process of Eastern correlative thinking changing since ancient times. Wang Hui states that as the feudal order of the Zhou Dynasty collapsed, the Confucian thought of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, centered on emperors and aristocrats, was transformed. Wang Hui points out the error in the existing interpretation that Confucius's thought of 'Ren' (benevolence) was a rationalization of the sanctity of the Zhou Dynasty's rites and music (Ye-ak), which originated from shamanism; he argues that Confucius, on the contrary, sought to restore it. By the same principle, he views the 'theory of disasters and anomalies' (Jaei-ron) of the Han and Tang dynasties—which transitioned from feudalism to a 'Junxian' (commanderies and counties) system with strong centralization—and the Li-Qi theory of the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, which were bureaucracy-oriented, as also being attempts to restore the collapsed sanctity. Wang Hui, who gained global fame by pointing out errors in existing research in his study of Lu Xun, argues that an alternative modernity based on Chinese thought is also possible through the restoration of tradition. Wang Hui's theory of alternative modernity, in that it explains modernity through the change of the sacred and the secular, aligns with the Western theory of alternative modernity, which explains modernity through the 'encompassment' change of the sacred and the secular.75)

Lim Heon-gyu, who studies Confucian thought through the mind-body relationship based on analytic philosophy, states that the empathetic interpretation of the mind concerning the child falling into the well in Mencius—which became the basis of Neo-Confucianism—has not yet been proven psycho-philosophically; however, if proven, it could become an important philosophical theory of the mind-body relationship that holistically solves problems that modern philosophy of mind's mind-body relationship cannot resolve. This can serve as an analytic-philosophical counterargument to the discussions that criticized correlative thinking using analytic philosophy.76)77)

Hwang Tae-yeon, who has traced the Eastern origins of the rationality that appeared in Western modernity after Matteo Ricci, states that actual Western rationality is not the Kantian-sense rationality spoken of by Weber, but the Confucian rationality of Confucius-Mencius, which accepted Chinese philosophy before Kant. The argument is that analytic philosophy, which represents rationality today, can be seen, when compared to Confucian rationality, as a dogmatism latent in Western substantiality.78)

To summarize, the difference in the thought systems of the East and West, although arising from various reasons, is ultimately condensed into the difference in immanence: the West's partial substance and the East's holistic attributes. The explanation in Eastern thought for the West's substance and the East's attributes can be interpreted as the difference in Yin-Yang attributes appearing in texts like the Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon). In the Huangdi Neijing, among the body's meridians (Gyeongnak), the Yin meridians, which have Yin attributes, ascend from bottom to top, and the Yang meridians, which have Yang attributes, descend from top to bottom. If we apply the Yin-Yang difference explained in the Huangdi Neijing to the East and West, Westerners, having Yang attributes, possess a substantial thought system that moves from bottom to top, like the Yin meridians—that is, from the self to the universe; Easterners, having Yin attributes, possess an attributive and holistic thought system that moves from top to bottom, like the Yang meridians—that is, from the universe to the self. In the East, where the Earth's Qi (Jigi) is Yang, people become 'Yin persons' (Eum-in) with Yin attributes to balance Yin-Yang; in the West, where the Earth's Qi is Yin, people become 'Yang persons' (Yang-in) with Yang attributes. Donghak Thought refers to this as the West's 'Gakja-wisim' (Each acting for oneself); Daesoon Thought, in the 'Jong-un' (Bell Rhyme), also expresses it as 'Cheon-gi hagang hago Jigi sangseung handa' (Heaven's Qi descends and Earth's Qi ascends), reprimanding that Western modernity—which, based on the Yin principle, thinks upward from the self to the world—ultimately fell into material gain (Jaeri).

The thought of immanence, which began in European structuralist philosophy centered in France, developed into empirical research such as the New Age Science Movement and Self-organization Theory, but it also crossed over into the Anglo-American sphere, developing into the theory of correlative thinking and liminality theory. Correlative thinking theory and liminality theory apply the binary opposition symmetrical thinking of structuralism to Eastern thought, developing into the characteristic of thought called 'correlative thinking' and the aspect of thought-change called 'liminality.' Correlative thinking develops in an empirical direction, like Fractal theory, and liminality theory gains attention as a post-modernity theory called 'Liquid Modernity.'79)

Next, we will examine the criteria for the East-West distinction. In the Jeon-gyeong, the scripture of Daesoon Thought, which has more instances of East-West distinction than Donghak Thought, the criterion for the East-West distinction aligns with the criterion historically used in the East Asian cultural sphere. In the Jeon-gyeong, the chronologically earliest East-West distinction begins at the point where Matteo Ricci distinguished between the East and the West. This matches the traditional concept which geographically designated the West as west of the Kunlun Mountains and the East as east of them. By Western standards, the 'Orient' includes the Middle East, but in the East Asian cultural sphere, the Middle East corresponds to the West. The criterion distinguishing East and West becomes the Kunlun Mountains. Furthermore, in the Jeon-gyeong, instances of the East-West distinction also appear in the aspect of the world of divine beings (Sinmyeong-gye). As can be seen in the example that before Matteo Ricci, the East and West were firmly guarded so that divine beings (Sinmyeong) did not travel between them, or in the account that Great Master Jinmuk crossed over to the West leading all the Dao-mastery gods (Dotong-sin) of the East, the East-West distinction in the Jeon-gyeong appears even as a criterion for dividing the world of divine beings.80) That even the world of divine beings is divided into East and West means that the criterion for the East-West distinction is very central to the composition of the world.81)

The reason the East-West distinction in Daesoon Thought appears even as a division of the world of divine beings is related to the Daesoon worldview of Yin-Yang and the Daesoon view of God(s) as Cheonjon (Heaven Honored), Jijon (Earth Honored), and Injon (Human Honored). In the worldview of Daesoon Thought, which regards all things as Yin-Yang differentiated from the Taegeuk (Supreme Ultimate), the East and the West each take charge of one axis of Yin-Yang. In Daesoon Thought, the reason the East-West distinction expands, among the axes of Yin-Yang, to become a criterion for dividing the world of divine beings is that the era of human history is the 'Earth Honored Era' (Jijon Sidae), when divine beings are enshrined on Earth. If the historical era of humanity is the 'Earth Honored Era' when divine beings are enshrined on Earth, then the distinction between East and West, which divides the Earth, becomes a core concept that extends even to the division of divine beings.82)

If East and West become the core concept for distinguishing divine beings, then in the framework of Daesoon Thought—which sees divine beings as immanent in all things—East and West can be understood as the principle of the Taegeuk (the reference point of Yin-Yang) being applied even to the world of divine beings. According to this principle, the everyday affairs and objects of the East and the West all come to manifest in opposing forms, like Yin and Yang. Therefore, in Eastern 'Hak' (Learning), which holds that universal principles are immanent in everyday affairs, the distinction between Donghak (Eastern Learning) and Seohak (Western Learning) becomes a fundamental distinction, and indeed, Donghak and Seohak manifest with opposing attributes, like Yin and Yang.83)

Donghak and Seohak were not only core concepts for distinguishing divine beings but also important concepts for understanding the West in the situation of the East-West clash, where Eastern civilization could be destroyed by Western civilization. Theories seeking to understand by distinguishing East and West, such as 'Dongdo-seogi-ron' (Eastern ways, Western machines), 'Jungche-seoyong-ron' (Chinese essence, Western function), and 'Seohak-jungwon-ron' (Western learning originated in China), already existed at that time. However, Donghak was the first in all of China, Japan, and Korea to make the distinction of dividing East and West into Yin and Yang from the perspective of thought methodology—a distinction that was modern yet more aligned with tradition.84)

In fact, today, after Western civilization has been transmitted to the East for over 100 years and anthropological and cultural-studies comparisons of Eastern and Western methodologies of thought have progressed, the East-West distinction as a fundamental cultural division, which appeared in Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought at that time, appears to have been very appropriate. This is because, in that the East and the West show opposing aspects not only in culture and language but also in ways of thinking, Donghak can be seen as having realized the continuity of tradition starting from its very name.

Correlative Thought as the Philosophical Methodology of Autogenous Modernity

Today, the logic of Eastern science is establishing itself as correlative thinking, different from that of the West.85) Correlative thinking is a theory that applies structuralism to Eastern thought, viewing all things as interconnected; it is a Western re-evaluation of the rationality manifested in Eastern thought. Correlative thinking (Sang-gwan-jeok Sayu) is a way of thinking in which the part and the whole move simultaneously. It is a thought and cognition method based on the idea that the whole exists within the part and all things are interrelated; most civilizations, excluding the West, possess such a thought system. Correlative thinking, previously considered superstitious thought, is now being verified by modern science, and its potential as a new science is instead being explored.86) Recently, it has even been revealed that the theories of analytic science are, in fact, a type of correlative thinking.87) Among them, Yin-Yang theory—a representative traditional Eastern theory that constitutes the first aim (Jongji) of Daesoon Thought—is attracting attention as a representative correlative thinking system that brings to the surface the fact that analytic thinking is actually hidden correlative thinking.

Until now, Western science has engaged in individualistic thinking, holding that all things move independently. For example, men and women are opposites, but their movements are separate from each other. Thus, it has been thought that all things can be broken down into particles (atoms, molecules, quanta), and that an object is a collection of such parts. Modern Easterners raised with a Western education also mostly engage in analytic thinking. This method of perceiving objects by breaking them down, assuming all things are independent, is called analytic epistemology. In opposition to this, the generative method of thought, which perceives through correlation because all things are interconnected and cannot be broken down, is called correlative epistemology.88)

The theory of correlative thinking is a theory that begins with Granet, who first positively evaluated the Yin-Yang and Five Elements theory (Eum-Yang O-Haeng Seol)—the representative logical theory of Eastern thought—and continues through figures like Angus Charles Graham (1919-1991), Roger T. Ames (1947-present), David L. Hall (1937-2001), Benjamin Isadore Schwartz (1916-1999), and Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (1900-1995). The theory of correlative thinking evaluated the Yin-Yang and Five Elements theory, which has both positive and negative aspects, as objectively as possible, assessing it as a primitive form of science. In particular, the American structuralist Sinologist A. C. Graham grafted structuralism onto Chinese philosophy and proved the correlative scientific nature of Eastern thought, which is different from Western individuality.89) Only after the research of Graham and others did the West begin to understand the scientific nature of the East, and the East, conversely, is now finding its identity by learning Eastern thought through the West.90)

John B. Henderson divided correlative thinking into four types. First, the relationship between humans and the universe, i.e., between the microcosm and the macrocosm.91) Second, the relationship between Heaven, the realm of the cosmos, and the earthly realm of the dynasty or state bureaucracy, which Needham called the 'state analogy.' Third, numerological correlation systems, such as the Five Elements. Fourth, the system of the I Ching (Book of Changes).92)

That correlative thinking is a characteristic of the East, different from the West, is empirically proven in the field of cognitive psychology today. Nisbett, who first theorized the cognitive psychological differences between East and West from the perspective of correlative thinking, shows that due to correlative thinking, the world appears more complex to Easterners than to Westerners. Easterners are objects of collective control rather than personal control. To Westerners, the world is a relatively simple place; it is an object of extremely personal control. Indeed, he said they are two different worlds. Although the East also has various strata and large differences between countries, it can be said that they are common in that they engage in correlative thinking.93)

Since correlative thought is the common cognitive framework of the Eastern worldview, its principles appear as correlative thought in the continuity and change of tradition. Eastern thought, represented by Yin-Yang, the Five Elements, and the Taegeuk (Supreme Ultimate), has explained the continuity and change of tradition based on how well it conforms to the Taegeuk and Yin-Yang Five Elements. Therefore, the continuity and change of tradition seen in Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought can be examined through the concepts of Yin-Yang Five Elements and Taegeuk.

