Ethical Imagination Beyond Violence and Gender: A Possibility of Virtue Ethics in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

This study examines Han Kang's The Vegetarian through an integrated framework of Michael Slote's empathy-based ethics of care and Martha Nussbaum's cognitive theory of emotion.By focusing on the interplay between affective empathy and cognitive moral judgment, this study explores how the novel reimagines moral agency beyond gender, violence, and human-centered boundaries.While existing scholarship has primarily emphasized trauma and gender politics, it has often overlooked proactive ethical dimensions by focusing on psychopathology or passive victimhood.This study addresses this gap by examining how Yeong-hye's ethical transformation expands the scope of moral imagination.Methodologically, this paper integrates close literary analysis into ethical frameworks to trace how Yeong-hye's transition to vegetarianism evolves from a private act of refusal into a sustained ethical practice-one that reclaims moral agency by synthesizing affective empathy with cognitive moral judgment within a conservative patriarchal Korean society.This choice, grounded in the synthesis of affective care and cognitive compassion, challenges patriarchal and anthropocentric value systems while extending the moral community to include nonhuman life.Slote's empathy-based ethics of care offers a lens for interpreting her actions as an expansion of moral concern beyond immediate human relationships, while Nussbaum's cognitive theory of emotion situates her stance within a broader vision of justice and human dignity.The analysis reveals that The Vegetarian not only critiques entrenched social and cultural hierarchies but also demonstrates literature's capacity to embody and expand philosophical ethics of care and compassion within a culturally specific context.By foregrounding Yeong-hye's transformation as an exercise of phronesis (practical wisdom), the study shifts the critical focus from symbolic trauma to the lived enactment of virtue.This links Korean literary criticism to ongoing global discussions in moral philosophy, showing how fictional narratives can refine the virtue ethics of empathy-based care and cognitive compassion across cultural boundaries.