• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.39
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• pp.175-214
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• 2021

In the Joseon Dynasty, Confucian literati sacralized their daily lives through ritual practices across the three dimensions of time, place, and humanity. 1) In the dimension of time, they cultivated in their personal lives by accepting and thoroughly practicing the ethical principles of the Elementary Learning (『小學』). These practices of self-cultivation developed into ritualized practices of daily routine from the perspective of neo-Confucianism. 2) In the spatial dimension, local public schools (鄕校), local private academies (書院), and village private schools (書塾) were constructed as the symbolic places for disseminating Confucian norms through intensive seminar activities and collective learning sessions (講會). These places were also used for the pious recitations of selected Confucian proverbs that had been ritualized by Confucian literati. 3) In the dimension of humanity, pious consciousness, reinforced by the ritualized practice of periodic sacrifices or intensive reading, was subconsciously deepened and projected onto dreams individuals reported of their deceased fathers or teachers. According to the Confucian ritualization process, people were seen as being able to sanctify their daily lives by thoroughly internalizing and effectively realizing Confucian values.