Regarding correlative thinking, the focal point of Western discussions re-evaluating Eastern culture today, which began during the Enlightenment period, can be said to be Confucius's (B.C. 551-479) "Yil-i-gwan-ji" (One thread runs through it all). Confucius bound his theory together with the concept of empathy, known as "Chung-seo" (loyalty and reciprocity). Furthermore, Confucius stated that his methodology of "Yil-i-gwan-ji" was not his own theory but the methodology of "Sul-i-bu-jak" (Transmitting rather than creating), handed down from antiquity. In fact, "Yil-i-gwan-ji" is a characteristic not only of Confucius but of Eastern culture as a whole. The East, rather than the West, is actually more obsessed with consistency. In pre-Kantian Europe, Confucius's thought was interpreted as the "Yil-i-gwan-ji" of empathy and became the foundation for a new Western morality. However, because Eastern consistency, unlike Western, is an internal consistency, Confucianism appeared to post-Kantian researchers as nothing more than miscellaneous studies.

If Confucius's thought is reinterpreted from the aspect of the "Yil-i-gwan-ji" of empathy, Eastern thought, previously regarded as a subjective theory, manifests objective consistency. First, the fundamental concept of the I Ching (Book of Changes)—the basis of all Eastern thought—which is 'Cheon-Ji-In' (Heaven, Earth, Humanity), has aspects understood through empathy. In the Eastern tradition, the mutual empathy between Heaven, Earth, and Humanity has been expressed as 'Gam-eung' (sympathetic resonance). In Eastern thought, Heaven, Earth, Humanity, and humans all originated from the 'One Thing' (Il-mul), thus becoming beings that inevitably resonate sympathetically with one another. Empathy is also an extension of sympathetic resonance; it is not that resonance is a personification of empathy.

Today, Western research that understands Eastern thought through empathy can be said to be represented mainly by Jullien's theory of immanence and evolutionary anthropology. These two studies are representative of the rationalist and empiricist traditions of the West today, respectively, and can be said to be cases where disparate academic fields have met at the forefront of research. First, Jullien's research, which inherits the rationalist tradition, follows the research of Deleuze and Foucault. In the process of studying the immanence that differentiates the West from the East—that is, the unique characteristics the West possesses when viewed from the outside—Jullien discovers commonalities between Mencius and the Enlightenment philosophers. The reason the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) garnered the attention of his contemporaries was his introduction of Eastern immanence—namely, empathy—which was difficult to find in Western philosophy. Empathy is the immanence of the East, that is, the most representative characteristic of the East that distinguishes it from the West.94)

What Jullien identified as Western immanence was the concept of substance used in the process of explaining change. Aristotle, unlike Plato (B.C. 424-348), while completing the syllogism, formalized that change must be explained by the attributes possessed by a substance. For example, in the case of A changing to B, in the East or in the pre-Aristotelian West, it could change through sympathetic resonance, like empathy. However, after Aristotle, the change from A to B required that the substance of B be inherent within A. Within this tradition, the Eastern immanence—that sympathetic resonance can be an element of change—eventually led to empathy, and this empathy became the cornerstone of Enlightenment thought. The Enlightenment was a heterogeneous ideology in the West, and the West was able to achieve modern civilization by developing the heterogeneity of the Enlightenment into a moral foundation replacing God.

Another theory that interpreted the core of Confucian thought transmitted by Matteo Ricci as 'empathy' was British empiricism. Empiricism, due to its own practicality, was not bound by Aristotle's concept of immanence and thus naturally accepted Eastern thought as 'empathy' from the beginning. Although interaction with Eastern thought faltered on the continent after Kant, British empiricism continued to develop it into evolutionary theory and evolutionary anthropology. Evolutionary theory and evolutionary anthropology further expand empathy theory by incorporating the recent discovery of mirror neuron theory in brain science. In fact, American pragmatism, influenced by British empiricism, also had a great influence on China, especially through John Dewey (1859-1952), because it is said to be very similar to Confucius's thought.95)

It is not, in fact, the first time today that the West has interpreted Eastern thought as empathy. Even before Kant, the West had consistently interpreted the East as empathy ever since encountering Matteo Ricci's translations. The Enlightenment and British empiricism can be said to have begun from Chinese influence. If Western modernity was a modernity based on the Confucian rationality transmitted by Matteo Ricci, then Donghak Thought, which appropriated Western Learning (Seohak) through liminality, can be called indigenous modernity.

Consequently, research linking Eastern correlative thinking with postmodernism, a post-modernity, followed. Kim Hyung-hyo early on linked postmodernism and Eastern thought, extending even to Jeungsan Thought, and many later Western scholars have agreed with this.96) Park Jeong-jin produced many substantial research achievements from a religious studies perspective based on Kim Hyung-hyo's research. Park Yong-sook has studied the East-West convergence of ancient shamanism from a civilizational history perspective, and Kim Jeong-min has sought empirical data.97) This has also been done in Daesoon Thought research.98) Kim Sang-il, the proponent of 'Han Philosophy,' also revealed the significance of Daesoon Thought through process philosophy and other means, and Kim Dae-hyun has compared Daesoon Thought with Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, and Deleuze.99)100)101)

Liminality and Revitalization

Liminality as the Mechanism of Sacred-Secular Transformation in Autogenous Modernity

Among the representative Western humanities and social science theories that connect correlative thinking—which Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought focused on—and modernity, there is the theory of Liminality. Liminality is a term first coined by Van Gennep in anthropology to express the attributes commonly appearing in 'rites of passage.' The Latin word 'Limen' is a language referring to the threshold, the boundary area, and liminality is a term derived from 'Limen.' Liminality is sometimes translated as 'Gyeonggyeseong' (boundary-ness) or 'Yeokchiseong' (threshold-ness), but as these fail to fully convey the meaning, it is generally translated simply as 'liminality.'102)

Van Gennep discovered the concept of 'passage' (Tong-gwa) or 'Transition' as a common attribute of world religious rituals.103) Gennep states that the world's rites of passage are commonly composed of three types of rites: rites of separation, rites of transition (jeon-i or gwado), and rites of incorporation. Van Gennep expressed the boundary area moving from the first stage to the second stage of the rite of passage—that is, from separation to transition—as liminality.104)105)

Van Gennep states that rites of passage are further divided, centered on the boundary area, into pre-liminal rites, liminal rites, and post-liminal rites. Liminality, by temporarily departing from value, possesses ambiguous, indeterminate, and vague attributes. For this reason, liminality is often compared to death, the womb, darkness, androgyny, desolation, solar and lunar eclipses, and so on. The reason the aspect of liminality has this duality and ambiguity is that the purpose of rites of passage is not simply a ritualistic formality of society for maintaining the existing social order, but to actually promote a new, unforeseen emergence. The change before and after the rite of passage is significant because it cannot be predicted by the person participating in the rite or by those around helping. However, the change after the rite of passage becomes a state of 'transcendence-inclusion' (Powol), which includes and yet goes beyond the state before the rite of passage.106)

The strength of liminality theory is that it formalizes the form and content of change in detail, clearly revealing the role and meaning of symbols in the process of change within the ritual. Consequently, liminality theory offers a quick method for modern people, who find it difficult to understand the meaning of religion today, to communicate with religion.107)

Two of the most noted concepts of modernity after the postmodernism debate—Zygmunt Bauman's 'Liquid Modernity' (液體近代) and Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt's (1923-2010) 'Multiple Modernities' (多重近代性)—are both related to the concept of liminality.108) The reason liminality is gaining attention as a theory of modernity is that it analyzes the problems of modern society that Hegel's (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831) dialectic, which represents the conventional ideology of modernity, fails to address.109) Bauman, who dedicated his life to the concept of modernity, garnered global attention late in life with the concept of "liquid modernity." Liquidity refers to "ambiguity" (兩價性), which is said to be a characteristic of modernity, and this implies the positive meaning of liminality.110) Furthermore, multiple modernities, which describes modernity using the concept of tongseop (consilience/encompassment) that redefines the concepts of the sacred and the secular, represents the concept of liminality present in the boundary transition between the sacred and the secular.

Liminality has the attribute of the union of opposites, like the dialectic composed of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but it points out the problem of ambiguity inherent in the union of opposites—which the dialectic optimistically interpreted—and interprets this ambiguity as the cause of the extreme despondency and uncertainty of contemporary modernity, such as eternal liminality, or 'Liquid Modernity.' The concept of liminality is recognized as a theory that brilliantly analyzes the confusion of post-modernity by suggesting that modernity, which subverted existing values, brought about the result of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."111)

The development of liminality theory into a theory that interprets modernity as an alternative to the dialectic occurred in three stages. The first is the stage where Van Gennep's liminality theory was criticized by David-Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)—whose theory became the mainstream in sociology up to the present day—and was reduced to only a theory of the Ritual Process. The concept of "passage," which Van Gennep discovered as a common attribute of rituals, was a concept that anthropology had long sought at that time. Since Frazer (Sir James George Frazer, 1854-1941), who discovered 'The Golden Bough' in the tradition of the priesthood of the woods as a common principle of anthropology, anthropology has been searching for the common principle by which humanity came to form society. Van Gennep, a contemporary of Dumézil (Georges Dumézil, 1898-1986) who succeeded Frazer and discovered the trifunctional system common to the Indo-European language family, discovered the concept of common passage in rituals and liminality, the core of passage, which later greatly influenced religious studies, including Eliade.

