A Good Way to Use Habitus, Proposed by Oneself 04.13

Pluralism and Monism

Groups that tried to realize ideals by dividing camps into superior and inferior and excluding the inferior were pushed out of the mainstream of the international community by the end of World War II. The victorious Allied powers, with a pledge that such a thing would never happen again, enshrined fundamental human rights, human dignity and worth, and equality of rights for men and women and nations large and small in the UN Charter, and this became the occasion for pluralism and political idealism to take root as the foundation of modern society.

Since then, democratic societies have arrived in many places around the world. Society became de-authoritarianized, and monistic thinking gradually naturally receded. Pluralism — the idea of respecting diverse actors and acknowledging diverse possibilities — has strong appeal in daily life as a powerful lesson of modern history, and its footing going forward looks solid.

In this context, there was a piece of writing that gave me a great shock. I don’t recall the source well, but the gist was: “If you’re someone who works in art, you ought to be able to properly distinguish what’s bad and what’s good in your field.” In short, a monistic claim that good things are still good. The problem was that it was persuasive. For instance, if we deliberately ignore the difference between a well-drawn painting and a poorly drawn one, we won’t be able to discover better works. But then, is pluralism — which prioritizes possibility and balance over the importance of value judgment — a misjudgment?

I want to organize this clash like this. Quality and environment are separate. What quality is valuable is determined by the environment, and depending on how much the environment has changed, the criteria can become completely different. The standard for what makes a painting a good painting is merely an interpretation following the environment an individual is placed in, so potential and possibility itself need to be kept broadly open. That is, pluralism remains valid.

Whether Stench or Fragrance

There’s a sociological term called habitus. Famous for being first proposed by French sociologist Bourdieu, this concept refers to individuals’ ways of living in the world and their attitudes, or unconscious dispositions, but in fact this term is more closely related to the definition of social class.

“Even owning a yacht as long as your legs does not guarantee you an invitation to the Duchess of Guermantes’s salon” is an apt summary of habitus. Even if you suddenly win the lottery and become rich overnight, whether you can cast off the poverty and rusticity passed down through generations and acquire leisurely dignity is another matter entirely for that person. So habitus is both a ruthless interpretation that judges individuals’ origins by its mere existence, and a cruel material that intensely stimulates the desire for class mobility.

Nevertheless, habitus is undoubtedly valid in explaining much of society. Then I want to go one step further from here. For example, instead of thinking “It’s a shame I wasn’t raised as a descendant of some country’s royalty” or “Fortunately I don’t have to live the wretched life of the poor,” I want to objectively assess my current habitus and expand its scope. Accepting demanding dining etiquette, desperate survival strategies, or the middle class’s ordinary worries without wariness, and furthermore cultivating the capacity to cope well even in sudden environmental changes later through the inclusiveness of becoming a member of those groups. This is under the influence of the pluralism discussed above.

The Traditional Perspective on History Is Exhausting 04.15

The Balhae History Attribution Dispute

In 698, Dae Jo-yeong expelled the Tang’s Andong Protectorate and founded Balhae. Balhae, as a branch of Korean ethnic history, claimed succession from Goguryeo, and became powerful enough to be called the “Prosperous State East of the Sea,” but ultimately fell to the Khitans in 926.

We remember Balhae like this. Popular perception is the same, and Korean academia also aligns on the basis that significant Goguryeo elements are discovered in Balhae’s cultural heritage. However, China’s view today differs. Chinese popular perception is weakly that Balhae was a Mohe tribe state, and strongly that it was a Tang local government. Chinese academia’s view isn’t much different; the consensus is that since Balhae was a Sumo Mohe state, it is Chinese history.

This can be seen as an extension of China’s Northeast Project, but perhaps due to the chaotic situation of the time, it’s true to some extent that Tang, Mohe, and Goguryeo elements are all found in Balhae. Perceptions of neighboring states at the time were also inconsistent. There are records that Goryeo regarded Balhae as a kindred state of the same lineage, but the Old Book of Tang describes Balhae as a “state of a separate branch of Goryeo” while the New Book of Tang describes it as a “state of the Sumo Mohe,” and interpretations of these expressions differ, creating dispute. Due to lack of historical records, it seems difficult for either side to present a compromise acceptable to both for the time being.

Treating Balhae as Chinese history would feel unpleasant to Koreans as an extension of the Northeast Project. However, the Chinese academia’s stance is stubborn, and from China’s perspective, Korea’s attempt to forcibly incorporate Balhae into Korean history would appear similarly unjustified. This is the reality we face, before even debating which side is right.

Goryeo’s Succession of Goguryeo

When Seo Hui and So Son-nyeong met to conclude the First Goryeo-Khitan War, So Son-nyeong claimed Goryeo was Silla’s successor, and Seo Hui countered that Goryeo inherited Goguryeo’s lineage — a famous anecdote. This is a representative case showing Goryeo’s consciousness of succeeding Goguryeo, but conversely, it also reveals that the concept of Goryeo as Goguryeo’s successor state was not yet a universal premise, and Goryeo, which claimed this, needed to appeal and propagate the claim.

