From wife to moral teacher: Kang chǒngildang on neo-confucian self-cultivation

This paper aims to investigate the philosophical thought and moral practice of a Korean neo-Confucian female scholar named Kang Chngildang (1772-1832), who not only believed in moral equality between men and women and the possibility of female sagehood but actually empowered herself to become a moral paragon. Furthermore, Chngildangs strong faith in moral equality between men and women enabled her to engage in social criticism of the existing educational system and social norms which discriminated against women, not by overcoming neo-Confucianism, commonly understood as essentially androcentric and patriarchal, but by wholeheartedly embracing and further re-appropriating it in the service of womens moral self-empowerment and moral perfectibility. After explicating why Chngildang nonetheless subscribed to gendered roles and female virtue with reference to her neo-Confucian worldview, I suggest that she can be called a harbinger of Confucian feminism. © 2014 Taylor and Francis.