The concept of "passage," which Van Gennep discovered as a common attribute of rituals, was an influential theory capable of explaining not only anthropology but even the core principles that constitute society. However, this was a concept that contradicted the sociological theories of "function" and "maintenance" that were mainstream in sociology at the time. Durkheim, who first proposed the theory of 'sociologism'—that religious phenomena are a reflection of social phenomena—and formed the mainstream theory, criticized Van Gennep's liminality theory, which emphasized action over structure, and reduced the concept of liminality, which originally started as a universal concept, to only the theoretical domain of rites of passage. The concept of liminality discovered by Van Gennep was consistent with the French Revolution, which was the background for the emergence of sociology by Comte and others, and it was also a theory consistent with the concept of liminality appearing in Pascal's "thinking reed," which was as influential as Kant at the time. Nevertheless, liminality subsequently became an almost forgotten concept in the sociology of religion.112)

The second stage is the revival of the buried concept of liminality through Victor Turner's accidental discovery. Victor Turner, who was studying the rites of passage of the Ndembu tribe at the time, was trying to establish his own concept to explain their rites, which could not be explained by existing structural-functionalist anthropological theory; in the process, he discovered Van Gennep's theory of liminality, introduced the concept of structure, and uncovered the hidden meaning of the liminality concept that even Van Gennep had not explained.113) Victor Turner focused on the transition stage among the rites of passage (separation, transition, incorporation) and discovered that the phenomenon of liminality appearing at this time is a concept, like the dialectic, that can explain not only rites of passage but also macroscopic, society-wide changes.114) After discovering the social drama aspect of liminality, Turner, along with Richard Schechner (1934-present) and others, defined the common attributes of rituals as 'performance' and developed research into ethno-performance studies. The third stage is when the concept of liminality, expanded by his wife Edith Turner (1921-2016) after Turner's death to analyze various everyday situations, was actually introduced into the analysis of the concept of modernity by Zygmunt Bauman and Shmuel Eisenstadt, and subsequently spread widely throughout the humanities and social sciences, being expanded even to theories of post-modernity in individual national cultures by figures like Kim Ik-du and Lee Young-ran.115)116)

The dialectic had early on been compared from the perspective of the East-West difference, noting its commonalities and differences with Yin-Yang theory, a theory of correlative thinking. Liminality theory interpreted the commonalities appearing in Eastern and Western modernity, acting as a mediating concept between Yin-Yang theory and the dialectic. Liminality theory was initially a concept in cultural anthropology originating from ritual and ceremony theory known as rites of passage, but it was decisively expanded by Turner into a universal concept applied across the entirety of socio-cultural change.117)

Victor Turner's liminality theory is broadly classified into liminality and communitas. Liminality and communitas are theories of social drama ritual. Among these, the concept of social drama is a reinterpretation of Van Gennep's theory of rites of passage as a theatrical theory of social change. According to Van Gennep, humans experience rites of passage when facing a survival crisis, passing through an unfamiliar territory, or undergoing a change in status. Rites of passage include the process of 'separation → transition → incorporation.' Turner, a symbolic-comparative cultural anthropologist, viewed Van Gennep's concept of rites of passage not just as ritual, but as a universal principle and structure of society. Victor Turner expanded Van Gennep's concept of rites of passage to all social, cultural, and religious domains, calling it 'Social Drama,' as it is like a play set against the backdrop of society.118)

Communitas is a term concerning human interrelationship, and Victor Turner presented two types of human relatedness. These are parallel interrelationship and alternative (either/or) interrelationship. Liminality and communitas appear almost simultaneously and are seen as being named differently depending on the difference in emphasis. The former refers to the structural state of the existing society, that is, the structured and differentiated social mode of political, legal, and economic status; the latter refers to the relatively undifferentiated social mode during the transition phase of a ritual, when organization is incomplete. The latter corresponds precisely to anti-structure. In this sense, communitas can be called an 'anti-structure' that transcends the dimension of structure, or a post-structural community in a 'structureless' state where structure has been dismantled.

Victor Turner's social drama is expanded to function like myth does for Eliade. However, whereas for Eliade, myth is a story related to the unique sacred era, Turner argued that myth contributes to current psychological and social purposes by broadly providing experiences that straddle the boundaries of consciousness. This is the same as accepting the claims of the ritual school within mythology. The ritual school linked myth and ritual in order to justify the ritual itself, but Turner links ritual and myth by focusing on the point that both perform the psychological function of helping to pass through life's painful transition processes more smoothly. The reason Victor Turner's social drama theory attracts attention in crisis situation analysis is that it explains how to overcome a crisis in the most comprehensive yet detailed way. Communitas is applied today not only to rituals but also to areas such as society, politics, religion, culture, and the arts.

Victor Turner discovered a peculiar fact while studying the Ndembu tribe of Africa. The members of that tribe were brave, strong, and responsible. What he learned through the tribe's traditional coming-of-age ceremony for 13-year-old boys was that, at the appropriate time, adult men would sneak into the quarters, wrap the boys in cloths, and abduct them. Afterward, the adult men take the boys to a completely unknown place and disappear. This place where the boys are thrown is precisely the state of liminality. The boys, facing a crisis they have never experienced before, realize they have been thrown into the mountains, completely unfamiliar with their surroundings. At first, they all cry and make a fuss, but their parents do not come just because they cry. The tribe's elders visit once a month to check on them and give advice. In such an environment, the boys learn how to survive. The boys learn a very strong sense of cooperation, camaraderie, and solidarity, thinking, 'We must stick together to survive here,' and develop an intense social bond and sense of belonging. After going through such a process, they return to the village and perform the coming-of-age ceremony. This community, which the boys learn by surviving together as members of the community before their coming-of-age ceremony, is called communitas.119)

Victor Turner says that social drama is a theory that explains the changes in "universal socio-cultural phenomena occurring worldwide." According to Victor Turner, all social dramas and conflicts go through the dialectic of 'structure → anti-structure → structure,' and specifically, they go through the stages of breach—crisis—redress/healing—reintegration/schism. Whereas Van Gennep focused his interest on rituals performed during life crises, such as coming-of-age ceremonies, weddings, funerals, childbirth, and pregnancy, Victor Turner noted the fact that most rituals or events possess the process or form of passage. In short, Victor Turner became interested in the second stage of the three stages, transition—that is, the time and space of the threshold or sill placed on the boundary line, belonging to neither this stage nor that stage; he considered this second stage, transition—namely, anti-structure—to be the key to crisis resolution, and began full-scale research on the symbolic system of rituals, utilizing terms such as limen, liminality, liminoid, communitas, anti-structure, and the subjunctive mode of culture.

Communitas and liminality, which form anti-structure, are closely related yet distinct. Liminality concerns the modes of existence, situations, and conditions of humans or groups. Communitas, on the other hand, concerns the mode of human interrelationship revealed in liminality.

Liminality is the intermediate state and process—filled with all possibilities and potential powers—that one passes through to break away from the existing socio-cultural system, order, or symbolic system, lose one's existing status, and reintegrate into a new system. Communitas is essentially a relationship between specific individuals of different qualities. These individuals are not divided by role or status but form free relationships among individuals.

The characteristics of anti-structure are as follows. First, anonymity. Within communitas, humans generally become anonymous beings. The participants in a ritual are represented as propertyless, wearing identical clothing. The secular markers of identification they held in the existing society—status, property, occupation, rank, social standing, privileges, and so on—all disappear or are homogenized. Second, equality. In a state where all existing social status and standing have been nullified, a strong sense of comradeship and equality grows among the practitioners, and they actively embrace egalitarianism. Third, the paradoxical power of the weak. In an anti-structural situation, social roles and authority are reversed: a phenomenon appears in which the weak seize authority and the strong are stripped of it. Those in lower positions rise to high places, or those of low standing or status come to possess sacred attributes, whether permanently or temporarily. The purpose of this lies in society's giving shape to its own mode of existence. 120)

After Victor Turner's death, his wife Edith Turner further expanded the scope of application for communitas, explaining that it appears in almost all spheres of life. She presented new categories such as the communitas of work (labor), liberation, resistance, and disaster, in addition to the communitas found in rites of passage, festivals, music, and sports.121)

In particular, Edith Turner states that the response of communitas in disaster situations is important. This is the redress/healing stage in the four stages of social drama: breach—crisis—redress/healing—reintegration/schism. In today's social dramas, what influences redress/healing the most is the media of various societies, including SNS. However, when conflicts cannot be resolved by society's media alone, as in the case of COVID-19, what comes to the fore is religious coping.122)

In this respect, previous studies have failed to sufficiently highlight the self-cultivation tradition of Daesoon Thought. The attribute of liminality that integrates these has a strong aspect of synthesizing performative post-modernity performatively, as in drama therapy. Nevertheless, liminality becomes a good framework for explanation when it includes socio-cultural elements while preserving its unique performative characteristics. In both East and West, modernity arrived at moments of crisis, like disaster situations. In the case of the West, modernity arose in the process of attempting exchange with China and India, based on the medieval crisis of the Mongol invasions and the plague, and the reflection upon it. Donghak Thought also arose as a rite of passage to overcome the crisis of potential genocide amidst the imperialist domination of Asia.123)

Meanwhile, the term "Liquid Modernity," which implies a very unstable state though it contains much potential for change, well explains why "Liminality" is in the spotlight, replacing dialectics, in the discourse on the crisis of modernity. In the theory of "Liquid Modernity," modernity is interpreted as an extreme state of fluid change due to permanent liminality. The concept of "Liquid Modernity" is that the modern era, born from overcoming feudal values, is in a state of permanent liminality, like a liquid, because it failed to establish alternative values. The concept of liminality is a useful theory that, while everyday like 'romantic love,' offers clear interpretations for representative modern myth concepts or difficult modern cases like the Gwangju Democratization Movement.124) Nevertheless, liminality, which achieves modernity through the rearrangement of the sacred and the secular, also presents the problem of modern people trapped in permanent liminality.125) This is because modern people today have 'never been modern,' so the modern era has always remained an unfinished reform.126)127)

Regarding this problem, the researcher who expanded liminality, a core concept of modernity, to the indigenous modernity appearing in correlative thinking is Kim Ji-ha.128) Kim Ik-du, and Lee Young-ran. Kim Ji-ha, who discovered in Donghak Thought an Eastern generative thinking method different from the Western dialectic and advocated for 'Life Thought' (Saengmyeong Sasang), discovered indigenous modernity in Donghak Thought and expanded his research to Daesoon Thought with 'Yullyeo' (cosmic rhythm) thought and the 'aesthetics of white shadow.' Kim Ik-du applied the anthropological concept of liminality to Kim Ji-ha's 'aesthetics of white shadow,' revealing that indigenous modernity is connected to the concept of liminality. Lee Young-ran views the core difference distinguishing the concept of liminality, which connects to post-modernity, from the dialectic as lying in 'ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.' For example, if in the 'Samjae' (Three Potentials) of Heaven, Earth, and Human (Cheon-Ji-In), Heaven, Earth, and Human are 1, 2, and 3 respectively, the change from Heaven (1) to Earth (2)—that is, liminality—is said to manifest the aspect of liminality because the emergent property of Earth (1, 2, 1+2) appears from Earth (2). Similarly, the change from Heaven (1) to Human (3) requires the properties of Human (1, 2, 3, 1+2, 1+2+3) to appear from Human (3), and to form the 'Samjae,' it must become a new, larger 1. Lee Young-ran states that the reason 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' in the aspect of liminality is because the "body" (Sinche) has the principle of the 'body' (Mom), where change accumulates. Lee Young-ran says that the aspect of liminality operates simultaneously through the body, and therefore it is the phenomenon itself, operating even in the present.129)

Turner also defined liminality as the emergence of a new, third element. Turner sees the difference between the liminality he rediscovered and the liminality first spoken of by Van Gennep as the indeterminacy of liminality. He states that while conventional liminality involved rites of passage with the character of a formality, primarily for the reintegration of society, the reason the aspect of liminality actually functions in society is because of liminality's indeterminacy.130)

Furthermore, Turner says that this indeterminacy is the emergence of a third element, and this third element has the 'Ga-il-bae' (doubled) character of integrating the contradictions of both the existing element and the new element. This is just like in a scientific revolution, where for a paradigm to change, the new paradigm must explain everything the existing paradigm explained, plus explain new phenomena, in order to replace the existing paradigm.131)

In the East, liminality has long been explained through the terms 'the method of doubling' (gayilbaebeop 加一倍法) and 'transformation' (hwa 化). The method of doubling refers to Shao Yong's principle in the Yijing of adding 1 when changing from one dimension to the next. Here, 'doubling' (gayilbae) signifies a multiple of 2. For example, if something cannot be explained by yin-yang, then by doubling yin-yang—that is, by multiplying by 2—it can be explained through the Four Images (sasang). Indeed, the East's yin-yang and Five Phases are structured as yin-yang (2, 2^1)–the Four Images (4 = 2^2)–the Eight Trigrams (8 = 2^3). Here 2, 4, and 8 move as multiples of 2, but in the exponents of 2 they are 1, 2, 3—a doubling. Expressed in terms of gua (lines), this becomes −, 二, 三, 𝌆, a doubling.

