RE: The Last Lesson of Lee O-young
This English version was translated by a large language model and may not perfectly match the original Korean text.
When we are truly spending time well, we often feel reluctant to let it pass—precisely because it feels so precious. Reading this book felt like that for me. Afraid that missing even a single word might cost me a piece of wisdom I could have gained, I read it carefully, as if holding a handful of sand in my palm, making sure not to let any grains slip through. The Last Lesson of Lee O-young is very much a book where Lee’s own perspective and teachings shine. Because it takes the form of an interview, it approaches the reader with a conversational intimacy. Across sixteen chapters, Lee and journalist Kim Ji-soo move through a remarkably wide range of subjects—individual life, society, death, technology, institutions, history, and more.
Embarrassingly enough, I had never read any of Lee’s writings before. Even so, I was quickly captivated by the unique way he constructs and communicates his own intellectual world. When faced with abstract questions, he dives immediately into concrete interpretation through vast knowledge. His style of speaking—moving across disciplines, weaving in metaphors and anecdotes—gives the reader a kind of intellectual pleasure. I began to understand why he is called a moral elder of the era.
Among the many ideas discussed, the lesson that stayed with me most was this: do not ask big questions. Until now, I had always wanted to find answers that could encompass all discourse at once. If I could identify the essential common ground across different events, I thought I would be able to apply it anywhere. But Lee says that answers to big questions are always the same. Because the question is broad, the answer inevitably becomes broad as well—so broad that it floats above reality without much meaning. This struck me deeply. When you start with a grand question, it is often unclear where to even begin answering. Only when you begin from something concrete and natural can a distinctive interpretation emerge. Of course, he probably does not mean that we should never ask big questions. Rather, he suggests thinking bottom-up—so that even when we eventually reach broader questions, we avoid giving empty, obvious answers.
It also made me reflect on writing itself. Having worked across many forms of creative expression, Lee says that writing begins anew each time by stepping over the emptiness and wounds left by previous writing. He also insists that a writer must possess a fierce ego of their own for the writing to be worth reading. At the same time, he introduces a line from Baudelaire:
“Lord, let me write one beautiful line of poetry to prove that I am not merely one number among them.”
Reading all this, I came to think that writing, for humans, is ultimately both the desire and the means to express oneself. The moment something is written down, it becomes uniquely one’s own. That is why people feel compelled to pull thoughts from their inner world and put them into words. Perhaps that is also why it is so difficult to develop a habit of writing. Writing is a conscious act. To create something that is truly one’s own requires deliberate will, while a habit is something we perform automatically, without conscious thought. And yet we must write throughout our lives. Just as breathing is necessary for biological life, writing is necessary for a person to truly exist as an individual rather than remain, as Baudelaire put it, merely a number. In that sense, just as a person who stops breathing dies biologically, a person who never writes may be said to have died ontologically. Lee describes writing as a three-step process: interest, observation, and relation. In other words, writing is the act by which the self meets the world, forming a relationship that leaves the trace of the self within the world of others.
The final realization I took from the book is that pain and learning are inseparable. One story that appears repeatedly throughout the book is that of Philoctetes. After being wounded on the journey home from the Trojan War, the Greek hero Philoctetes was abandoned on a deserted island with only his bow. For ten years he endured pain and survived alone. Later, when his former companions discovered that the bow was Apollo’s divine weapon, they returned intending to steal it back. But upon witnessing the transcendent figure Philoctetes had become through ten years of suffering, they instead honored him and brought both him and the bow back with them. The point is simple: the wound and the bow are one. The wound represents the trials we endure in life; the bow represents the knowledge gained as their price. People often wish to obtain the result while avoiding the suffering. But like Philoctetes, only when a wound has been endured long enough does the bow acquire its true value. The works and ideas of artists and thinkers who lived difficult lives often resonate through history precisely because they carry the weight of those lives. That is why I try to choose the harder path rather than the easier one. Only through failure and hardship, I have realized, does learning become real.
There were many other passages I felt I should return to and reflect upon. As I said at the beginning, this is a book that offers precious wisdom. Yet as Spinoza once said, wisdom cannot be transmitted. Perhaps what I received from Lee’s life and wisdom amounts to no more than a speck compared to its true weight. That is why it feels like a book worth opening again from time to time. Each time, perhaps, I will be able to measure—through this book—how much wisdom I have managed to grow.