And Goryeo successfully spread the notion of being Goguryeo’s successor state to its surroundings, and it was recognized as such for over a thousand years. It even went so far as viewing Goryeo as a continuum from Goguryeo with only the royal surname changed. The attempt to revise this traditional historical view by separating Goguryeo history and Goryeo history as distinct states and incorporating Goguryeo history into Chinese history began only when China today started pushing the Northeast Project as a shortcut for stable domestic governance.

Yet why does China’s claim possess at least the minimum ripple effect to persuade its own people? Because their claim, while unreasonable to accept, is not entirely without merit. Just as the late Goryeo–early Joseon transition was a historical continuity, the late Silla–early Goryeo transition was also a historical continuity. As So Son-nyeong claimed, Goryeo’s territory was only a part of Goguryeo’s, and whether one likes it or not, Goryeo was a state that inherited Silla’s legacy politically and culturally. China focuses on this point.

Of course, the view of world historians is that Goguryeo’s share in Goryeo’s origins is quite significant. The biggest reason is that the Goguryeo remnant forces originating from Goguryeo’s core territories occupied by Unified Silla, such as Pyongyang, were active as the main agents who founded Goryeo. The nature of the state-founding subject greatly influences succession consciousness, surrounding states’ perceptions, and subsequent historical interpretation, and for similar reasons, the Republic of China on the continent and the Republic of China on Taiwan, the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, ancient Israel and modern Israel — despite having different concrete criteria — are each recognized as successors to their predecessors.

Our Imagined Order

However, disappointingly, this is ultimately a story built on shared fiction, as anthropologist Yuval Noah Harari unflinchingly points out in his book Sapiens. If we peel back concepts like nation, ethnicity, history, we discover they are abstract concepts existing only in our heads, and recognizing this makes the rest not difficult. Attempts to define Goguryeo history or Balhae history as one side or the other are coercive from any perspective. Goguryeo history is Goguryeo history, Balhae history is Balhae history. No, the affairs of that time are the affairs of that time. Even viewed realistically, it’s nothing more than a political dispute trying to push and pull practical interests with justification, or a past important to both Korea and China.

History is an even more fluid concept than the nation. Borrowing his perspective, today’s Homo sapiens on the Korean peninsula and Homo sapiens on the Chinese continent give different interpretations of past events, and the attempt to attribute that past to one group’s nature is merely their imagination. And if so, obsessing over this is an extremely exhausting endeavor.

The Limits of Confucian Order from a Categorization Perspective 04.28

Confucianism and Pragmatism

“Let the ruler be a ruler, the minister a minister, the father a father, the son a son” (君君臣臣父父子子). As a solution to the chaotic social conditions of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, Confucius proposed a world where the ruler acts like a ruler, the minister like a minister, the parent like a parent, the child like a child. This methodology, which defined propriety (禮) as the treatment of human society and human relationships based on benevolence (仁) and righteousness (義), had great ripple effects, and East Asia long strove to realize political order through the Confucian ideological system.

The Confucianism we know today is, however, merely formal observance of etiquette, system-conforming ethical consciousness, demands for obligation and obedience to the collective — a justification to prioritize the interests of superiors or seniors — and is closer to the extension and remnants of a pathetic appearance that could only function as empty theory on justification even amid the rapidly changing international order of the mid-to-late Joseon period, rather than a discipline for serious agony and exploration to achieve clear goals.

I thought about this situation a bit abstractly. There are many ideologies besides Confucianism that were adopted by society, enjoyed honor, gradually lost self-correcting ability, and degenerated into authoritarianism. Scholasticism, mercantilism, imperialism were like that, and modern communism and socialism also lost their efficacy in reality detached from ideals. Even modern democracy raises concerns that with the emergence of internet media and deepening confirmation bias, only formal justification may remain.

In this context, Confucianism is merely one of many ideologies rigidified into justificationism. Ideologies or beliefs are fundamentally methodologies for solving problems before they are justificationism, and effort is needed to read them pragmatically rather than blindly accepting even the ideological system considered the best today.

Side Effects of Categorization

We find commonalities and differences in the world, and borrowing the power of intuition, we group similar things together to understand them. This is categorization. Categorization itself is a useful tool, but problems arise when we pass value judgments on the created categories. Categories are formed ignoring the characteristics and potential of individual entities to some extent, so they don’t reflect all of reality, and that fragmentary impression breeds misunderstanding. When self-correcting insight into the categorization process is lacking, problems like radical separatism based on race, ethnicity, class, gender, etc. occur.

From this perspective, Confucian propriety (禮) has a conceptual common denominator with eugenics, and for the same reason experiences limits in modern society. It merely concludes with moral edification of young commoners instead of oppression and exclusion of people of color, but the principle is the same in that it presupposes thorough categorization and ranking of categories. If you stripped a pre-modern monarch of their official court robe, contrary to what Confucianism claims, that person would be no longer a ruler but a single human no different from a street slave of the time.

The utility of categorization cannot be realistically denied. Then, effort is needed to recognize the limits of categories and reduce room for misunderstanding. When publicizing categories, there needs to be accompanying effort to minimize the harms that one’s value judgment on categories can produce.