In this case, 'Ga-il-bae'—adding 1—means adding one more 'count' onto the existing foundation, which aligns with the content-related characteristic of liminality described by Lee Young-ran. This is applied identically in the numerical changes of the East's Six Lines (Yuk-hyo), or the West's Enneagram, Tarot, Kabbalah, etc. In the Six Lines (Yuk-hyo), which are the 6-line hexagrams of the I Ching, the next line possesses the elements of the previous line. In the Enneagram, Tarot, etc., the subsequent number also has the characteristics of the preceding number. The freedom in religious acceptance in Korea, which has a strong character of 'grafting' (Jeophwa), can also be explained this way. That is, it is said to be because Koreans do not 'convert' (Gaejong) when accepting a religion, but 'add' a religion (Gajong). Hwang Pil-ho states that 'Gajong' (adding a religion) is a characteristic of Korean religious culture. For example, when Buddhism entered, it was merely the addition of the element called Buddhism to existing Shamanism; the same applied later to Confucianism and Christianity.132) This has traditionally been expressed in the East as 'Powol' (transcendence-inclusion), 'Jeophwa' (grafting), or 'Hwa' (transformation), meaning to include and transcend. Korean culture, with its strong 'grafting' (Jeophwa) character, has a character closer to the Heaven-beyond-Heaven, or transcendent Heaven, compared to Chinese culture, which has a strong 'assimilative' (Donghwa) character, or Japanese culture, which has a strong 'condensative' (Eungchuk) character, even among East Asian cultures. It is said that among the three East Asian countries, only Korea saw the transcendent-Heaven religions of Protestantism and Catholicism gain prominence. 'Jeophwa' (grafting) is a concept that encompasses both mind and body.133) Similarly, in rites of passage, both the spirit and the material must endure the rite of passage. When the spirit changes like the body, it changes according to the principle of 'Ga-il-bae-beop' (adding one fold), so this was traditionally expressed using "Hwa" (化), signifying chemical change. "Hwa" (化) represented the principle by which the transcendent Heaven operates things, as seen in the Jeongyeok (Correct Change), which expresses the Creator as the "Old Man of Transformation" (Hwamuweng).

The liminality of correlative thinking appearing in Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought is explained in more detail by Kim Ji-ha, Kim Ik-du, and Lee Young-ran. Kim Ji-ha, who experienced the liminality of life offered by Donghak Thought during his imprisonment, left behind a vast amount of writing on the indigenous modernity and post-modernity found in Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought after his release. Kim Ji-ha explained the development from Donghak Thought to Daesoon Thought in three stages: Life, Yullyeo (rhythm), and White Shadow. Regarding the difference between Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought, Kim Ji-ha argues that Jeungsan Thought emphasized everyday life more than Donghak Thought did. Kim Ji-ha discovered "Life" in Donghak, finding an indigenous modernity as opposed to the material-centric, materialistic Western modernity. However, he explains that Donghak, which discovered "Life," "Yin-Yang," and "Sicheonju" (Bearing God), failed to find the roots to make these sustainable in everyday life and could not overcome the Confucian limitation (Jeonheon) of "Yoksok-budal" (More haste, less speed), leading to the emergence of Daesoon Thought, an indigenous post-modernity.134)

It was Kim Ik-du who revealed that the center of change in the 3-stage development of Kim Ji-ha's theory lies in the concept of the liminality of the 'white shadow.' Kim Ji-ha perplexed surrounding researchers by failing to find a concept in Western theory similar to the 'white shadow' concept he devised, and it was Kim Ik-du who solved this problem. Kim Ik-du showed that the dual attributes of the 'white shadow' correspond to the dual attributes appearing in the aspect of liminality, and that the 3-stage development of Kim Ji-ha's theory corresponds to the 3-stage development possessed by the aspect of liminality. Kim Ik-du also derives the uniqueness of Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought, as explained by Kim Ji-ha, by presenting not only the commonalities but also the differences in the liminality attributes possessed by the 'white shadow.' As a professional drama researcher, Kim Ik-du analyzes Eastern and Western myths as dramas and finds that the crucial difference in the aspects of Eastern and Western mythology lies in Aristotle's theory of conflict. And he explains that this Aristotelian theory of conflict extends to liminality theory, and the East-West difference in liminality connects to the difference between the indigenous post-modernity discovered by Kim Ji-ha and Western post-modernity. Therefore, Kim Ik-du reveals that the indigenous modernity and post-modernity found in Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought, discovered by Kim Ji-ha, are the alternative modernity that Western postmodernism had been searching for so desperately.135)

Kim Ik-du's research, due to Lee Young-ran's research which identified liminality as a common attribute of postmodernism, becomes more precisely combined with Western theory and develops into theories of indigenous modernity and indigenous post-modernity. Lee Young-ran analyzes liminality theory as a common phenomenon appearing in postmodernism. Lee Young-ran discovered that the aspect of liminality is a common point in the various concepts with which post-modernity theorists criticized the modern era. Consequently, liminality is regarded as a keyword that encapsulates contemporary Eastern and Western thought. Lee Young-ran integrates and presents Maurice Merleau-Ponty's (1908-1961) phenomenology of the body, Derrida's deconstructionism, Whitehead's process philosophy, Deleuze's philosophy of becoming, Kim Sang-il's 'Han' thought, and Korean 'Seondo' (Way of Immortals) thought into liminality theory from a performance studies perspective, as shown in <Table 2>.136)

The table above, which summarizes liminality and post-modernity from a performance studies perspective, provides a key viewpoint for expressing the liminality of correlative thinking as indigenous modernity. When the union of 'Hon' (spirit-soul) and 'Baek' (body-soul), mind and body, is considered the core task given to humans in the views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, performance studies, which unites mind and body, can present a major methodology. In fact, Merleau-Ponty, who introduced the 'body' into phenomenology, is evaluated as a philosopher who made an original contribution to the development of phenomenology, and the core theme of post-modernity is also said to be the introduction of the 'body.' In addition, Lee Young-ran defines the characteristic of liminality as post-modernity as 'ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny,' clarifying its difference from the dialectic. Lee Young-ran states that the stages occurring in the liminality process, such as anti-structure and separation, can be understood as the process of ontogeny that must recapitulate phylogeny. In other words, the process of binary-opposition integration in liminality becomes the passage process of the individual, which must recapitulate phylogeny. In fact, Turner also explains the process of nullification in the transition stage as an integration of the pre-liminal stage and the post-liminal stage.

<Table 2>. Summary of Liminality and Postmodernity from the Perspective of Performance Studies

In this way, Lee Young-ran, by applying the concept of liminality all the way to post-modernity, provided an opportunity for Kim Ik-du's research to be further expanded. Lee Young-ran synthesizes the similarities appearing in Eastern correlative thinking and Western post-modernity concepts using liminality. Through this, Lee Young-ran's research established the theoretical foundation that the indigenous modernity of Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought could become an alternative modernity linked to post-modernity. Kim Ik-du and Lee Young-ran commonly found the liminality of Eastern performance studies—where mind and body, corresponding to Heaven, Earth, and Humanity (Cheon-Ji-In), combine—in the performance studies of Turner and Schechner. Accordingly, liminality can be a major philosophical methodology for understanding the modernity of the two thoughts. Viewed this way, indigenous modernity as the liminality of correlative thinking becomes the phylogenetic fusion—that is, the continuity and change of tradition—between the substance-centric Western views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity and the attribute-centric Eastern views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity; and indigenous post-modernity comes to include indigenous modernity.

The first study to interpret new religions, represented by Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought, through liminality is the research of Yoon Seung-yong.137) Yoon Seung-yong, in his analysis of liminality and new religions, interprets the unprecedented success of Korean new religions through liminality and communitas. However, as postmodernism had not been introduced to Korea at that time, Yoon Seung-yong did not connect liminality to indigenous modernity. If Yoon Seung-yong's preceding research is expanded and applied to Kim Ji-ha's research, and then combined with the research of Jeong Jin-hong, who integrated Korean religious spiritual history, Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought can be understood as indigenous modernity.138)

In that modernity was in the midst of rapid change, modernity possesses the attributes of liminality, like a rite of passage, helping the emergence of anti-structural modern ideologies such as equality and freedom. For example, a man and woman approaching a rite of passage like a wedding exhibit liminality, being neither unmarried nor married, and before the rite, deviation and anti-structure—which are contrary to the rite—are partially permitted. A society facing the great transformation of the modern era also passes through a period of equality and freedom, like the French Revolution, before leaving its pre-modern attributes. In the East, there was Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Rebellion and Donghak's Peasant Revolution Movement.

Both the West and the East constructed liminality and realized modernity through their views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, but the form of modernity's liminality was different between the West—which possessed a rationality expanding from the self to the universe—and the East—which expands rationality from the universe to the self. Misunderstanding this difference, the West claimed modernity did not exist in the East and exploited the East as a colony. Fortunately, Japan's miraculous victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War allowed the East, although centered on Japan, to succeed in making a comeback. The West, facing limits in its colonial management, shifted its direction of struggle internally, leading to mutual destruction, which allowed the East to find a path to independence.139)

Liminality holds similarities to the East's correlative thinking, which emphasizes the harmony of opposing elements. In fact, after postmodernism, as the East's Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism (Yu-Bul-Seon) were re-evaluated as archetypes of post-modern thought, the modernity possessed by the correlative thinking of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements, on which Yu-Bul-Seon are based, has been re-evaluated. Among the three East Asian countries, the cases of constructing modernity with an indigenous view of the Three Realms (Samgye-gwan) are particularly Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought in Korea. Unlike China and Japan, which rejected the traditional view of the Three Realms through the May Fourth Movement and the Meiji Restoration, Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought commonly emphasize 'Gaebyeok' (Great Opening), which is related to the indigenous view of the Three Realms. Korea's modernity truly begins its modernity from "Gaebyeok," the transformation of the indigenous view of the Three Realms.140)

From this perspective, in ideal situations, more diverse equality and freedom were realized in correlative thinking than in analytic thinking; however, in distorted situations where grievances (Wonhan) had accumulated, the negative aspects of correlative thinking emerged, potentially leading to even greater suppression of freedom and equality than in analytic thinking. The negative aspect of correlative thinking is expressed as the "fallacy of the perfect schema." The correlative thinking inherent in the traditional views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity secured stability and continuity in which facts and values did not conflict within a single universe. However, in return, a heavy price had to be paid: the forgetting of adventure and challenge, due to the perfect schema that mercilessly swallowed new experiences and classified them in an orderly manner. Especially in the East, facing rapid changes in the external environment, a new indigenous ideology was desperately needed to bring about a 'Gaebyeok' (Great Opening) of the Three Realms, which had been distorted by grievances (Wonhan).141)

Revitalization as the Mechanism of Sacred-Secular Continuity in Autogenous Modernity

