• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.37
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• pp.229-262
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• 2021

The debate on the treatment of animals has accelerated as a social issue in the West since the 1970s. In 1975, Peter Singers argued in his book, Animal Liberation, that speciesism should be banned. This led to an explosion in research on animal welfare in the philosophical and social sciences. Following Singer, Tom Regan suggested considering the animal rights as being on the same level as human rights. Their arguments were that animals should be imbued with some intrinsic weight sufficient enough to remind humans of their social responsibility to animals at least to a certain degree. In this regard, social responsibility for animal welfare as well as animal rights has formed an axis that organizes human morality in modern society. Such arguments regarding animal welfare can be perceived as an active and creative effort which accords with the free will of human beings who in Daesoon Thought are understood as facing the era of human nobility. This argumentation also aligns with the doctrine of grievance-resolution for mutual beneficence as a practical creed due to the way in which modern bioethics implies that animal welfare could become a practical communal morality integrated into legal systems prior to adoption as a system of individual morality. From within this context, this study discusses the nature and limits of modern animal welfare and animal rights from the perspective of the grievance-resolution which Kang Jeungsan promised to animals.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.28
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• pp.133-163
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• 2017

It is the aim of this paper to elucidate the meaning of 'Sangsaeng' in Daesoon Thought on the basis of its relation to Life and Spirit in the philosophy of Hegel. To achieve this aim, this article compares three important concepts from Daesoon Thought, namely the 'gods of heaven and earth,' 'Haewon', and 'Sangsaeng' with Hegel's 'Life,' 'Spirit,' and the 'struggle for recognition.' This paper will clarify the commonalities as well as the differences between Daesoon Thought and Hegelian philosophy. The comparison between Hegel's concept of 'life' and the 'gods of heaven and earth' shows a specific relationship between a life and a soul which is characterized by duality. The point of similarity is that the two thoughts regards the soul as the basis of all things in nature including the life itself and spirit. This is the duality of the soul in nature and spirit as the truth of nature. But the difference is that Hegel does not reduce all things in nature including life itself to the soul as the truth of nature. This paper will argue that Hegel's idea of spirit returning from nature to itself has a similarity with the essence of Haewon in Haewon-sangsaeng. Hegel insists that spirit submerges initially in nature just as human beings in Daesoon Thought have inherent Won. The realization of the spirit in the Subjective Spirit shows that the spirit sublimates this initial submergence in nature und reveals itself in corporeality. This study will suggest that this realization of spirit including the struggle for recognition may be interpreted as the meaning of Sangsaeng.