Claim. Three Great Subjects Thought, coined by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, asserts that the three central figures of human life — parents (center of family), teacher (center of school), and leader (center of dominion: enterprise, country, organization) — must all practice God’s true love through their respective subject-roles.
Elaboration. Lee defines the three great subjects as three centers of love-relations: parents as the center of the family, teacher as the center of the school, and leader as the center of dominion (II. Three Great Subjects Thought). “Leader” is broad — the head of a group, president of an enterprise, governor of a province, head of state. The doctrine emphasizes that each subject practices true love through the concrete activities proper to that role.
For parents, the role is yangyuk (養育) — raising children. The two characters split the work: yang means raising by providing food, clothing, shelter; yuk means educating in family law, manners, ethics, morality, and knowledge with deep and warm heart. The critical normative claim: parents should not raise children instrumentally (to extract financial return or social power later) but with the wholehearted wish that the children become good and praiseworthy.
For a teacher, the role is comprehensive education — knowledge, technical, artistic, physical — conducted with sincerity and willingness to help students with difficulties. Teaching only for wages is “selling and buying knowledge” — not education at all because love is not invested. The teacher must possess noble personality and a spirit of service before they can teach with true love.
For a leader, the role is governance with love. A company manager should not work employees hard to enrich himself; once profit is made, an appropriate share returns to employees. “In the future society, the spirit of making money will be united with the spirit of giving.” Dominion-with-love extends to material things too — the third blessing of Genesis (dominion over all things) requires that buildings and facilities be regarded as belonging to all people and to God. Pollution, Lee adds, is the inevitable consequence of losing the spirit of management-with-love.
This is a notable theological move: ethical practice is structured around three role-positions rather than around abstract principles or virtues. Each subject’s love is downward-directed, originating in God’s downward love.
See also. three-subjectivities-one-center, god-as-origin-of-three-great-subjects-kunsabu, downward-love-primary-induces-upward-and-horizontal