Deep Ecology of Eastern Learning, Donghak

Donghak 東學 (Eastern Learning), founded by Su-Un 水雲 (崔濟愚, 1824–1864) in nineteenth-century Korea, emerged amid external pressures from Western imperial expansion and Japanese colonial encroachment, as well as internal crises within late Joseon Confucian society. As an indigenous Korean religious–philosophical movement, Donghak synthesizes Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism with elements of Christian theology into a distinctive life-centered East Asian cosmology. Its dialectical vision integrates Buddhist nonduality, the Confucian concept of reverence, and Korean indigenous spirituality. Dr. Oh focuses on the Korean concepts of hanul (the sacred Heaven) and salim (enlivening), articulating a relational ontology of existence and highlighting how Donghak offers a philosophically engaged mode of practice. Central to this worldview is hanul as an immanent yet personal divine presence encountered through Su-Un’s practice of si-cheon-ju (侍天主, “serving hanul”). The second Donghak leader, Hae-Wol 海月 (崔時亨, 1827–1898), further developed a theo-anthropo-cosmic ethic of triple reverence (samgyeong 三敬)—for Heaven, humans, and myriad things. In dialogue with Alfred North Whitehead and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, this talk explores Donghak reverence as a deep ecological vision that challenges anthropocentric and colonial subalternization of the more-than-human world and offers an alternative ethical horizon for addressing contemporary ecological crises.

Dr. Jea Sophia Oh specializes in Asian and comparative philosophy, philosophical theology, environmental ethics, and feminist decolonial studies. Her monograph, A Postcolonial Theology of Life: Planetarity East and West (2011), pioneers Korean ecofeminist theology through a dialogue between A. N. Whitehead’s process thought and Donghak (Eastern Learning). She has also co-edited and contributed to Nature’s Transcendence and Immanence (2017), Suffering and Evil in Nature (2021), Emotions in Korean Philosophy and Religion (2022), and Greening Philosophy of Religion (2024). Dr. Oh is currently completing her forthcoming monograph, Korean Goddesses and Cultural Narratives: A Feminist Thealogical Hermeneutic for Planetary Care (Bloomsbury, 2026).