In liminality as modernity, the difference in attitudes toward tradition is clearly revealed according to whether it is an empire or a colony. In the case of Western modernity, which defined its identity in reaction against tradition, liminality emphasized a negative stance toward tradition; whereas in the modernity of non-Western countries with colonial experience, there were many aspects of liminality that emphasized a positive stance toward tradition, as a reaction against the West. The forms of liminality in non-Western modernity that emphasize a positive stance toward tradition have been referred to as revitalization movements. Revitalization theory is a theory that emerged before Turner's liminality theory, so its potential for expansion is limited compared to liminality theory; however, it presents a clearer explanation regarding the part of continuity and change of tradition within liminality theory.142)

According to Wallace, the change in a society's belief system occurs through the 'Mazeway' (cognitive map, originally meaning maze), which is the mental image held by the members of a society. According to Wallace, all members of a society, as parts of a social organism, come to have a mental image not only of their own body and the regularity of actions the body performs, but also of the society and culture to which they belong; it is this image that corresponds to the 'Mazeway.' Wallace viewed human society as a giant organism, and the Mazeway is the way each member of society adapts to this social organism.143) The concept of the maze includes not only the perception of physical objects living within the social environment but also the perception of the way an individual adjusts to minimize given stress, or the way they adjust and reconstruct this maze together with other members of society.144)145)

When a society's identity crisis occurs, a crisis visits this Mazeway for the individual, and this is connected not only to a material crisis but also to a crisis of the ideology that constitutes the society; therefore, it approaches the members of society as a greater threat than a material crisis. In response, the society reacts with various religious revitalization movements, and some religious movements expand into political movements. For the leaders of numerous colonized countries in the 19th-20th centuries, when imperialism was expanding, the most threatening crisis was the identity crisis, more so than the material crisis. Traditions that had continued for thousands of years were tabooed as superstition by Western civilization, and respected leaders were reduced to charlatans promoting superstition; the belief system of traditional society could no longer maintain social order, and the social status of individuals also plummeted irreversibly.

For the general public as well, the collapse of tradition acted as a strong psychological stressor. In a situation where only their own belief system was being negated—even though the new Western belief system, like the collapsed traditional belief system, also came from a long tradition and was a belief system that could collapse at any time—the method that the general public and leaders could choose was the appropriation of existing tradition by reinterpreting it: namely, revitalization. Revitalization was applied to time, space, and humans. In the case of time, it appeared as Millenarianism, that a new era would dawn; in the case of space, it sometimes became an earthly paradise movement, that a new utopia would arrive. On the human level, hybridism (syncretism), where religious doctrines are mixed, sometimes appeared, and politically, non-resistance sometimes appeared. Most religious movements of the 19th-20th centuries can be classified as types of revitalization, and in the case of Donghak, all these types are synthesized.

Revitalization theory originated as a theory seeking to evaluate the birth and development of religious groups based on the investigation of the 'Long House movement,' which appeared among the Iroquois in the early 19th century, initiated by the Seneca tribe prophet Handsome Lake (1735-1815) in 1952 (sic). Just as the capitalistic material culture of Japan and the West caused an identity crisis in Joseon—which had known only the long-standing, China-centered patriarchal order as the entire world—Western culture and Westerners, who destroyed their authority with guns and swords, came as a great shock to the Native Americans who had lived for ages with cultural pride.

To the Iroquois, a representative Native American tribe in the northeastern United States where New York is located, the shock came even greater. Handsome Lake, who was one of the leadership class of the Seneca tribe, one of the Iroquois, was also a person who seriously suffered an identity crisis due to America's colonial policies. The period when Handsome Lake lived was when the Gold Rush was underway due to the discovery of American gold mines; with the onset of this Gold Rush, the status of the Native Americans, who had previously contracted with the United States on an equal footing as nation-to-nation, was reduced to that of a protectorate, just like Joseon, which lost its national status during the Japan-Korea annexation.

Unlike Japan, which, even while annexing, preserved the status of the existing Yangban class for the sake of governance, the United States did not recognize the status of the Native American leadership. Like other disheartened Native American leaders, Handsome Lake also fell into a life of alcohol and dissipation, but one day, a turning point for a change of heart arrived. Like the Sangje (Supreme God) who appeared to Su-un, Handsome Lake also had a mystical experience; the spiritual being that appeared to Handsome Lake revealed to him the revitalized future of the Native Americans and, as a condition, requested a life based on restrained discipline.

Awakening from the mystical experience, Handsome Lake ended his dissipated life, personally practiced the experiences and teachings from the mystical experience, and spread them widely to others, leading many Native Americans to, like Handsome Lake, end their dissipated lives and join the discipline movement. Because the place they gathered was the Long House where Handsome Lake was, this is called the 'Long House movement.' Even after Handsome Lake, in North American Native society, the 'Ghost Dance' became popular, following a revelation that dancing would hasten the arrival of the Native American utopia, and the 'Peyote ritual,' involving the ingestion of an herb called 'peyote,' also appeared.146)

The case of Handsome Lake shows the typical stages of revitalization. Wallace, through the case of Handsome Lake, discovers the stages common to numerous cases of revitalization. Wallace defines a revitalization movement as "a deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture." Revitalization movements arise when people feel the need to do so because the current system is unsatisfactory. People innovate new functions, new systems, and this leads to a chain reaction effect. Activation (Revitalization) is a theory signifying the view of society as an organism, first introduced by Durkheim. When under pressure to change, a society takes emergency measures to preserve the invariance of the "life maintenance system (Matrix) of its individual members."147)148)

Although liminality theory and revitalization theory both share the commonality of being theories about change, if liminality is a theory about the mechanism of change, revitalization theory can be said to be a theory about the mechanism of persistence. There is a difference in that liminality theory mainly solves problems through change in response to crisis, whereas revitalization theory solves problems through tradition in response to crisis. When an individual faces severe stress and realizes their mazeway does not provide relief, they face a choice. It is a choice between continuing tradition or changing: "The 'real' system may have to be changed to bring the mazeway and 'reality' into congruence." "The effort to work change in mazeway and 'real' system together" to "permit more effective stress reduction" is also an effort for revitalization. "And the collaboration of a number of persons in such an effort is a revitalization movement."149)

The reason liminality theory and revitalization theory attract attention as cultural change theories is that they have found a single common formula among various changes, regarding internal and external change. In the case of myth, Joseph John Campbell (1904-1987) discovered a single formula called the 'hero's journey' from the numerous myths discovered by Eliade, and this formula has been applied to Hollywood scriptwriting, leading to the creation of numerous blockbuster movies. In fact, Western modernity began with the revitalization of Greco-Roman culture, the Renaissance, and Islam and India are also constructing indigenous modernity through revitalization.150)

In Buddhism, the numerous change processes through spiritual cultivation have been presented with commonalities in the 'Ten Ox-Herding Pictures' (Sibu-do). Daesoon Thought also adapted the 'Ten Ox-Herding Pictures' into the 'Searching for the Ox Pictures' (Simu-do) and sometimes requests exertion in the cultivation process. In this context, Campbell's 17 stages of the hero's journey follow the revitalization stages, much like the 6 panels of the 'Searching for the Ox Pictures.' The revitalization process follows "five somewhat overlapping stages":

Steady State

Period of Individual Stress

3. The Age of Cultural Distortion

Period of Revitalization (during which the functions of mazeway reformulation, communication, organization, adaptation, cultural transformation, and routinization occur)

New Steady State.151)

In religious studies, liminality belongs to rites of passage, and revitalization belongs to revitalization rites. This is similar to 'Naeseong-Oewang' (Inner Sageliness, Outer Kingliness) in Confucianism. Liminality is close to 'Naeseong' (Inner Sageliness), which cultivates the inside, and revitalization is close to 'Oewang' (Outer Kingliness), which communicates with the outside. Donghak also responded with 'Naeseong' (inner sageliness) as anti-feudalism and 'Oewang' (outer kingliness) as anti-foreign-influence.

The process from correlative thinking through liminality to revitalization is similar to the stages of 'Gyeokmul-chiji' (Investigation of Things, Extension of Knowledge) - 'Jeongsim-Susin' (Rectification of Mind, Cultivation of Self) - 'Jega-Pyeongcheonha' (Regulation of Family, Governance of State) in the Confucian classic Daxue (Great Learning). If correlative thinking derives Donghak's epistemology through the method of 'Gyeokmul-chiji,' then liminality shows Donghak's internal growth method, like 'Jeongsim-Susin,' and revitalization theory represents Donghak's external response to Seohak (Western Learning), like 'Jega-Chiguk' (Regulation of Family, Governance of State).

The name "Donghak" (Eastern Learning) holds the seed of revitalization—that it integrates the existing Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism (Yu-Bul-Seon)—and "Cham Donghak" (True Eastern Learning) carries the meaning of completing this. Daesoon Jinrihoe is the only organization among the numerous groups related to Donghak today that has formed a major religious order (Daejongdan) possessing an organizational name and doctrinal system from the Eastern tradition. If this is viewed from a liminality perspective, it can be seen as the only communitas in which the change achieved in the aspect of liminality is sustained. If Donghak Thought is seen as a continuously generating liminality, then the "Hoe" (Association/Fellowship) of Daesoon Thought can be said to correspond to communitas. Regarding this, Patrick Laude (1958-present) has interpreted the characteristic of the "Hoe" as Eastern modernity.152)

From Mugeukdo, where Daesoon Thought emerged as a religious order, revitalization is more appropriate than liminality. As such, the indigenous modernity appearing in the correlative thinking of Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought can be explained even more universally through the religious anthropological theories of liminality and revitalization. Unlike modernization, which focuses on industrialization, modernity emphasizes cultural change. In non-Western societies where Western industrialization has spread, modernity is more prominent in the aspect of cultural change and continuity rather than modernization, and accordingly, liminality and revitalization become appropriate terms to explain the indigenous modernity of non-Western societies. Western modernization, too, can be explained by liminality and revitalization before industrialization. In the West as well, the trigger for modernity is said to have been the clash of East and West, namely, the Mongol invasions and the plague epidemic. The Mongol invasions and the plague epidemic brought about a crisis and reflection on the existing views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity represented by Christianity. Finally, the West devised a new view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity called atomism as a counter-theory to Christianity. They devised atomism through revitalization under the name of the Renaissance and continued the change. Furthermore, the West accepted the Eastern culture of empathy and constructed modernity through the Enlightenment.

Although the liminality and revitalization of East and West develop commonly, the main difference lies in correlative thinking. Today, epistemology such as correlative thinking is also being interpreted in the field of cognitive science of religion and is evolving into Post-humanism, which moves beyond post-modernity to address the problematic fusion of humans and machines. However, at the time Western modernity was being introduced, correlative thinking was identified as a factor that stagnated Eastern modernity and was rejected by mainstream society as a foundation for indigenous modernity.153) However, new Korean religions take this as the foundation for indigenous modernity. This point must be re-evaluated today. This is because if the ideology penetrating new Korean religions can be called anthropocentrism, it can be interpreted as a post-humanism that goes beyond new materialism and can stand against the age of artificial intelligence.154)

The theory of correlative thinking shows the characteristics and reasons for the Eastern tradition, which always shows tendencies opposite to the West. Turner's liminality theory presents why religious liminality is necessary in an age of crisis. Furthermore, Wallace's revitalization theory shows the aspect in which the reconstruction of tradition takes place.

The commonality of the theory of correlative thinking, Turner's liminality theory, and Wallace's revitalization theory is that they are representative theories discussing the continuity and change of a society and cultural tradition. If correlative thinking theory is a theory that explains the continuity and change of Eastern cultural tradition by revealing the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western cultures, then liminality theory and revitalization theory well show how a society's existing order changes and how that change is sustained.

