Sino-Korean word from 哲學, from 哲 (“wise”) + 學 (“study”). Orthographic borrowing from Japanese 哲学 (tetsugaku), which was coined by Nishi Amane in 1874.
First attested in Korean in 1888, but apparently only truly popularized after the establishment of the Japanese protectorate in 1905. The earliest known attestation of the word clearly equivalent to the Western sense of "philosophy" dates to 1906. James Scarth Gale's English-Korean dictionary translated philosophy only as 리학 (理學, rihak) in its 1897 edition. In a 1911 republishing, Gale added 철학, becoming the first dictionary to attest the term.
The Korean scholar Yu Kil-chun, writing before the adoption of the Japanese term, variously described Western philosophers as engaging in 도덕학 (道德學, dodeokhak) for e.g. Socrates and Plato, 궁리학 (窮理學, gungnihak) for e.g. Aristotle and Hegel, and 성리학 (性理學, seongnihak) for e.g. William Hamilton and Herbert Spencer. These terms were largely displaced by 철학 and other standard Japanese usages.
| Romanizations | |
|---|---|
| Revised Romanization? | cheolhak |
| Revised Romanization (translit.)? | cheolhag |
| McCune–Reischauer? | ch'ŏrhak |
| Yale Romanization? | chel.hak |