Abstract
This paper reviews the history of Korean Neo-Confucian thought from its introduction in the late fourteenth century until the end of the Joseon dynasty in the early twentieth century. With the founding of Joseon in 1392 the Neo-Confucian synthesis that had swept China was adopted in Korea, replacing the Buddhist establishment of the previous dynasty. The introductory section discusses the major figures in this transition and their grasp of the new metaphysical framework and ascetical theory which now supplemented the traditional Confucian ethical core. The new teaching took deep root in the fifteenth century, but it did so in the context of succession problems leading to a series of “literati purges” of Confucians serving in government. The sixteenth century marked the coming to full intellectual maturity of the Neo-Confucian thought of the Cheng-Zhu school on the Korean peninsula. Toegye and Yulgok, the most famous names in Korean Neo-Confucian thought, represented opposing sides in the celebrated Four Seven Debate concerning the origination of feelings in the mind-and-heart. As the Mongols established the new Qing dynasty in China in the seventeenth century, Korean Neo-Confucians felt they had become the sole heritors and defenders of true civilization, leading to a period of intense and conflicted conservative orthodox orientation towards the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian school. In the intense factional struggles of the time the Yulgok followers of a faction led by Song Siyeol rose to dominance, and in the early eighteenth century the second most celebrated controversy, the Horak Debate, broke out within the ranks of this single intellectual lineage. The debate is best known for the question of whether and how humans and all other creatures share the same “original nature,” but it also inquired deeply into the accessibility of the original nature in techniques of meditative self-cultivation. The latter part of the eighteenth century is known for the emergence of a broad, loosely coordinated movement away from philosophical questions towards “practical learning,” or “Silhak” as twentieth century historians have named it. Philosophical inquiry continued to have a lively life well into the nineteenth century, however, with a deepening and radicalization of lines of thought established in the earlier debates, as well as some creative crossing and merging of the boundaries that separated the intellectual lineages of Toegye and Yulgok.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Yun (1983) Gil had 11 students, 6 of whom took and passed the civil service examinations, while Gwon had 14 with 10 exam passers. Kim Jongjik, the most prolific teacher of the century, had 93 students with 53 exam passers Yun 1983: [1] 2. Kim Jongjik was among the most successful, enjoying high position at the center of power. His forte was literary elegance, though he was also a champion of the Sohak and its moral training.
- 2.
From the Korean translation found in Yi B 1987, 217–18.
- 3.
Lo Chin-shun (1465–1547) was a leading Ming scholar of the Cheng-Zhu school. Koreans were in general quite suspicious of him because he openly criticized Zhu Xi for an overly dualistic interpretation of i and strongly advanced a more monistic alternative.
- 4.
For an account of this development in China, see Elman 1985.
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Kalton, M.C. (2019). Korean Neo-Confucian Thought. In: Ro, Yc. (eds) Dao Companion to Korean Confucian Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2933-1_2
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