T. K. Seung
Thomas Kaehao Seung 승계호 | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 20, 1930 |
| Died | February 19, 2022(aged 91) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Platonism |
Main interests | Ethics,Political Philosophy,Philosophy of Law,Structuralism,Deconstruction,Hermeneutics |
Notable ideas | Cultural thematics, bedrock Platonism, the sovereign individual, Spinozistic epics |
T. K. Seung[a](September 20, 1930 – February 19, 2022) was a Korean-American philosopher and literary critic. His academic interests cut across diverse philosophical and literary subjects, includingethics,political philosophy,Continental philosophy,cultural hermeneutics,andliterary criticism.
Seung was a professor of Philosophy, Government, and Law at theUniversity of Texas at AustinCollege of Liberal Arts.[1]
Background
[edit]T. K. Seung was born on September 20, 1930, the eldest of three children, near the city ofChongjuinNorth Pyongan Province.He attended Chongju Middle School, where he was exposed to Western-style education. In 1947, he escaped fromNorth Korea,crossing the 38th parallel with a few friends. He settled inSeoul,South Korea,where he studied atSeoul High Schoolfor three years. He attendedYonsei Universityfor only one month before theKorean Warbroke out in June 1950, subsequently fleeing south toBusanahead of the advancing North Korean army.
After the end of theKorean War,on the personal recommendation of PresidentSyngman Rhee,Seung enrolled atYale Universityon a full scholarship under the sponsorship of the American-Korean Foundation and resumed his undergraduate studies in 1954. As resident ofTimothy Dwight Collegeand a student in theDirected Studiesprogram, he discovered the history of Western culture. He was introduced to the latest schools of thought such asexistentialism,New Criticism,and other intellectual movements. At Yale he was mentored by a number of famous professors, includingThomas G. Bergin,Cleanth Brooks,Brand Blanshard,andF.S.C. Northrop.He graduatedsumma cum laudein 1958 with a bachelor's degree inphilosophyand was elected toPhi Beta Kappa.He enteredYale Law School,but quit after one academic year, deciding instead to pursue doctoral studies in philosophy. While still a graduate student he wrote and published his first book,The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante's Master Plan,which proposed a new, "trinitarian" interpretation of theDivine Comedy.His Ph.D. thesis was later published as a book,Kant's Transcendental Logic.
In 1965, he received his Ph.D. and also married Kwihwan Hahn, a graduate ofJuilliardin piano performance. They have three children. His son,Sebastian Seung,is Professor at thePrinceton UniversityNeuroscience Institute and Department of Computer Science. His second son, KJ Seung, is Professor at the Harvard Medical School and the medical director at the Eugene Bell Foundation. His daughter, Florence Seung, is a psychiatrist. After teaching for a year atFordham University,Seung joined the philosophy department of theUniversity of Texas at Austinin 1966, where he was theJesse H. JonesProfessor in Liberal Arts, Professor of Philosophy, Government, and Law.[2][failed verification]In 1988, he was awarded the highest honor of Yale's graduate school alumni association—theWilbur Cross Medal.[3]Other winners have includedJohn Silber,Richard Rorty,Robert Putnam,Robert Dahl,Bartlett Giamatti,andStanley Fish.
In his career at the University of Texas at Austin, Seung published ten monographs, including books on Dante, Kant, Structuralism, Hermeneutics, Rawls, Plato, Nietzsche, Wagner, and Goethe. In the course of writing these books, he developed a methodology he called "cultural thematics," which he described "a cultural tradition" in which can be found "a constant interplay of existential themes or motifs, in analogy to a dramatic production or a musical composition." Seung emphasizes that "human existence is always inextricably culture-bound." Contrary to Heidegger, he insists, "my approach in cultural thematics openly stands on the historicist premise that every culture is the embodiment of an existential structure unique to itself" (Cultural Thematics, pp. x-xi). He would use this approach not only to interpret philosophical traditions of particular ages, such as the late Medieval Dante and Boccaccio, and later the Spinozistic German epics of the 19th century, but also to traditions that sometimes spanned centuries, such as the periodic recurrence of Platonic ideas in Kant and Rawls.
Seung taught broadly at the University of Texas, including for many years in its Plan II program. He was also a dissertation supervisor for David Lay Williams and Michael Locke McLendon.
