Religion as an Epistemic Challenge: The Confucian Response in Early 20th-Century Korea

Abstract

This article interrogates the question “Is Confucianism a religion?” by shifting attention from definitional debates to the epistemological dynamics that shaped the historical emergence of this question in early 20th-century East Asia. Rather than evaluating Confucianism’s compatibility with standard definitions of religion, the study explores why such a framing was pursued in the first place. It argues that the encounter between Confucianism and the Western category of “religion” was not merely a matter of terminological translation, but a conceptual collision that gave rise to new epistemic categories and practical responses. By analyzing how Korean Confucian scholars—particularly Park Eun-sik, Yi Seung-hui, and Yi Byeong-heon—appropriated the concept of religion, the paper shows that the religionization of Confucianism functioned as a civilizational strategy amid national crisis. These thinkers did not adopt religion as a passive label, but as an active framework to rearticulate Confucian values, institutions, and missions within a modern register. However, their efforts also produced a categorical inversion, where Confucianism was subordinated under the very religious framework it sought to instrumentalize. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that the Confucian religion movement was not a misapplication of Western ideas, but an epistemological and practical response triggered by the encounter with the civilized Other. In doing so, it offers an interpretive account of Confucianism’s refracted trajectory in modern society—a path forged by its historical encounter with the category of “religion.”