The Institute of Philosophy - 24th Conference (January 9)

We are pleased to announce that the 24th Conference of The Institute of Philosophy at Sungkyunkwan University will be held on Friday, January 9th, from 2:20 PM to 5:50 PM in Room 31604 (6th floor, Toegye Hall for Humanities). We cordially invite students and faculty members to attend. Date: Friday, January 9, 2026, 2:20 PM - 5:50 PM Venue: Sungkyunkwan University, Toegye Hall for Humanities, 6th Floor, Room 604 (#31604) Program: 2:20–2:30 Registration and Opening Remarks 2:30–3:30 Kyungnam Park (KAIST Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences; Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago) Kant's Doctrine of Right and Rawls's Political Liberalism 3:40–4:40 Wonjae Ha (Ph.D., Yonsei University) Meaning in Trouble 4:50–5:50 Chaeyoung Paek (Seoul National University; Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst) Autonomy as Ownership Kyungnam Park Title: Kant’s Doctrine of Right and Rawls’s Political Liberalism Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to criticize Krassnoff’s independence reading of Kant’s Doctrine of Right. Krassnoff defends the independence thesis that Kant’s political philosophy does not rely on Kant’s moral philosophy by deploying Rawls’s distinction between political liberalism and comprehensive liberalism. Krassnoff argues that Kant’s Doctrine of Right should be understood as a form of political liberalism in that the moral claims of the Doctrine of Right concern inherently political values rather than comprehensively moral values, which include non-political values as well as political values. In this paper, I argue that Krassnoff’s attempt to defend the independence thesis by characterizing Kant’s Doctrine of Right as political liberalism is not plausible for the following three interrelated reasons. First, there remains a conceptual conflict between the politically liberal aspects and the strong moral claims that Krassnoff ascribes to Kant’s Doctrine of Right. Second, relatedly, Kant’s Doctrine of Right should be characterized as containing comprehensively moral claims since its strong moral claims concerning the equal freedom of each citizen could not be accepted by citizens who support Hobbesian or other prudentialist theories of political justice. Third, I argue that the failure of Krassnoff’s strategy to defend the independence reading in terms of Rawls’s political liberalism is due in part to Krassnoff’s neglect of the tension between Rawls’s claim that political liberalism is independent of moral philosophy and the strong moral claims that Rawls’s political liberalism nevertheless requires by prioritizing public right over individual interests. Wonjae Ha Title: Meaning in Trouble Abstract: In this papaer, I argue that extension, as traditionally conceived, is not generalizable in the sense required for philosophically fundamental concepts. This yields a dilemma: either abandon the generalizability of the concept or give up the philosophical fundamentality of it. I propose a third route by combining Carnap's idea of extension with a Leibnizian notion of equivalence defined as the predicational equivalence. This proposal implies a view identifying extension with properties, which provides a uniform, generalizable notion of extension. Chaeyoung Paek Title: Autonomy as Ownership Abstract: The relational approach to autonomy holds that autonomy fundamentally depends on one’s social environment. I argue that existing relational accounts face a dilemma: they either set the bar too high, rendering autonomy unattainable, or define it in terms of a self-relationship so permissive that even manipulated or brainwashed actions may count as autonomous. To resolve this, I propose the ownership view of autonomy, which holds that autonomy depends on the degree to which one possesses and exercises ownership over one’s actions. On this view, social relationships shape ownership: when an agent is embedded in a relationship that normatively requires her to relinquish control over her actions, her autonomy is diminished. By tying autonomy to ownership, this account avoids the pitfalls of existing relational theories. If you have any questions regarding the event, please contact us at the information below. Research Director, Jeonggyu Lee / 02-760-0208 / jeonggyulee@skku.edu Research Assistant, Injin Woo / jaegoi53@gmail.com

[Alumni] Kim Jeonggyun, Byeon Yeongyeong, Lee Donggeon, and Lee Donghun Pass PhD Dissertation Examination(Fall Semester)

Kim Jeonggyun, Byeon Yeongyeong, Lee Donggeon, and Lee Donghun have successfully completed their PhD dissertation defenses. The titles of their PhD dissertations are as follows: Kim Jeonggyun: A Critical Examination of Fictional Realism: Focusing on the Problem of Negative Existential Statements Byeon Yeongyeong: A Study for a Phenomenology of Taste–Food Experience: Issues of Sensation and Perception in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Their Extensions Lee Donggeon: On Schopenhauer’s 'Better Cognition Leading to the Negation of the Will' Lee Donghun: A Critique of the Possibility of the Political Use of Artificial Intelligence: Focusing on Hannah Arendt’s Discussion The PhD degree is scheduled to be conferred in February 2026. Congratulations! *Only the photo of Kim Jeonggyun, who wished to have it posted, has been included.

Successful Completion of the 2025 Department of Philosophy Autumn Hiking Event

The 2025 Department of Philosophy Autumn Hiking Event was held on November 8. This year’s hike to Mt. Bukak brought together Professors Emeriti Hangoo Lee and Jwayong Lee, Professors Byeong Deok Lee, Min Seol, Jeonggyu Lee, and Seong Soo Park, along with 10 graduate students and 12 undergraduate students. It was a meaningful occasion that fostered intergenerational exchange and camaraderie. Thanks to everyone’s warm interest and enthusiastic participation, the event concluded successfully.

Photo from the SKKU–Nagoya University Student Exchange Workshop

The student exchange workshop, co-hosted by the Department of Philosophy at Sungkyunkwan University and the Departments of Philosophy and Informatics at Nagoya University, was held from November 1 to 3. https://sites.google.com/site/masashikasaki2/%E3%82%A4%E3%83%99%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88/philosophical-interchange-between-sungkyunkwan-and-nagoya-university?authuser=0 We would like to share some photos from the event below. Seong Soo Park: Gaslighting and Bullshit Min Cheol Seo: Proof, Computer and Mathematical Agent Gangwook Lyeo: From Text to Existence: The Circular Structure of Understanding Injin Woo: On the Reference of Social Groups under Reductive Materialism Jaehun Cho: From a Calculative Space toward the Meaningful Place: A Phenomenological Deconstruction of the Sungkyunkwan University Campus Donggeon Kim: What is Wrong with White Ignorance?: A Case against the ‘Environmental Model’ of Epistemic Normativity Masashi Kasaki: What is Epistemic Justification?