Lecture
LUCIP Colloquium "Tough Compassion: Chŏng Yagyong’s Political Theory of Meritocracy"
- Date
- Tuesday 1 July 2025
- Time
- Location
-
P.J. Veth
Nonnensteeg 1-3
2311 VJ Leiden - Room
- 0.07
The Leiden Center for Intercultural Philosophy (LUCIP) is pleased to announce a lecture by Prof. dr. Sungmoon Kim, Chair Professor of Political Philosophy and Director of the Center for East Asian and Comparative Philosophy at the City University of Hong Kong.
Abstract
In this talk, I present Chŏng Yagyong’s vision of a new public world in terms of meritocracy. I argue that Chŏng’s meritocratic vision of the public world led him to champion absolute kingship as the pivot of legal order and political stability that could undergird economic meritocracy and merit-based citizenship. Central to my claim is that in attempting to remake the public world from a meritocratic standpoint, Chŏng critically departed from the Mencian ideal of humane government. While the Mencian ideal of humane government singles out the ruler’s commiserating heart-mind as the locomotive of good government, which gives priority to the well-being of the worst-off members of society, Chŏng’s meritocratic model requires the ruler to be a man of “tough compassion,” whose care for the people must be expressed through the law and public policy that can make the state rich and orderly. I show that Chŏng’s desire to make the state rich and orderly drove him to valorize economic meritocracy over equal distribution of wealth, further leading him to espouse a citizenship accessible only to the contributing members of society.
All are welcome!