This paper deals with the social thoughts of the Zhuangzi(莊子), one of the Philosophers and Hundred Schools in ancient China. In the twentieth century, the Zhuangzi was studied mainly on metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, but received little attention from the term ‘the jiang-hu or rivers-and-lakes’(江湖), which reveals his unique perspective on the social. The jiang-hu is a plain word that literally means rivers and lakes. However, in the context of the emergence of the word in the Zhuangzi, the unique meanings of “the tian-xia or Under Heaven”(天下) are revealed. If the tian-xia is basically a politico-spatial meaning of the extent where the emperor’s political power is affected, then the intent of that word indicate to the outside of that range. Of course, in ancient China, the rivers-and-lakes cannot be said to be a realistic social space. Also, it does not describe in detail what kind of institutions and norms construct the community. Nevertheless, the rivers-and-lakes seems to have sufficient meaning as a means of resistance and criticism against the centralized power order that was in place at that time. For this reason, the concept of the rivers-and-lakes presented by the Zhuangzi is not presented as a blueprint for a society but is defined as imagination. But imagination is not just fiction. It is ‘imagination’ because it can be a reality like the modern society we live in today, but it is not systematic and concrete. In this paper, I tried to describe the unique social and ideological meaning and background of his concept of the rivers-and-lakes. First, the Zhuangzi criticized ‘the tien-xia’ as a centralized system led by the Legalists and Confucians at that time, and tried to reveal that he imagined a new society called Kang Ho. Second, the rivers-and-lakes was expressed as a “community of friends” formed by voluntary mutual agreement of people with uncommon characters. This meaning and historical context of ‘the rivers-and-lakes’ received little attention in the academic circle of the 20th century, and I wanted to reveal that it is an area of interest in future research. The the rivers-and-lakes, comparable to the western word, ‘society’, is thought to be a useful concept to reexamine the socio-political thoughts of the Zhuangzi and the various social spheres in the past of East-Asian world. Although the rivers-and-lakes is still in use, its origin and meaning have never been discussed in academic circles. This paper presents the meaning and context that was first used in the Zhuangzi, and can be compared with the meaning of that word, which was used in various fields in the past. It is also expected to be an opportunity to stimulate new research in fields other than philosophy and thought.

This study aims to reveal the problems of the humanism and to suggest the educational alternatives. The critics on humanism have been increased recently from the two events. One is the environmental destructions that have been expressed by the name of Anthropocene. The other is the advents of the trans-humanism that could be realized by the development of artificial intelligence. The humanism became the new religion after the renaissance era and it made a boundary line between man and woman, white and colored, human and nature. Of course the former ruled and discriminate the latter. At last the human will become the god in the era of trans-humanism. The 『Diamond Sutra』 suggest the ideas to overcome the humanism by the 4 images(四相)-humanism. We can overcome the ego by the I(我相)- humanism. We can overcome the ‘human first’ by the man(人相)-humanism. We can overcome the ‘life priority’ by the life(衆生相)-humanism and the ‘perpetuity priority’ by the infinite(壽者相)-humanism. I suggest the 4 overcoming humanism curriculums by the 4 images in 『Diamond Sutra』. That are ‘to become the opponent’, ‘to become the animals and plants’, ‘to become the earth’ and ‘to become the nothing’.

This study has tried to understand the Jeju 4·3 Incident from the social structural viewpoint and subsequently proposed his personal views focusing on the principles that seem to have been relatively less stressed in the activities of liquidating the past history of Korean society and relatively neglected in the process of inquiring into the actual truth of the Jeju 4·3 Incident among the five basic principles of past liquidation: the principle of punishment on responsible persons, the principle of recurrence prevention, and the principle of continuous memory. This is because it was previously thought that the past can be completely liquidated when the wounds of the past caused by state violence is finally restored to the previous state after the historical, social, and religious judgments beyond the finite span of life or legal statute of limitations. Due to the nature of the stated intention and direction of this article, the discussion related to clarification of the truth, compensation of victims for damages and losses, and their rehabilitation cannot help but be overlooked to some extent. However, this discussion must never be interpreted as unnecessary or unimportant. On the contrary, such a discussion needs to be considered and implemented sooner than the issues that were focused on in this article. Indeed, since the discussion of the Jeju 4·3 Incident has so far been centered on the issues, the author may attempt to address the issues that are otherwise relatively easy to neglect.

Tongdo temple became one of global tourist attractions after being nominated as UNESCO World Heritage. This study poses an issue that the observers who tour Tongdo temple are not able to perceive a spacio-temporal aesthetic impression that was applied in the traditional architecture. Through this, this study aims to highlight a temporal value associated with the society of the Silla era that had been pervaded in traditional architectural space of Tongdo temple. Tongdo temple projects a variety of social and political events of all periods from its establishment to current. It is a hope that this study would contribute to heighten the cultural value of traditional architecture by deriving the thoughts associated with past timeline that was entailed into the space, and by dissolving a common sense of Tongdo temple, which is an old temple of the Silla era. In the space of Tongdo temple, various timelines exist as the integrated form because Buddhism was politically settled in the Silla society such as ‘Buddhism for Country related to Seondeok Dynasty’, ‘Integration of ancient three-forked flower crown and Buddhism’ and ‘Multi-temporal illusion of architectural painting’. Such timelines have been melted in the materials and spaces that appeared by implementing the political and social events of the times through historical records associated with Tongdo temple. Therefore, this study has a significance in that it enhanced the aesthetic impression of Tongdo temple tour by discussing the temporal architectural culture that must be perceived socially after extracting the space that can be seen synchronically through historical records on top of architecture of Tongdo temple that diachronically see.

This study firstly analyzes the old Korean historical geographical approach about decentralization by rule of multi ethnic groups which is associated with their autonomy, rather than single ethnic and lineage centralized authoritarian rule. Secondly, it reviews periodical changes of administrative boundaries for decentralization and suggests 8 province system that is already validated. Koryo dynasty and previous Kingdoms consisted of multi ehtnic group, which strongly ruled their local areas even though reorganizing local administrative boundary. However, in Chosun dynasty, King sent local governor, in place of him to rule over with his strong centralized power. Through this, the Chosen dynasty created multi lineage groups to be ranked. And this ranking system led a society with an order based on Confucianism. The dynasty reorganized 8 provincial administrative boundary to rule the ethnic groups, weakening the autonomy. Against Japanese rule, awareness of single ethnic was aroused, increasing the independent movement, but Japanese imperial government enforced centralized colonial rule. After liberalization, Korean military government has been always the same. In order to solve the problem of population growth, Korea should move toward a multi cultural society, which is based on 8 provincial decentralized autonomous model, being evidence of foreign labors and family groups. The model effects on civil groups making better harmony of the free market and state in post-modern society.