Seung was born on September 20, 1930, the eldest of three children, near the city of Chongju in North Pyongan Province. He attended Chongju Middle School, where he was exposed to Western-style education. In 1947, he escaped from North Korea, crossing the 38th parallel with a few friends. He settled in Seoul, South Korea, where he studied at Seoul High School for three years. He attended Yonsei University for only one month before the Korean War broke out in June 1950, subsequently fleeing south to Busan ahead of the advancing North Korean army. After the end of the Korean War, on the personal recommendation of President Syngman Rhee, Seung enrolled at Yale University on a full scholarship under the sponsorship of the American-Korean Foundation and resumed his undergraduate studies in 1954. As resident of Timothy Dwight College and a student in the program, he discovered the history of Western culture. He was introduced to the latest schools of thought such as existentialism, New Criticism, and other intellectual movements. At Yale he was mentored by a number of famous professors, including Thomas G. Bergin, Cleanth Brooks, Brand Blanshard, and F.S.C. Northrop. He graduated summa cum laude in 1958 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. He entered Yale Law School, but quit after one academic year, deciding instead to pursue doctoral studies in philosophy. Around this time he wrote his first book, The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante's Master Plan, which proposed a new, "trinitarian" interpretation of the Divine Comedy. His Ph.D. thesis was later published as a book, Kant's Transcendental Logic. In 1965, he received his Ph.D. and also married Kwihwan Hahn, a graduate of Juilliard in piano performance. They have three children. His son, Sebastian Seung, is Professor at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute and Department of Computer Science. His second son, KJ Seung, is Professor at the Harvard Medical School and the medical director at the Eugene Bell Foundation. His daughter, Florence Seung, is a psychiatrist. After teaching for a year at Fordham University, Seung joined the philosophy department of the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, where he is the Jesse H. Jones Professor in Liberal Arts, Professor of Philosophy, Government, and Law. In 1988, he was awarded the highest honor of Yale's graduate school alumni association—the Wilbur Cross Medal. Other winners have included John Silber, Richard Rorty, Robert Putnam, Robert Dahl, Bartlett Giamatti, and Stanley Fish.
Selected works
;Books The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante's Master Plan. Kant's Transcendental Logic. Cultural Thematics: The Formation of the Faustian Ethos. Semiotics and Thematics in Hermeneutics. Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Intuition and Construction: The Foundation of Normative Theory. Kant's Platonic Revolution in Moral and Political Philosophy. Plato Rediscovered: Human Value and Social Order. Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner: Their Spinozan Epics of Love and Power. Kant: A Guide for the Perplexed. The Cultural Background of Western Philosophy. ;Articles "Plural Values and Indeterminate Rankings," with Daniel Bonevac, in Ethics 799 "Virtues and Values: A Platonic Account," in Social Theory and Practice 207 "Kant's Conception of the Categories," in Review of Metaphysics 107 "Conflict in Practical Reasoning," with Daniel Bonevac, Philosophical Studies 315: 53 "Literary Function and Historical Context," in Philosophy and Literature 33: 4 "Thematic Dialectic: A Revision of Hegelian Dialectic," in International Philosophical Quarterly 417: 20 "The Epic Character of the Divina Commedia and the Function of Dante's Three Guides," in Italica 352: 56 Contributions "The Metaphysics of the Commedia," in The Divine Comedy and the Encyclopedia of Arts and Sciences, edited by G. Di Scipio and A. Scaglione "Kant," in The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade "The Philosophical Tradition in Korea," in Tae Kwon Do Free Fighting, edited by Gaeshik Kim "Bonaventura's Figural Exemplarism in Dante," in Italian Literature: Roots and Branches: Essays in honor of Thomas G. Bergin, edited by G. Rimanelli and K. Atchity