Seung died on February 19, 2022, at the age of 91.[4]
Kant research
[edit]Seung was the author of three books about the German philosopherImmanuel Kantwritten over four decades. Seung's first book on Kant is titledKant's Transcendental Logic(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969) addresses issues raised in Kant'sFirst Critique.His second book about Kant isKant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) in which Seung criticizes Kant on the lack of consistency between the First Critique and theSecond Critiqueby Kant due to ambiguities between Kant'sontologicalconstructivismand hiseideticconstructivism.Seung's last book on Kant is a primer about studying Kant for students titled:Kant: A Guide for the Perplexed(London: Continuum, 2007).
Selected works
[edit]- Books
The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante's Master Plan(Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1962).
Kant's Transcendental Logic(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969).
Cultural Thematics: The Formation of the Faustian Ethos(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
Semiotics and Thematics in Hermeneutics(New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
Structuralism and Hermeneutics(New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
Intuition and Construction: The Foundation of Normative Theory(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
Plato Rediscovered: Human Value and Social Order(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).
Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra(Lanham, MD: Le xing ton Books, 2005).
Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner: Their Spinozan Epics of Love and Power(Lanham, MD: Le xing ton Books, 2006).
Kant: A Guide for the Perplexed(London: Continuum, 2007).
The Cultural Background of Western Philosophy(Seoul: Korean Academic Research Council, 2007).
- Articles
"Plural Values and Indeterminate Rankings," with Daniel Bonevac, inEthics799 (1992)
"Virtues and Values: A Platonic Account," inSocial Theory and Practice207 (1991)
"Kant's Conception of the Categories," inReview of Metaphysics107 (1989)
"Conflict in Practical Reasoning," with Daniel Bonevac,Philosophical Studies315: 53 (1988)
"Literary Function and Historical Context," inPhilosophy and Literature33: 4 (1980)
"Thematic Dialectic: A Revision of Hegelian Dialectic," inInternational Philosophical Quarterly417: 20 (1980)
"The Epic Character of theDivina Commediaand the Function of Dante's Three Guides, "inItalica352: 56 (1979)
"Semantic Context and Textual Meaning," inJournal of Literary Semantics,8:2 (1979)
Contributions
"Defeasible Reasoning and Moral Dilemmas," with Rob Koons, inDefeasible Deontic Logic,edited by Donald Nute (Springer, 1997)
"The Metaphysics of theCommedia,"inThe Divine Comedy and the Encyclopedia of Arts and Sciences,edited by G. Di Scipio and A. Scaglione (Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 1988)
"Kant," inThe Encyclopedia of Religion,edited by Mircea Eliade (New York: Free Press, 1987)
"The Philosophical Tradition in Korea," inTae Kwon Do Free Fighting,edited by Gaeshik Kim (Seoul: Nanam Publications, 1985)
"Bonaventura's Figural Exemplarism in Dante," inItalian Literature: Roots and Branches: Essays in honor of Thomas G. Bergin,edited by G. Rimanelli and K. Atchity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976)
Notes
[edit]- ^Originally romanized asT. K. Swing.
References
[edit]- ^"Profile for Thomas K Seung at UT Austin".
- ^Plato Rediscovered: Human Value and Social Order(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), p. 327.
- ^"Graduate School Awards & Prizes; Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences".
- ^"In Memoriam: T.K. Seung (1930–2022)".Leiter Reports.Retrieved26 December2023.
Further reading
[edit]- Balkin, J. M.: "Transcendental Deconstruction, Transcendent Justice,"Michigan Law Review,Vol. 92 (1994): 1131-86.
- Balkin, J. M.: "Being Just with Deconstruction",Social and Legal Studies,Vol. 3, No. 3 (1994): 393-404.
- Balkin, J. M.:Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
- Hede, Jesper:Reading Dante: The Pursuit of Meaning(Lanham, MD: Le xing ton Books, 2007).
- Hede, Jesper: "Ranking Types of Reading: Descriptive and Epic Readings in Dante Studies," inDante: A Critical Reappraisal (Nordic Dante Studies III),edited by Unn Falkeid (Oslo: Unipub, 2008).
- Williams, David Lay:Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment(Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).
