Donghak
from 1860
Heaven is inside every person, including the ones at the bottom, and a movement founded on that ended in a peasant war.
- Active
- from 1860
- Where
- Korea
- Also
- 동학 Donghak
- Status
- living
- Tradition
- Japanese And Korean
The claim
Innaecheon — humans are heaven. The divine is not above and outside but within each person, which makes hierarchy based on birth indefensible.
What it held
Choe Jeu founded Donghak in 1860 as Eastern Learning, explicitly against Seohak — Western Learning, meaning Catholicism — while sharing its egalitarian implications and much of its appeal to the same constituency.
The teaching is compact. Bear heaven within you. Treat others as you would treat heaven, since it is in them too. That is stated at a moment when Korean society was rigidly stratified by birth, and the second head of the movement made the point unmistakable by freeing his own slaves and having them adopted into families.
The philosophy draws on Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist material and on the shamanic tradition, and refuses to be only any of them.
Choe Jeu was executed for heresy in 1864. The movement grew anyway, and in 1894 the Donghak Peasant Revolution demanded land reform, the abolition of slavery and an end to corrupt local government. The Korean government asked China for help; Japan sent troops as well; the rebellion was crushed and the resulting Sino-Japanese war began the sequence that ended in Korea's annexation.
The movement continues today as Cheondoism.
How it argued
Teaching in vernacular Korean rather than classical Chinese, with chanted formulas and a written scripture composed for people who could not read Chinese.
What it was arguing against
Catholicism as a foreign import, the neo-Confucian status hierarchy, and local officials whose corruption was the immediate grievance.
Where it disagreed with itself
Whether Donghak is a religion, a philosophy or a political movement — it has been all three at different moments and the sources disagree.
Common misconceptions
That it was simply anti-Western. It borrowed from Catholicism's egalitarianism while opposing its foreignness, which is a more interesting position than straightforward rejection.
How it began
Choe Jeu's religious experience in 1860, in a countryside suffering from famine, corrupt local administration and visible foreign pressure.
What became of it
Living as Cheondoism, with a much reduced following. Its 1894 rising is a founding event in Korean national memory.
Lasting influence
Korean nationalism and the 1919 independence movement, where Cheondoists were prominent among the signatories. Korean egalitarian thought generally.
Why it still matters
It is a clear case of a metaphysical claim about where the divine resides producing an immediate political conclusion about hierarchy.
Put another way
Heaven found inside the person who was told to bow.
Where to start
A history of the 1894 rising with the doctrine explained. The scriptures alone will not show what was at stake.
The surprising bit
The second leader, Choe Sihyeong, responded to the doctrine by freeing his own slaves — one he adopted as a daughter, the other as a daughter-in-law.
In their own words
Humans are heaven.
Treat people as you would treat heaven.
Connections
- Opposed by
- Cheng-Zhu School, Korean Toegye School
The verdict
A doctrine of inner divinity that its adherents took literally enough to rise against a state.