Abstract
Korean civil society is often criticized because of its dual nature, that is, the paucity of social capital in everyday life and the plethora of collective political actions in the national civil society. Although liberals view such duality as the critical impediment to Korea’s authentic (that is, liberal) democratization, which would represent a fundamental, liberal-pluralist transformation of Korean society, this article rather acknowledges its cultural (that is, Confucian) uniqueness and utilizes it as the basis on which to construct a Korean non-liberal democracy that is culturally pertinent and politically viable. First, this article critically re-examines the recent neo-Tocquevillian praise for social capital in light of Tocqueville’s original idea on the art of association, and reveals the liberal-individualistic assumption behind them, with which Confucian-Koreans are culturally unfamiliar. It presents a Korean version of Confucian civil society to promote democratic collective self-government and common citizenship, while rejecting modern Western moral individualism.
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Notes
Because of the common political catchphrase of ‘the state vs. civil society’, we tend to forget an important historical lesson that well-developed local civil societies sometimes can reinforce, rather than check, the pathological strengthening of the state. According to Sheri Berman (1997), this is exactly what happened in Weimar, Germany, where fully blown local civil societies of high social capital yet under the underdeveloped political society were taken advantage of for strengthening what eventually became the Nazi state. In a sense, Japan’s expansive nationalism in the twentieth century, too, seems to be closely correlated with the plethora of social capital that was ready for state mobilization (see Garon, 2003).
In their recent article, political scientists Aie-rie Lee and Yong Glasure (2007) attempt to explain the underlying causes of the Koreans’ persistent political participation after democratization in terms of social capital among mass public. Their key argument is that despite a sharp rise in the percentage of civic engagement in voluntary associations between 1990 and 1996, since then social capital (in terms of interpersonal trust) has played only a minor role in political participation in Korea. According to them, what is statistically significant in explaining political participation and public protest in Korea is the psychological involvement in politics. Unfortunately, the authors do not go further to investigate the nature of the social psychology of the Korean people. While attempting a normative theorization of the Korean-Confucian civil society, this article pays full attention to this social-psychological factor, and attempts to make full use of it in constructing a Korean civil society that is practicable.
Despite growing interest in ‘Confucian civil society’ (Tan, 2003; Fan, 2004; Madsen, 2008; Nosco, 2008), scholars have mainly concentrated on its philosophical and conceptual possibility rather than its actual form in the particular political context. With special focus on post-democratic Korea, this article attempts a more realistic version of Confucian civil society.
‘Nothing provides anxiety like the proposition that in American democracy “statecraft is soulcraft”’, writes Rosenblum (1998, p. 13).
Of course, my discussion thus far is a far cry from conveying Tocqueville’s rich and complex political theory of democracy and civil society. For that, see Manent (2006). The point I am trying to make here is simple and modest – that is, we need to take Tocqueville’s political theory (as well as moral theory) of civil society seriously.
I am thinking here of democratic theorists like Benjamin Barber (1998) and Michael Sandel (1996).
Even though Barber (2003[1984]); Sandel (1998[1982]) and Charles Taylor (1989), often lumped together as ‘communitarians’, find themselves in disputes with liberal individualists (mostly inspired by John Rawls), they never dismiss liberal individualism as such. Their republican-communitarian concern is only how to make the American people, otherwise consumed in commercial impulses and absorbed in private quests, self-governing citizens. Yet, as Rousseau had no problem with simultaneously having both an autonomous individual and an active citizen in the self-transformed personhood (Rousseau, 2000, pp. 166–167), these contemporary democrats, too, celebrate the idea that individuality and communality can be dialectically realized in the public action of a citizen-individual. Also see Warren (1992).
Patrick Deneen (2005) criticizes this optimism inherent in liberal democratic theory by calling it ‘democratic faith’.
The same is also true for John Stuart Mill. Mill, otherwise a vehement individualist, nonetheless saw the moral and political value in associational life: morally it helps to enrich a personal life of moral pluralism and politically it can counter the force of the tyranny of majority. On Mill’s ambivalence toward associational life see Boyd (2004, pp. 177–208). In Peter Berkowitz’s judgment, Mill is essentially an Aristotelian thinker rather than one of Cartesians. See Berkowitz (1999, pp. 134–169).
