太極思想에서 본 女性參與의 存在論的 含意 = The Existential Implicit Meaning of Women's Participation from the Viewpoint of the Taeguk Theory

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper is to examine the existential implicit meaning of women's participation through the Taeguk theory and at the same time to explore the rising phenomena of women's participation in the context of the great transition of civilization. Taeguk in cosmology is the very orgin of all things, i.e., an ultimate reality, the theory of which, based on its fundamentality, inclusiveness, harmony and unity, explains the creation and development of the universe as the yin-yang priciple of complementarity. At this point of time entering upon the great transition period of civilization, the attempt to examine intrinsically the phenomena of women's participation in existential dimensions will be of help to understand the new paradigm of civilization.
The Taeguk theory concerning the fundamental principle of the universe gets us to face up to the fact that all things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole; as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality, and thus implies the road to a true being. Women's participation as the equal subject is not only the passage to women's self-realization, but is also the passage to the systhesis of yin and yang. It is to embody a real welfare society by erecting the legal system based on the equality of the sexes and bridging the gap between de jure equality and de facto equality. This explains exactly the fact that women's participation is the road to the emancipation of women and at the same time the emancipation of human being.
How, then, is women's participation closely connected with the emancipation of women and further with the emancipation of human being? We here have tp face up to the nature of sexual discrimination problem. Sexual discrimination, like class distinction or racial discrimination, etc., comes of lack of spiritual identity. That is, it stems from lack of insight into the basic oneness of the universe - that the constituents of matter and the basic phenomena involving them are all interconnected, interrelated and interdependent; that they cannot be understood as isolated entities, but only as integrated parts of the whole. Only in a state of consciousness where individuality dissolves into an undifferentiated oneness, where subject and object fuse into a unified undifferentiated whole, a participatory universe, in its truest sense, arises.
The rising phenomena of women's participation can be viewed in the context of the great transition of planetary dimensions. This transition involves what is now often called a "paradigm shift" - a profound change in the thoughts, perceptions, and values that form a particular vision of reality. We now need an ecological perspective which the mechanistic world view of Cartesian-Newtonian science does not offer. In this context, the feminist movement followed on the decline of patriarchy is one of the strongest cultural currents of our time and will have a profound effect on our further evolution. The ultimate goal of women's participation will be the realization of the new paradigm of civilization. That is, in a word, to realize the systems view of life.