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This paper is aimed at examining more extensively the relations between Yi Ok and Yu Deuk-gong, his cousin by a maternal aunt, in order to reilluminate the literary tendency of the former from a new perspective. The literary journey between Yu Deuk-gong and Yi Ok is similar but is also extremely opposite. It is similar in that as a calligrapher from Gyeonggi-do, he devoted his energy to poetry and sentences and grew up to be a literary figure representing the 18th century. However, due to their differences in literary trends, they indeed showed big differences in terms of the evaluations and courtesy they received from the king. With the cooperation of the king, Yu Deuk-gong started from a low position and served in a high position. In comparison, his younger brother Lee Ok was punished in the wake of the Literary Style Reform Movement, which denounced the newly emerging creative writing style, but he still maintained his identity as a writer. In the 18th century, two distinct groups of writers coexisted inside and outside the government. They created a unique literary world of different colors. However, those writers outside the sphere of the government were executed and punished. But such government punishments made their literary color clearer.

This paper examines the emergence and changes of daily-life encyclopedias in the late Joseon Dynasty, based on the comparative studies of Sallim-gyeongje (Farm Management; 山林經濟) by Hong Man-seon, Jeungbo-sallim-gyeongje (Revised and Augmented Farm Management; 增補山林經濟) by Yu Jung-rim, and Imwon-gyeongjeji (Essays on Rural Life and Economy; 林園經濟志) by Seo Yu-gu. To this end, in Chapter 2, I reviewed the number of citations of Sallim-gyeongje in the list of references of Imwon-gyeongjeji. In Chapter 3, I made a comparative analysis of the table of contents and the contents of the three kinds of encyclopedias. Lastly, in chapter 4, I summarized the aspects of changes with regard to the contents of the three different encyclopedias. The newly added contents are the following three: various tools and household items; knowledge related to hobbies and leisure; and knowledge of how to create and accumulate wealth. These changes represent the gentry’s desire for a higher quality of a descent living and the active pursuits of wealth, departing from the traditional style of living a content life amid poverty and taking pleasure in cultivating morally.

Literary thoughts of Malraux stemmed mainly from his doubt about and his reflection on Western civilization in the early 20th century. His harsh criticism on depravities of material civilization and the imperialistic expansion in La Tentation d’Occident (1926) drew much attention from the world literature circles and the knowledge-based society. Since then, the author wrote his involvements in revolution and adventure, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War into the successive publication of books as Les Conquérants (1928), La Voie Royale (1930), La Condition Humaine (1933). As an existentialist participatory writer, Malraux voluntarily takes action in revolutions, adventures, and wars, and records own experiences in literary works in detail. In them, he takes a tragic world view of human values being disintegrated as the central issue of his philosophical thoughts. Immersed in irrational situations of revolutions, adventures, and wars, the characters of Malraux reveal antisocial antagonism through their negative view of the reality. A human being, isolated from the world, facing irregularities and solitude without any relief, struggles for self-recognition. Therefore, Malraux denies the existence of God and emphasizes nihilism by arguing the necessity of death to consent to the world. The nihilism of the author is a form of an existentialist idea that a human being resists against unjustifiable human conditions by committing a suicide or a murder. In other words, Malraux’s nihilism is that a human attaches value to death and constructs dignity by eliminating the misery of fate and the agony of life with his or her own will, which is a pursuit of metaphysics.

The ancient Greeks who lived through the age of myth had a strong belief that human destiny was determined by gods. This determinism is well illustrated in the tragedies they created. Of them, Oedipus the King by Sophocles also shows that the fate planned by gods is realized without a single mistake even before the birth of the protagonist. In this tragedy, the main character tries his best to get out of the oracle given to him. Nevertheless, Oedipus falls into the abyss of tragedy. Does this tragedy show determinism according to which humans can’t escape from the fate decided by gods? Considering Oedipus’ behaviors, it does not necessarily mean it. First, he trusts the ordinary people more than the prophet, who is the agent of gods. Second, instead of blaming gods for what he has done, he takes responsibility for himself. Third, at the height of the tragedy, he pokes his eyes instead of choosing his own death. In short, Oedipus the King can be seen as a tragedy that compromises determinism and the freedom of will, rather than resorting to typical determinism. This view of Oedipus as a figure situated between determinism and freedom will open a new horizon for the interpretation of Oedipus the King.

