• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.145
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• pp.1-43
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• 2018

This article intends to look for the desirable form of Confucian familism in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution. First of all, the concept of the fourth industrial revolution is a very vague concept. Therefore, it would be more meaningful to analyze the situation of the family in present Korean society and to find an alternative to it in Confucian familism. But the problem is that it is very burdensome to bring out the Confucian familism idea again. Since Confucian Confucianism was criticized in 1915 during the New Cultural Movement, many people have criticized Confucian familism as patriarchal and authoritarian, and thus an anti-democratic value that seriously damaged the equality of men and women. Therefore, the discussion starts with looking at the justification of such an evaluation. I wanted to see if their evaluation of Confucian familism is legitimate or an unjustified evaluation resulting from misunderstanding, and if it is an inappropriate evaluation, where they are based. In addition, I examined whether the cause of such an evaluation was attributed to the subject who made the evaluation, or because the spectrum of significance contained in the Confucian familism thought formed over 2500 years was too wide. I sought to reassess criticism of the existing Confucian familism by looking for answers to these questions. Through such a reevaluation, I has found that the wrong criticism of Confucian familism was because we saw the Confucian scholarship and the Confucian scholarship without distinguishing the ideological Confucianism from the Qin(秦) Dynasty. In the end, I tried to show that Confucian familism can function as an alternative to resolve family problems that are occurring in today's Korean society through the illuminating work of the ideas of Confucian familism.