NDPR Philip J. Ivanhoe and Hwa Yeong Wang Korean Women Philosophers and the Ideal of a Female Sage: Essential Writings of Im Yungjidang and Gang Jeongildang

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2025.09.8 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Philip J. Ivanhoe and Hwa Yeong Wang, Korean Women Philosophers and the Ideal of a Female Sage: Essential Writings of Im Yungjidang and Gang Jeongildang, Oxford University Press, 2023, 304 pp., $30.99 (pbk) ISBN 9780197508695.

Reviewed by Erin M. Cline, Georgetown University

“Are there any lineages of women philosophers in Confucianism?” When students in my Chinese Philosophy classes ask this question, I enjoy answering yes. Now, I am delighted to be able to assign the work of the philosophers I tell them about. This book collects and translates, for the first time, the work of the first and only explicit lineage of Confucian women philosophers: Im Yunjidang (1721-1793) and Gang Jeongildang (1772-1832).[1] They are rooted in the Korean Confucian tradition, a much-neglected but extraordinarily rich and sophisticated branch of Confucianism that has had a deep and enduring impact in East Asia. Im...