This is not to say that Tocqueville was a liberal-individualist. As Roger Boesche (1987) argues, the version of liberalism that Tocqueville’s political theory aimed to advance is quite ‘strange’ in that it is at once liberal and conservative, and rational and anti-rational (sentimental). Sanford Lakoff (1998), thus, calls Tocqueville (alongside Burke) a ‘liberal conservative’.
See Tarcov (1998). Of course, the Hobbesian social contract that is less dependent upon self-transformation is more political than moral in nature.
But perhaps, the Weberian critique of Tocqueville is too harsh, because after all it was the world mastery individualism that brought about a disinterested and individually sanctioned pursuit of virtue (that is, trust or civility), and, according to Tocqueville, it is what made democracy viable in America (Gellner, 1995, p. 77). In my view, where Weber highlighted the most viable form of modern individualism in charismatic society in the seventeenth century New England in which the secular and the sacred were amazingly fused, Tocqueville saw (or rather foresaw) what was (would be) happening to this ideal man-type along with the modernization of the new world.
In the republican-communitarian case, the relation between ‘I’ and ‘We’ are dialectically achieved by political action.
See Steinberg's (1997) criticism of Cho's (1997) attempt to trace the cultural origin of contemporary Korean civil society to the neo-Confucian literati politics in seventeenth and eighteenth century Korea.
Hall and Ames’ (and Henry Rosemont’s) somewhat provocative view of the Confucian self as social roles has invited criticisms from many other prominent students of Confucianism, including Philip Ivanhoe and Tu Wei-ming and their debate on how to understand the Confucian (relational yet coherent) selfhood is still ongoing. My own view is a qualified approval of the former: Hall and Ames are right in saying that the ordinary Confucian self cannot be approached in such Western psychological concepts as ‘ego’, ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ because of its fundamentally relational nature; at the same time, however, it seems to be overstating to argue that the Confucian self is nothing but ‘roles’, because I also believe the independent/relational self is not a partial self but a whole self entertaining its own unique moral coherence. I think, at least for the sake of theoretical clarity, the ordinary Confucian East Asian’s relational self, which is my major target in this article, should be distinguished from the traditional Confucian intellectual’s highly individualistic Heaven-oriented moral self (De Bary, 1983).
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith writes, ‘The jurisdiction of the man without is founded altogether in the desire of actual praise, and in the aversion to actual blame. The jurisdiction of the man within is founded altogether in the desire of praiseworthiness, and in the aversion to blameworthiness’ (TMS III.2.32).
Also, recall Hegel’s famous formula of ‘ “I” that is “We” and “We” that is “I” ’.
The original meaning of ren is difficult to translate in English. It is often translated as benevolence, goodness, humanity or humanheartedness. Perhaps ren as the Confucian virtue par excellence includes all.
Neo-Confucianism is a reformed Confucianism that emerged in struggles with Daoism and especially Buddhism in the Song dynasty (960–1279). It is often called a ‘study of human nature (xing) and Principle (li)’, or xing-li-xue, as it incorporated Hwa Yen Buddhism’s complex philosophical and metaphysical doctrines into classical, more social philosophy-oriented, Confucianism.
Also see De Bary (1983, pp. 24–27).
Compare the Confucian ritualistic sharing of bodies to the Lockean liberal sharing of bodies through the exchange of property (and eventually of money).
Not only does this psycho-cultural extension help generate an affective identification with the larger national community but, I argue, it also creates a uniquely Korean collective moral responsibility or ‘uri-responsibility’, which is practiced by every individual citizen participating in the public action (Kim, 2008).
During the Chosǒn dynasty (1392–1910) in pre-modern Korea, the state had been thought to be the ethical embodiment of the essence of Korean (proto-modern) nation. During and after democratization in the 1980s; however, a national civil society emerged as the most authentic embodiment of the chŏngish we-self, and thus as the powerful counterforce of the authoritarian state.
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Kim, S. On Korean dual civil society: Thinking through Tocqueville and Confucius. Contemp Polit Theory 9, 434–457 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2009.30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2009.30