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 April 10-12, 2008
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April 10-12, 2008
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The Importance of the Art of Living Kah Kyung Cho
University at Buffalo
Til Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
These famous lines of Rudyard Kipling were often cited, yet often taken out of context. Any reader discouraged at first may, however, with a little patience, be uplifted to hear a much different message in the immediately following verse:
But there is neither East nor West, Border, or Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
(Rudyard Kipling, The Ballad of the East and the West, 1899)
Born in India under the colonial rule of England, Kipling passionately glorified British imperialism. He was even decried as a “racist” for portraying Indians and other colonized people as “incapable of surviving without the help of Europeans”. It is a fact that he believed, never questioning the basic nature of colonial politics, that the British rule would bring blessings to Indians. But it is also a fact that his art of storytelling, poem and satire surpassed the bounds of Realpolitik, warning the danger of colonizing native people as well as showing the path to a heroic reconciliation among different races.
The Ballad of the East and the West is a saga of “Kamal” and “The Colonel’s son”, one brown and one white solider fighting for what they believe in. But they give up their thirst for each other’s blood when they come closer and gaze at each other “between the eyes”. Both men are momentarily swept by the sense of respect for the bravery and sense of duty that adorn and elevate them to equal height.
As European colonial empires collapsed in the mid-20th century, much of Kipling’s work fell far out of step with the times. But his amply demonstrated sympathy for the world of children, and his prophetic vision of the uniformity and equanimity that subsist among all mankind still remain. Today, the character of the two fictional soldiers from the “ends of the earth” speaks to us livelier than the lore of the two worlds left standing in the opening verse of the Ballad.
Our task at hand is to re-think the philosophical premises of East-West understanding in today’s global setting. In so doing, we draw from Kipling’s Ballad as a paradigm of “successfully” bridging as big a gulf as the East-West divide. What it teaches us is the exalted virtue of soldierly bravery that has literally transported the two strangers to the high ground where they recognize themselves as “equals”.
However, outside of this sanctuary of epic harmony, a different kind of disparity between East and West looms compared to a century ago. Ironically, it is Kipling himself who, even as a votary of Eurocentrism, seems to condescend to a new reality and expect an acquittal from the East in the form of a moral wisdom:
The West can teach the East how to get a living, but the East must
Eventually be asked to show the West how to live.
(R. Kipling, THEYI HSIEH, Chinese Epigrams Inside Out and Proverbs, Exposition Press, 1948, 588)
Does it matter that these words do not come directly from Kipling? It is not evidence enough that the proverb resonated with him to such a degree that he handpicked and published it with his signature as the editor? Kipling couldn’t have agreed more with the first half, but he would have endorsed the second half of the epigram even more wholeheartedly.
Now the real challenge for us students of comparative study of philosophy is to respond to the question the author of the Ballad of the East and the West has raised. Even if the question had not been raised by him or, for that matter, by anybody in the West, the East should have been vigilant and kept the question alive, if for no other reason than to safeguard the “survival” of Eastern philosophy. To the Eastern world, the knowledge required for “making a living” was never in the same category as the art to live in accordance with the principles of propriety, human-heartedness and eco-ethical harmony with the larger universe.
For too long, the modern East has been preoccupied with the question of how to make a living. This limited and specialized pursuit of happiness was facilitated by the potent Western science, technology and economy, which all contributed to the success of life, albeit within limits. As a result, the classical ideal of the simple life that placed purity of heart above physical contentment has all but been eclipsed. We know that both the old and new values have become, in their extreme forms, dysfunctional. Thus a new ground rule must be observed. Letting Kipling speak in “reverse perspective” of what he has been known to stand for is an effective strategy. The need to learn from the “art of living” is not something that a comparative philosophy can easily foist upon the mind of an average westerner. The door must be let open from within.
-- Curriculum Vitae --
Academic Background
Born in Seoul, educated at Seoul National University
1952-57, Study of philosophy in Heidelberg, Germany, Ph.D. 1957
1957-69, Taught at Seoul National University
1970- Appointed as successor to Marvin Farber at the State University of New York at Buffalo
1994- SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor
Experience
Fulbright exchange scholar, Yale University 1961-62
Fellow of Branford College, Yale University 1961
Fulbright Visiting Asian Professor, Buffalo and 6 other universities 1962-63
Alexander von Humboldt Professor, Frankfurt, Germany 1976, Bochum, Germany 1983
Visiting Professor at Austin, Texas 1977
Visiting Professor at Osaka, Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science 1990
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Soong Sil University, Seoul 1991
Publications
Philosophy of Existence, Seoul 1961, 1995 (13th edition)
Philosophy and Science in Phenomenological Perspective, ed. Dordrecht 1984
Bewusstsein und Natursein (Consciousness and Nature) Freiburg 1987
Japanese edition, Tokyo 1994
Phenomenology of Nature, ed. Freiburg 1999
Phenomenology in Korea, ed. Freiburg 2001
Essays on East-West Dialogue in Phenomenology, Kyoto 2008 (in print)
Over 90 articles in various languages (Korean, Japanese, Italian, German, English) on topics in the area of phenomenology, hermeneutics and East West comparative philosophy.
Other
Editorial Board, Husserl Studies
General Editor (with Y. Nitta and H.R. Sepp) Orbis Phaenomenologicus
Invited Speaker at the XXII World Congress of Philosophy, 2008, Seoul
Professor Cho's Webpage at University at Buffalo
Website constructed and maintained by Douglas Shrader / Department Chair Philosc@Oneonta.edu March 31, 2008