The purpose of this study is to examine ‘the theory of the civilized and the barbarians (華夷思想)’ and ‘the theory of Unification of Chinese and Foreign (中外一統)’ in Resolving Confusion with a Discourse on Righteousness (大義覺迷錄, Da yi zue mi lu)’. Especially, this study insists that the aim of Resolving Confusion with a Discourse on Righteousness was to overthrow ‘the theory of the civilized and the barbarians (華夷思想)’ of Han China in the Yongzheng Emperor era of the Qing Dynasty, not the establishment of the theory of the unification of multiethnic states. Recently, some researchers of Resolving Confusion with a Discourse on Righteousness insisted that the purpose of the book’s publication was the Yongzheng Emperor’s agenda of establishing a multiethnic empire. Besides, they insisted that ‘the theory of Unification of Chinese and Foreign (中外一 統)’ was linked to the theory of ‘the unification of multiethnic states (多民 族統合國家)’ in modern China as well as that of ‘Great Unification (大一統) of the Qing Dynasty’ in the Qianlong era. Although the theories of Resolving Confusion with a Discourse on Righteousness influenced the theories of multiethnic states in the late Qing Dynasty and modern China in some degrees, I think that Yongzheng Emperor’s purpose of publishing Resolving Confusion with a Discourse on Righteousness was not saying about the establishment of the theory of the unification of multiethnic states. First of all, the purpose of Yongzheng Emperor was to overthrow ‘the theory of the civilized and the barbarians (華夷思想)’ of Han China in Jiangnan (江南)’. The Qing Dynasty had formally been the ‘Manchu’ state which conquered Han China. So, in the Yongzheng reign, it was very important for the Qing emperors including Yongzheng drawing a willing obedience from the Han Chinese in Jiangnan. Additionally, in the Yongzheng reign, the Qing Dynasty had not yet conquered the non-ethnic Chinese regions, including Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinzhang. Consequently, the Yongzheng Emperor wanted to display the legitimacy of Chinese Emperor (中華君主)’ not a blueprint of a multiethnic empire. The vision of a multiethnic empire of Qing was presented by the Qianlong Emperor, the son of Yongzheng. The publication of Resolving Confusion with a Discourse on Righteousness was the Yongzheng Emperor’s ‘ideological struggle’ against the Han Chinese in Jiangnan.

The aim of this paper is to explore the correlation between writing classes and textbooks on academic writing through the case study of ‘academic writing’ classes, the textbook titled Critical Thinking Academic Writing and student essays produced at Sungkyunkwan University. In particular, through the case study of Sungkyunkwan University, I confirmed how the textbook reflects the goals of writing classes and liberal arts education in general. I examined the textbook contents and composition in relation to the strategy of writing. And I empirically confirmed the effectiveness of the textbook through the analysis of student essays. In order to do this, I suggested the necessity of research on the effectiveness of writing textbooks and the correlation between writing classes and textbooks. Through this, we expect that students can enjoy the effects of writing education better through the improvement of the quality of textbook, a key tool for writing classes.

Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy was criticized as committing the fallacy of circular logic from the moment of its publication. Therefore, the problem of Descartes’s vicious circle needs to be discussed in order to understand Descartes’s epistemology. This paper begins with the examination of 3 interpretations proposed by several critiques and reveals the fact that all of 3 interpretations are obliged to recognize explicitly or implicitly the meditator of Meditation III having knowledge in a certain sense. To solve this problem, knowledge in Meditation III can be distinguished by complete knowledge and limited knowledge according to its nature. This paper aims to argue that each of this knowledge is still problematic. If all clear and distinct perceptions are considered as complete knowledge, the casuality principle is troubled. On this account, all clear and distinct perceptions employed in the demonstration of God’s existence cannot be knowledge of complete certainty. In the second place, if all clear and distinct perceptions are understood as limited knowledge, these perceptions are unavoidably regarded as knowledge justified only by externalism. However, Descartes himself nor theorists claiming this interpretation did not want such consequence. This paper concludes that the attempts to solve Descartes’s vicious circle examined in this paper are not successful for the reason that it depends on the unconvincing concept of knowledge.

Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, which has made significant contributions to the formation of the economic and political order of contemporary society, has recently been interpreted as ‘divine providence’ by several researchers who focused on the religious context of Smith’s thought. These studies, however, do not pay much attention to the role played by individuals in the process of providence being implemented socially. Joseph Butler, a renowned theologian and moralist in eighteenth-century Britain, systematically presented the way divine providence is embodied within human nature with a relatively natural and secular language and an empirical approach, unlike conventional Christian theologians. This paper, by comparing Smith’s theory of human nature with Butler’s, attempts to reconstruct the way Smith understood how providence works at the level of human nature, and explore the ethical implications underlying his concept of ‘invisible hand’.