Like Kuhn's philosophy of science, which suggests that even science, representing objectivity, might be merely a paradigm, the methodology of 'Hak' (Learning) operates as a frame of thought that maintains and changes a society, and this frame forms the ideology and utopia of each society. Mannheim early on summarized a society's order maintenance and change as Ideology and Utopia. If ideology is the doctrine and attitude seeking to maintain the existing order, utopia is the doctrine and attitude seeking to transform the existing order.155) Liminality theory and revitalization theory are theories that explain the religious-anthropological emergence and change process of ideology and utopia appearing in religion. If liminality theory, which originated from the theory of rites of passage (the change of internal members of society), focuses on the internal change and growth of social order, then revitalization theory, which originated from acculturation theory, emphasizes the response to external shocks.156) Both theories are representative theories that explain the ideological function and utopian function of religion.

Donghak, in its very name, exhibits a mode of response to the external ideology of Seohak (Western Learning). In this regard, Donghak first emphasized the aspect of 'Dong' (East), stressing the meaning of an Eastern epistemological method. Here, 'Dong' signifies the methodological response of correlative thinking. Second, in the aspect of 'Hak' (Learning), which pursues internal change and growth, it includes the theory of liminality, a theory of rites of passage. Third, in that it is a response to the shock of the external ideology of 'Seohak,' it also includes the characteristic of revitalization. In this way, when Donghak-related thought is studied by applying these three theories in a multidimensional manner, a value universal to humanity can be drawn out in religious-studies terms.

While the theory of correlative thinking has rarely been applied to Donghak Thought or Daesoon Thought, there have been studies applying liminality theory to Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought respectively, but they were not studied at the level of comparison between Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought.157) Liminality theory can be used to more clearly reveal the ideological differences and significance of the two thoughts, in that it can be applied as a detailed study in the comparative research of the two.158)159)

Wallace's revitalization theory has also been applied and studied in various cases around the world related to the encounter between Christianity and traditional religions, in the field of Donghak Thought alone, in research connecting Donghak Thought and Cheondoism (Cheondogyo), and also in Daesoon Thought by Bernadette Rigal-Cellard.160)161)162)

However, Bernadette's research did not compare the liminality of Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought. Therefore, the difference in liminality arising from the difference between the two thoughts, and correlative thinking, were not highlighted. Therefore, the author believes that if Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought are compared from the aspect of Eastern methodology of thought, and if liminality and Wallace's revitalization theory are applied, the difference between Daesoon Thought—which is called 'True Donghak' (Cham Donghak)—and Donghak Thought can be clearly revealed.

There is the research of Ko Nam-sik, which continuously grasped Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought from the aspect of 'True Donghak.' This dissertation, based on preceding research that examined Daesoon Thought from the aspect of the continuity and change of Donghak Thought, synthesizes existing preceding research on Donghak Thought and applies the academic methods of Eastern thought. However, by examining this in detail from a religious-anthropological aspect, it illuminates more precisely the aspect of Daesoon Thought, which expanded the scope of Donghak to the realization of the ideal world proposed by Donghak. In particular, it seeks to examine, from the perspective of the continuity and change of tradition, how Daesoon Thought revitalized Donghak at the point where Donghak's revitalization failed. Through this, it intends to present the value of the two thoughts as universally human ideologies by applying an organic method that synthesizes the other two avenues of research on Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought—namely, the popular movement and religious thought—with the practical Donghak research on the realization of the ideal world.163)

Liminality and revitalization have self-reflection and creative acceptance as common characteristics. In liminality as a rite of passage, a new creation appears through bottom-level experience and reflection that can integrate binary opposition. Revitalization theory also, by viewing one's own culture unfamiliarity, re-illuminates the positive aspects within one's culture. This aligns with the attribute of 'Mu-ja-gi' (Guarding against self-deception), which has been emphasized as the foundation of 'Sudo' (cultivation) in Daesoon Thought.164) This is because 'Mu-ja-gi,' by viewing oneself unfamiliarity through reflection, re-illuminates the new creation through bottom-level experience and reflection, and the positive aspects within oneself.165) Paying attention to this point, this dissertation aims to illuminate that the indigenous modernity of Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought is the new re-creation of the views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity based on correlative thinking, by accepting the Western views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity through liminality and revitalization.166) The misunderstanding of the Eastern origins of Western modernity and the rationality of correlative thinking has also influenced the evaluation of the indigenous liminality and revitalization appearing in Donghak-related thoughts. The difference between the aspect of liminality in correlative thinking and the liminality in analytic thinking is that while the liminality of analytic thinking harmonizes two mutually opposing elements, like the dialectic, the liminality of correlative thinking harmonizes the boundary between two complementary elements. Therefore, this research, keeping in mind the Eastern origins of Western modernity—which is implicit in Donghak-related thoughts and noted in Daesoon Thought—intends to trace the journey through which the two thoughts sought to achieve revitalization, as indigenous modernity, through the liminality of correlative thinking.

Autogenous Modernity and the Liminality of Disorder (作亂) in Donghak Thought

Autogenous Modernity in the Siecheonju (侍天主) View of Heaven

The Western Formal (形相的) View of Heaven

The heliocentric theory and Calvin's predestination, which represent Western modernity, were both changes in perspective regarding the views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity. Because the views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity are the most fundamental foundation directly connected to human existence and survival, a change like the modern era, which marks a new epoch, is measured by the change in the views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity.1)

Although the views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity were the main terms for dividing the universe in the Eastern cosmological view represented by the 'Cheon-Ji-In Samjae' (Three Potentials of Heaven, Earth, Humanity), in Western thought, which shares a common origin in religions related to Northern Shamanism, the views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity also appeared as a trifunctional system.2) The views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity have been the foundational concepts for dividing the universe in the West since the age of myth.3) Accordingly, the views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity can be a concept for comparing Eastern and Western thought.4)

That the 'Cheon-Ji-In Samjae' can be called a foundational concept in Western thought is also shown by the fact that the cosmology of Platonic philosophy, which became the root of Western philosophy, is also composed of three dimensions like 'Cheon-Ji-In': the cosmos, God, and human. As is well known, Plato explained that the visible universe is a reflection of the invisible world of Ideas. In this, the invisible world of Ideas corresponds to the East's Heaven (Cheon), the visible world corresponds to the East's Earth (Ji), and the observing being corresponds to the Human (In).5)

As Whitehead's saying that "Western philosophy is footnotes to Plato" has long been repeated, the influence of Platonic philosophy on Western thought was significant. Plato's thought was transformed by his disciple Aristotle to be more suitable for explaining reality; Aristotle explained Ideas as 'form' and the earth as 'matter.' To Aristotle, the universe, appearing in the form of a formal Heaven and a material Earth, manifested as a world where the form of Heaven transformed the Earth as matter. The human is regarded as a being that helps the form of Heaven manifest on Earth.6)

The Western views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, starting from Aristotle, can be called ontological because they presuppose substance when explaining change. Ontology and 'generativism' (Saengseong-ron) are the major thought systems distinguishing East and West today. In the system of Eastern thought, which thinks from the whole to the part, from top to bottom, a generative thought system is formed where change is explained without substance; whereas in the system of Western thought, which expands from the part to the whole, it becomes an ontological thought system that explains change starting from the part as substance.7)

Francois Jullien, who applied Deleuze's theory of immanence to Eastern thought, also regards the West, which explains change through substance, as ontological, and the East, which explains through attributes, as generative. Typically, in the case of medicine, Eastern medicine targets living people, so its anatomical charts are poor, while the West targets dead people, so its anatomical charts are detailed. Viewed from the standpoint of Western ontology, which is represented by substance theory, atomism which represents the modern West, the monotheistic God which represented the medieval West, and Plato's Ideas which represented the ancient West, can all be called a formalistic (Hyeongsang-jeok, form, eidos) view of Heaven (Cheon-gwan) as substance. In the ontological views of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, the substance of change was posited as God in the past, but upon reaching the modern era which denies God, change came to be explained only by matter, without God.

Aristotle's substance theory is an ontological theory that states the process of change must be explained by substance to be a logical explanation. For example, for water to change into fire, Aristotle's theory requires a substance with the property of changing water into fire, otherwise, it is not a logical discipline. On the other hand, the fractal correlative principle of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements can change without any substance.8)

The substantial cause of this change is the four causes, and the matter that causes change is the four elements. Aristotle is said to have claimed that the universe is composed of the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air (wind). By the same principle, the universe is said to be composed of the four causes: formal cause, final cause, efficient cause, and material cause. Among the four causes, the material cause and formal cause that constitute things are immanent in the things, but the efficient cause and final cause, which move things and realize their purpose, exist outside the things.9) The difference between the Eastern Yin-Yang and Five Elements theory and the Western four causes theory and four elements theory lay in explaining change through substance.10)

If the purpose and action where form and matter combine are the four causes by which substance is formed, then the differentiation of matter constitutes the four great elements (earth, water, fire, air). When interpreting the four-element theory as a cycle, the four elements become the four phases of the cycle: convergence (water) - compression and explosion (earth) - expansion (fire) - inflation (air). Aristotle further substantiated the theory of earth, water, fire, and air that existed before Empedocles. Dumézil is said to have argued that in the anthropological structure of the Indo-European linguistic imaginary, characterized by ascent and descent, the substantialist cosmology was formulated as the four-element theory, with the ascent of fire and air, and the descent of earth and water.11)

The four causes theory was considered the most rational Western theory for explaining the universe until the 17th century when Matteo Ricci lived. Therefore, in the Western formal view of Heaven, Plato's Idea or the Christian monotheistic God, as the fifth element separate from earth, water, fire, and air, becomes the center of the view of Heaven. Unlike in the East, the Western view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, which has clear boundaries, establishes a mode of liminality through the substance of the fifth element rather than through immanent liminality.

Aristotle's four causes theory was used by Matteo Ricci in The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu Shiyi) as the basis for arguing that the cosmology of earth, water, fire, and air was more scientific than the cosmology of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements. Matteo Ricci proves the existence of the Lord of Heaven (Tian-zhu) using Aristotle's 'four causes theory'. The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven is a summary of Western Learning (Seohak) written by Ricci; it was the first such work written in the East and subsequently had a significant influence on Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought. The two systems of thought appear similar, but there was a difference in that Yin-Yang and the Five Elements explain change through attributes, whereas earth, water, fire, and air explain it through substance, and this difference led to significant disparities in Eastern and Western modernity. In the West, as seen in medieval architecture and art, the attributes of God also manifest as the four attributes of earth, water, fire, and air.12)

It can be said that the four-element theory and the four causes theory are closely related. In India, which also had a worldview based on earth, water, fire, and air, a logic similar to the four causes theory developed, and it can be said that the process of explaining the change of the four elements directly connects to the four causes theory.

Today, most Easterners prefer the traditional Western view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, which does not recognize spiritual beings (Sinmyeong), as a scientific worldview. However, based on the Eastern view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, the Western view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity that does not recognize spiritual beings also becomes a view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity established under specific assumptions. The Western view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity can be called an ontological view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, having the background of ontology, which explains change through substance.

