An Outsider’s View:
On and In Korean (Confucian) Philosophy

This talk will revolve around the question in how far and to what ends the outsider position was (and is) relevant to and made productive in Korean (Confucian) philosophy.

I will take advantage of my own outsider position vis-á-vis Korean philosophy to make extended use in this endeavour of the writings of Pak Chiwŏn, known to the Western Korean Studies as a writer of “literature” rather than as a “philosopher”. While these categories carried little or no significance, of course, to pre-modern Korean literati, the mode of more literary writing, working out arguments through metaphors, analogies, and narrative strategies, was well suited to Pak Chiwŏn’s philosophical quest as I see it, and which can, in a nutshell, be grasped with the phrase “positioning oneself well at the borderline” or “handling well a position at the threshold” (善處其際).

This position at the threshold allows for or helps in, I will argue, a number of epistemic operations, such as a re-evaluation of the meaning of tradition, critical reflections of identity issues, scrutiny of the idea of the “limes” or “limit” itself, and the ability to imagine the pushing or transversing of limits, including imaginations of a future that is not a projection of the past.

I will end with some observations on code switching in Pak Chiwŏn’s Yŏrha ilgi and how it may relate to another technique of “situating oneself well in a marginal position” which I call cultural code-switching, and the significance this idea may have for the practice of transcultural or comparative philosophy.