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Earth Consciousness as Reflected in Kim Ji-Ha’s Philosophy of Life and Its Significance

  • Cross-Cultural Studies
  • 2026, 77(), pp.421~447
  • Publisher : Center for Cross Culture Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Literature
  • Received : January 10, 2026
  • Accepted : February 9, 2026
  • Published : February 28, 2026

Lee Sun-Hee 1

1경희대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study aims to analyze Kim Ji-ha's life philosophy, focusing on his reflections on the Earth and interpreting the Earth consciousness embedded within, along with its significance. It examines how Kim's Earth consciousness is articulated into a coherent logic within the framework of his life thought. By comparing it with the perspectives of Bruno Latour and Dipesh Chakrabarty, the study clarifies the distinctive features of Kim's understanding of the Earth. Kim Ji-ha's life philosophy, which deepens ecological thinking, reveals several forms of Earth consciousness. First, Kim expands his ethical horizon beyond a morality confined to human life, embracing a view that encompasses cosmic life. In this epistemic widening, consciousness of the Earth becomes a crucial medium of thought. He creatively reinterprets Gaia theory, which views the Earth as a living organism, and by conceptualizing life as the flow of gi (氣), he transforms the Earth from a mere physical object of knowledge into a cultural and discursive concern. Furthermore, by incorporating an Earth-system engineering perspective, he broadens a viewpoint that had previously remained within human society, deepening it into a cosmic life philosophy. As a result, through a re-conceptualization of humanity, he emphasizes an Earth ethics of Mosim (serving with reverence) and Salim (enlivening). In contrast to Latour and Chakrabarty, who perceive the Earth and humanity as separable entities, Kim regards the Earth and humanity as relational beings bound in an inseparable nexus. He positions the Earth as an interlocutor of resonance and communication, underscoring the ecological-ethical subject. Kim Ji-ha's Earth consciousness possesses a discursive contemporaneity, anticipating the problem-consciousness prevalent in posthumanist debates and Anthropocene discourse. It is particularly future-oriented, recognizing the Earth through a lens of convergence and integration—overcoming disciplinary compartmentalization by combining reason, emotion, and spirituality, while fusing thought, science, and religion. His approach to the Earth as a living being—granting spirituality to its materiality and seeking to Mosim and serve it—holds significant value as an ecological ethic. Regardless of whether its factuality or practicability can be fully validated, it renews the understanding of the Earth, which has often been treated solely as an object of reason and science, and calls for an active transformation of consciousness aimed at alleviating the current crisis.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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