In summary, the Western ontological view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity is represented by the worldview of earth, water, fire, and air, starting from Aristotle. In the Western case of observing things from bottom to top, substance is divided into essence and phenomenon; therefore, phenomenon is the essence (form) changing the phenomenon (matter) as substance. In contrast, generation (saengseong) does not presuppose substance, so the East does not distinguish between phenomenon and essence; rather, phenomenon and essence are unified as one, like in Yin-Yang and the Five Elements, and change is explained monistically.

The Eastern Assimilative (同化的) View of Heaven

Traditionally, the Eastern concept of "Cheon" (Heaven) had two meanings: the "Cheon" concept that corresponds to Cheonji (Heaven and Earth) as a pair, and the Cheon of Mugeuk (Limitlessness) and Taegeuk (Great Ultimate) that existed before the division into "Cheonji," which gave birth to Heaven and Earth—in other words, the Heaven above Heaven, Cheon-oe-cheon. This is similar to how in the West, Adam before splitting into Adam and Eve is split into Eve, and even after splitting, is still called by the same name, Adam. Accordingly, in the Cheon-Ji-In (Heaven-Earth-Human) concept, if Cheon is posited as Cheon-oe-cheon outside of Heaven and Earth, then Ji (Earth) becomes the Heaven and Earth created by Cheon-oe-cheon; and if the Cheon that is part of the Heaven-Earth pair is taken as Cheon, then Ji also becomes the Ji concept that is part of the Heaven-Earth pair. This ambiguous use of the Cheon concept is also a reason why discussions of the Eastern views of Heaven and Earth are difficult and confusing. This article intends to specify the distinction between Cheon as Cheon-oe-cheon and Cheon as part of the Heaven-Earth pair before explaining the Cheon concept.13)

This applies equally to the concept of Sin (神, Deity/Spirit). When the concept of Heaven (天) is used as the concept of Cheonoecheon that created Heaven and Earth, the Sin (Deity) signifies "Sangje" (上帝, the Supreme Ruler), and the Sin (Deity) as the subject operating Heaven and Earth within the Heaven-and-Earth created by Cheonoecheon becomes Cheonjisinmyeong (天地神明, Spirits of Heaven and Earth) or Sinmyeong (神明, Spiritual Beings). However, when distinguished from humans, both Sangje and Sinmyeong have been collectively referred to as Sin (Deity/Gods), so the concept of Sin also needs to be differentiated. In Donghak Thought, Sangje or Cheonju (Lord of Heaven) signifies the Deity of Cheonoecheon, thus it is distinguished from the concept of Sin (Deity) in existing Eastern thought, where Sin as Sinmyeong (Spiritual Beings) appears frequently. Comparing with the West, the West uniformly emphasized Sin (God) mainly as the Sangje of Cheonoecheon, whereas the Eastern Cheon (Heaven) emphasized the meaning of Cheonoecheon during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, but in Neo-Confucianism, it was almost used as the concept of Heaven as one part of Heaven-and-Earth, namely, the Principle-Heaven (理法天, Ibeopcheon).

Ibeopcheon (Principle-Heaven) is a term that emphasizes the principle-aspect (Ichi) of heaven rather than its personal aspect. This reflects the Eastern thought that because the Heaven above Heaven created Heaven and Earth according to principle (Ichi), the Heaven below Heaven moves according to laws. The Heaven below Heaven was made according to principle, so its personal attributes are relatively lacking, but because the Heaven above Heaven exists, the Principle-Heaven (Ibeopcheon) is also variable; however, in Eastern thought, the attributes of Heaven were fixed as the Principle-Heaven.

This applies not only to the concept of Sin (Deity) but also to the concept of Ji (地, Earth). When Cheon (Heaven) is used as Cheonoecheon (Heaven above Heaven), the concept of Ji (Earth) becomes the concept of "Cheon-ji" (Heaven and Earth) created by the existing Cheonoecheon; therefore, Ji at this time appears as the object and result of the action of 'Johwa' (Creation-Transformation) or 'Muwiiwha' (Spontaneous Transformation) by Cheonoecheon, and in Donghak Thought, terms like 'Johwa', 'Muwiiwha', and 'Gihwa' (Qi-transformation) become the terms signifying 'Ji (地)' corresponding to Cheonoecheon.

The ambiguous use of the concepts of Cheon (Heaven), Ji (Earth), and Sin (Deity) is similar in both the East and the West. However, the reason they are used more ambiguously in the East than in the West is that in the East, which changes through resonance (Gam-eung) unlike the substantialist West, Heaven, Earth, and Deity are explained through the changes of correlative thinking. In the East, which explains based on attributes, the specific scope meant by Heaven, Earth, and Deity differs depending on the case, but their attributes are identical.

Correlative thinking corresponds to aesthetic order in Western thought, so the Eastern Cheon (Heaven), Ji (Earth), and In (Humanity) can be more clearly defined using aesthetic terms.14) Accordingly, the Eastern view of Heaven (天觀), differentiated by Yin-Yang and represented by Cheonwonjibang (Heaven is round, Earth is square) and Cheondojideok (The Way of Heaven, the Virtue of Earth), can be classified as an assimilative (同化的) view of Heaven; the view of Earth (地觀) as a condensative (凝縮的) view of Earth; and the view of Humanity (人間觀) as a grafting (接化的) view of Humanity.15)

Assimilation (同化) is a term expressing the common attribute found in Cheonwon (Heaven's roundness) versus Jibang (Earth's squareness) and Cheondo (Heaven's Way) versus Jideok (Earth's virtue); like the 'assimilation' in 'carbon assimilation', it means making heterogeneous properties or forms identical. Assimilation forms a hierarchical relationship as heterogeneous things are integrated into one, thus exhibiting the nature of the circle (Won) of integration and the Way (Do) of order.16) The Eastern spiritual cultures of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism (Yubulseon) also exhibit the nature of assimilation: Daoism assimilates with nature, Confucianism assimilates with the inner self, and Buddhism assimilates with the Dharma (Law).17) The East, unlike the West which analyzes and dominates, pursued assimilation because it had an organic view of nature where nature and humans are one.

Condensation (凝縮) is a term expressing the common attribute found in Jibang (Earth's squareness) versus Cheonwon (Heaven's roundness) and Jideok (Earth's virtue) versus Cheondo (Heaven's Way); like the 'condensation' in 'water vapor condensation', it expresses the phenomenon of different elements intertwining and solidifying together. Condensation, unlike assimilation, does not change the components themselves but compresses heterogeneous beings to form a single small unity, thus, like a square (Bang), it is angular but characterized by the virtue of precision. Both condensation and assimilation aim for unity, but the direction of their force is opposite. If assimilation is a force that continuously expands outward centered on the self, condensation is a force that contracts inward. If assimilation is called Jungwha (Central Harmony), condensation is like Hoegwi (Returning). Eastern material cultures such as art, music, and martial arts sought maximum effect with minimum effort, like the beauty of empty space (Yeobaek).18)

Grafting (接化) is a term expressing the coming together of opposing existences, such as Cheonwon (Heaven's roundness) versus Jibang (Earth's squareness) or Cheondo (Heaven's Way) versus Jideok (Earth's virtue), to blend as one; like the 'grafting' in 'Jeophwagunsaeng' (grafting and transforming all living beings), it expresses an integration where two existences meet equally and preserve their heterogeneity. If assimilation aims for the center and condensation aims for perfectionism, grafting advocates for hybridity through the harmonization of conflict (Sanggeuk). This is suitable for the human attribute, which is the fusion of Cheonwon (Heaven's roundness) and Jibang (Earth's squareness) appearing in Wonbangak (Circle-Square-Triangle), and the fusion of Cheondo (Heaven's Way) and Jideok (Earth's virtue) appearing in the virtuous person (Dodeokgunja).

At this time, the Eastern Heaven, Earth, and Humanity form a relationship identical to Lee Young-ran's definition of liminality, where ontogeny (individual development) recapitulates phylogeny (evolutionary history). Geongeongonsun (乾健坤順) means that what Heaven (Geon) decides, Earth (Gon) executes; if Geon (Heaven) is 1 and Gon (Earth) is 2, then Earth's 'Sun' (順, obedience/following) has the meaning of 1+2, incorporating Heaven's 'Geon' (健, strength); similarly, In (Humanity), which grafts Heaven and Earth, forms a relationship of 3, 1+2+3, (1+2+3)' from Heaven (1), Earth (2), and Humanity (3). In other words, condensation includes assimilation, and grafting includes assimilation, condensation, and even a third existence.19)

Meanwhile, compared to the generative Eastern thought, the ontological Western thought corresponds to differentiation (異化) or segmentation (分化), which is the opposite of assimilation, and this corresponds to ontological order; therefore, following Aristotle's ontology, which is the cornerstone of Western ontology, the Western view of Heaven can be classified as a formal view of Heaven, the view of Earth as a material (質料) view of Earth, and the view of Humanity as a growth-theoretic (成長論的) view of Humanity.

In the Eastern generative view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, which spontaneously differentiates from Mugeuk (Wuji) and Taegeuk (Taiji), the Eastern view of Heaven becomes an assimilative view of Heaven that integrates all things as one; if the Daoist view of Heaven is an assimilative view of Heaven regarding the natural world, which is Heaven's artwork, then the Confucian view of Heaven can be called an assimilative view of Heaven regarding the inner mind of humanity, which is Heaven's masterpiece (名品). In the East, even the Buddhist view of Heaven, which is closest to ontology, can be called an assimilative ontological view of Heaven regarding the existence called Heaven.20)

The Eastern view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity explains change through attributes, unlike the Western Samjae (Three Powers) which explains change through substance; therefore, the laws of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements are applied to the Eastern view of Heaven, just as they are to all things. Yin-Yang and the Five Elements, acting as attributes, apply not only to matter but also to Sinmyeong (Spiritual Beings), so the Eastern Heaven is composed of numerous Sinmyeong to whom Yin-Yang and the Five Elements are applied.

The Eastern Sin (Deity) was not a singular concept like the Western absolute God, but a complex concept distinguished into the supreme God Sangje, the Cheonjisinmyeong (Spirits of Heaven and Earth), and ancestral spirits (Josangsin). Unlike the few angels of the West, the numerous Eastern Sinmyeong—so many that it is said there are countless Buddhas even in a speck of dust—filled the universe, operated the universe like a computer, and were beings possessing their own domains according to the laws of Yin-Yang. The Eastern Sinmyeong protected their respective domains, differentiated according to the laws of Yin-Yang, so the Eastern Sangje (Supreme Ruler), even though Sangje, could not interfere in the affairs of the Sinmyeong; thus, in the East, the existence of the supreme God was depersonalized almost to a law, reaching the point of being forgotten.21) In the Eastern relationship between gods and humans, Sinmyeong (Spiritual Beings) were beings created by Sangje as Yin-Yang with humans, just like all other existences; and the ancestral spirits (Josangsin), which humans become after death, unlike Sinmyeong, did not participate in the operation of Heaven and Earth but were beings that oversaw the human descendants' cultivation (Sudo) to unite with Sinmyeong as Yin-Yang.22)

If the organizing principle of the traditional Western ontological Samjae (Three Powers) is the principle of earth, water, fire, and air, then the organizing principle of the traditional Eastern generative Samjae is Yin-Yang and the Five Elements. If the Western view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, which began from the tri-functional system appearing in Greco-Roman mythology and Indian mythology, was established early through earth, water, fire, and air, culminating in Aristotle's ontological view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity based on matter-form, then the Eastern generative view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity was formed over a long period as Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism (Yubulseon) and Yin-Yang and the Five Elements interacted with each other.

