* I would like to express my appreciation to Youn-Kyoung Kim and Young A Chung who helped me locate materials on Kim Iryeop. Their help has been invaluable for this research. Jin Y. Park (Bak, Jin-yeong) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion at American University. She obtained her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has published articles on Buddhism and Asian philosophy, and is also editor of Buddhisms and Deconstructions (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming). E-mail: jypark@american.edu.
關鍵詞
English; Korea; new theory of chastity; modern self; Buddhist self; great-free-being; Buddhist feminism
摘要
This essay examines the role of gender in Korean Buddhism's encounter with modernity. I argue that different roles society has imposed on different genders resulted in different experiences of modernization. In the case of Kim Iryeop, a representative female intellectual who lived during the first half of the twentieth century in Korea, it was Buddhist philosophy--especially the Buddhist view of the self--that provided her a philosophical foundation in her search for identity and liberation from the traditional view of women. An investigation of Kim Iryeop's Buddhism demands a reconsideration of the so far accepted postulation of the binary of modernity and tradition--Buddhism, in this case. Kim Iryeop's Buddhism also brings to our attention the patriarchal nature of our understanding of modern Korean Buddhism, in which the Buddhist encounter with modernity has been portrayed as focusing exclusively on male Buddhist leaders and gender-neutral issues. Finally, Kim Iryreop's Buddhism offers us an example of how Buddhist philosophy can contribute to the contemporary discourse on feminism, providing the possibility for creating a new Buddhist, feminist theory.
目次
Introduction 115 Love and Modernity 116 Gender and Creation of a Modern Self 123 Modern Self and Buddhist Self 128 Buddhism, Modernity and Gender 133
