함석헌 노장이해의 특징

Abstract

Ham Seok-heon (13 March 1901~4 February 1989) was a civil rights activist committed to human rights and non-violence during the period of Japanese colonial rule, Soviet military government, and Korean military dictatorship. His commitment to human rights, democracy, non-violence, and pacifism earned him the name, ‘the Gandhi of Korea,’ and the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and 1985. Ham was also a Korean liberal thinker who tried to combine Christianity with various Eastern philosophical perspectives in order to find Korea’s spiritual identity and produce new values. He considered Japanese imperialism and Korean dictatorship as a product of modern totalitarianism, and he found and developed important ideas to overcome totalitarianism and keep pacifism among East Asian thoughts, especially in Taoism, although his ideological foundation was Christianity. This paper mainly analyzes this point with a focus on Ham’s idea of ‘Sewer’. In his view of Korean history, Ham uniquely interpreted the historical experiences and mission of Korean people, referring to Korea as the ‘Sewer’ of World History. The idea of ‘Sewer’ can be construed as a ‘Place’ in Ham’s thought and teleological view of history, in that it refers to a convergence of Korean past historical-cultural experiences and future ideals, and in a way, it means the ultimate goal, salvation of humanity, throughout history. * Gyeongsang National Univ. To illuminate this idea, above all, I investigate Ham’s distinctive concept of Ssial (seed grains), which means ‘the people’ as the historical subject, who keep fundamental life in themselves like seed grains. Ham also matched it with some concepts of ‘weakness’ ‘humbleness’ ‘benevolence’ in Laozi. Ham believed only suffering people can sympathize with other people’s suffering, and that is why God gave the Korean people lots of adversities in their history, as a ‘Sewer’ of World History. Therefore, ‘weak’ and ‘humble’ Korean people, groaned under despotism and totalitarianism, could carry their cross, ‘love’ other people, and so achieve world peace in the truest sense. Ham was also an inspiration to many various anti-authoritarianism or pro-democracy movements in Korea, in terms of suggesting various approaches including ecology, syncretism, liberation theology, and so on.