The traditional Eastern view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity is largely divided into the Samjae (Three Powers) view of the I Ching (Book of Changes) and the Samgye (Three Realms) view of Buddhism. If the I Ching's Samjae view, organized by the principles of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, is the traditional Eastern generative Samjae view, then the Buddhist Samgye view is closer to an ontological Samjae view. The traditional Eastern view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity was formed first as the Daoist I Ching's Samjae view, and then, as the Buddhist ontological Samgye view was introduced, it was synthesized into the Neo-Confucian (Seongrihak) Confucian Samjae view; in fact, before the introduction of Buddhism, Confucianism had almost no ontological cosmology, and the generative cosmology of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements was introduced first. It is natural that in the generative Eastern thought system, the view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity could only develop into the Samjae view after the introduction of Buddhism's ontological thought system.

Due to differences in natural and cultural environments, the Eastern Samjae-gwan, which developed a more genesis-based view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity compared to the West, was a view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity based on correlative thought, represented by Cheon-Ji-In and Yin-Yang and the Five Elements. The theories of Yin-Yang, the Five Elements, and the Three Powers (Samjae), which are said to have arisen individually in history, share correlative thought and began to be integrated starting from Dong Zhongshu's Confucianism of Cheon-in-gam-eung-ron (theory of resonance between Heaven and Human), but their full-scale integration begins with Zhou Dunyi's (1017-1073) Taegeuk-do-seol (Explanation of the Diagram of the Great Ultimate), which is the foundation of Neo-Confucianism. The Yin-Yang mentioned in the I Ching develops in the order of the Cheon-Ji-In Samjae of Asian shamanism, which is similar to the European three-function system, and then the Five Elements. The development process of correlative thought can be summarized as follows.

Although Yin-Yang, Samjae (Three Powers), the Five Elements, and the Eight Trigrams (Palgwae) had different origins, they were each differences in perspective looking at the same Samjae, so if the differences in perspective are understood, they can be integrated. Each of these was a minimal system for viewing the Samjae (Three Powers) depending on the perspective. Yin-Yang, Samjae, the Five Elements, and the Eight Trigrams become an integrated principle capable of interpreting the same Samjae in detail according to Shao Kangjie's (So Gang-jeol) principle of "adding one fold" (Ga-ilbaebeop).

First, Yin-Yang is a common element of binary opposition worldwide, serving as the first step in intuitively distinguishing things and as a fundamental attribute. In the generative Samjae view that emphasizes attributes, Yin-Yang becomes the fundamental principle. If Yin-Yang exhibits binary oppositional attributes in a world without form, these attributes must form a solid (three-dimensional body) to have substance in reality, thus developing into Samjae (三才, Three Powers), the minimal system for forming a three-dimensional solid. At this time, Samjae is represented by the Heaven-Earth-Humanity Samjae; as Samjae developed from Yin-Yang into form, in Heaven-Earth-Humanity, Heaven (Cheon) takes the role of Yang, Earth (Ji) takes the role of Yin, and Humanity (In) takes the role of Jung (中, Neutral/Middle) mediating Heaven and Earth.23)

If a solid (three-dimensional body) is formed by Samjae, just as a particle in matter must simultaneously have the nature of a wave to exist, the particle must form a Sasang (四象, Four Symbols) system that can circulate as waves. Sasang systems like Wonhyeongijeong (元亨利貞; sublime, potential, favorable, correct), Saengjangyeomjang (生長斂藏; birth, growth, harvest, storage), and Chunhachudong (spring, summer, autumn, winter) form a system similar to the Sasang system formed by earth, water, fire, and air. However, the difference here between the Sasang system of earth, water, fire, and air and the Sasang system of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements is that earth, water, fire, and air is a substantial thought system moving from bottom to top, and thus is not an attributive thought system developing into Yin-Yang and the Five Elements, which are attributes common to all things.

The Sasang system, in turn, must achieve mutual conflict (Sanggeuk) and mutual generation (Sangsaeng) to form a continuous cycle, so it develops into the Five Elements (Ohaeng), the minimal system for Sanggeuk and Sangsaeng, requiring the central element, Earth (土, To), for its central role. However, even the Five Elements are existences of "generating numbers" (Saengsu) that do not yet possess the Yin-Yang that constitutes things; therefore, for these generating numbers to acquire the Yin-Yang that possesses change in reality, the Five Elements must change into the 8 Trigrams (Pal-gwae), which, as an even number, can form the minimal system of Sanggeuk and Sangsaeng.24) The 8 Trigrams again require a center, thus becoming the Gugungpalgwae (Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams), and this Gugungpalgwae becomes the fundamental system of correlative thinking that explains the universe, developing into the He Tu (River Chart) and Luo Shu (Luo Writing).25)

For the Gugung (Nine Palaces) of the Hado and Nakseo to appear as the substance that actually operates Heaven and Earth, the element of time is added, appearing as the 10 Heavenly Stems (Sipgan) and 12 Earthly Branches (Sipiji). In the 10 Stems and 12 Branches, the element of To (Earth), such as Jin, Sul, Chuk, Mi, is placed in time to mediate the changes of time. The 10 Stems and 12 Branches, arranged respectively in Heaven and Earth, perform the Cheonji-hwayuk (Nurturing Transformation of Heaven and Earth) through Cheon-gi-hagang (descent of Heaven's Gi) and Ji-gi-sangseung (ascent of Earth's Gi), that is, Cheonji-seunggang (ascent and descent of Heaven and Earth), which is the action of the Cheonjijiyong (Function of Heaven and Earth), the 12 Unseong (Phases of Fortune): namely, the actions of Potae (Conception), Yangsaeng (Nourishment), Yokdae (Bathing & Girding), Gwanwang (Coming of Age & Prosperity), Soebyeong (Decline & Sickness), and Sajang (Death & Burial).26) If the 10 Stems and 12 Branches are like atoms in physics, the 12 Unseong as the Cheonjijiyong can be likened to molecules, where atoms combine to exhibit completely different properties.27)

The 12 phases of Qi (Unseong) express the transformation and nourishment (Cheonjihwayuk) of Heaven and Earth's ascent and descent (Cheonjiseunggang) as the life cycle of a living being.28) Like the meeting of a man and a woman, Heaven and Earth as Yin-Yang begin with conception (Potae)—where Heaven descends and Earth ascends (Cheongangjiseung) and the seed of life is sown in the earth—followed by the earth nourishing (Yangsaeng) the seed of life, the seed emerging outside the earth or body to bathe in Heaven's rain and dew (Uro) and form the phase of bathing and girding (Yokdae) as another girted individual, and then reaching the phase of coming of age and prosperity (Gwanwang) where it takes on work and acts vigorously, before declining, sickening, and being buried (Soe, Byeong, Jang), signifying 12 stages.29) This shows a process similar to the 12 stages of Campbell's monomyth, the 7 characters, or the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures (Simudo).30) Kim Ji-ha expressed this as Yullyeo (cosmic music/rhythm).31) The function of Heaven and Earth (Cheonjijiyong) shows that the operation of Heaven and Earth is not mechanical by nature, but is due to the utmost Seong-Gyeong-Sin (Sincerity, Reverence, and Trust) of Heaven and Earth. From the perspective of Eastern thought, what Western atomistic modernity most overlooked was the omission of the Seong-Gyeong-Sin of the Sinmyeong (Spiritual Beings) in its mechanistic view of nature. This is referred to as the "disease of lack of Dao" (Mudobyeong) in Donghak Thought and Daesoon Thought.32)

The function of Heaven and Earth (Cheonjijiyong) influences not only everyday things but also thought systems, so Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism (Yubulseon) appear as reflections of this function. The conception (Potae) of Heaven and Earth is expressed as the Dao of Immortals (Seondo) of emptiness (Heomu); the nourishment (Yangsaeng) of Heaven and Earth is expressed as the Buddhist Dao (Buldo) of cessation (Jeokmyeol); and the bathing and girding (Yokdae) of Heaven and Earth is expressed as the 'Ijo' (以詔, decree/instruction) of the Confucian Dao (Yudo). If the Western view of Heaven explains Heaven's characteristics through the substantial attributes of earth, water, fire, and air, the East expresses Heaven's attributes through the four attributes of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements. If the Western view of Heaven is substantialist and thus, since modernity, has differentiated countlessly and individually like atomism, the Eastern view of Heaven shows a unified structure—such as Yin-Yang, Samjae (Three Powers), Five Elements, Eight Trigrams, 10 Stems, and 12 Branches—within each unit, including atoms, molecules, individuals, and society.33)

The Clash and Mutual Antagonism (相克化) of East-West Views of Heaven in Modernity

Clash of Views of Heaven

The Western view of Heaven, expressed through the attributes of earth, water, fire, and air, and the Eastern view of Heaven, expressed through Yin-Yang and the Five Elements, had similarities. In fact, Ricci, who embarked on the Eastern mission, was impressed that the Eastern view of Heaven appearing in the Classic of History (Seogyeong), a Confucian classic predating Neo-Confucianism, was similar to the Western view of Heaven and even had superior points, and he held hope for the Eastern mission.

I have never seen, among all the nations of gentiles known in Europe, any whose ancient ideas had fewer errors than those of the ancient Chinese. In fact, I discovered in their books that they always revered the supreme being, whom they called the King of Heaven (天帝) or Heaven and Earth (天地). Perhaps, in their view, Heaven and Earth constituted a single living body (體), and the supreme being of that body was something like its soul.34)

Matteo Ricci pursues the Eastern mission with the view of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity based on earth, water, fire, and air. The view of Heaven in the Classic of History that Matteo Ricci discovered—Heaven as Creator, the providence of Heaven, the judgment of Heaven, and the attributes of Heaven as Ruler—appeared almost identically to Western Learning (Seohak).35)

Heaven and Earth are the parents of all things, and the human being is the most numinous of all things. — Heaven as Creator 36)

August Heaven watched over and gave its command, so that he became the sovereign of all under Heaven who governs the whole world. — The providence of Heaven 37)

Heaven punishes because there is sin. — The judgment of Heaven 38)

The Way of Heaven is such that it bestows blessings upon the good and sends down calamity upon the wicked. — The attribute of Heaven as the presiding ruler 39)

Matteo Ricci considered it a corruption and lamented that the idea of Heaven in the Classic of History, which he found similar to the Western view of Heaven, lost its personal divine attributes and changed into a Principle-Deity (Ibeopsin) as it progressed through the Zhou dynasty, Confucius, and Neo-Confucianism. However, from today's perspective, which understands it as an attribute of multiple modernities where the secular (Sok) encompasses the sacred (Seong), divinity is seen as having been rather strengthened.40)

In fact, intellectuals in Joseon, which was the most Neo-Confucianized society in East Asia, encountered The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven and sometimes welcomed it as an ideology that could reveal the original meaning of Confucianism. Contemporary intellectuals such as Gwangam Yi Byeok and Jeong Yak-yong even risked their lives to accept Western Learning (Seohak). On the other hand, many intellectuals, represented by Sin Hudam (1702-1761) who wrote the Critique of Western Learning (Seohakbyeon), also expressed concern about Western Learning.41)