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KOREAN STUDIES
REVIEW
Chông Yagyong: Korea's Challenge to Orthodox
Neo-Confucianism, by Mark
Setton. Korean
Studies series. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.
(ISBN 0-7914-3173-8 cloth; ISBN 0-7914-3174-6 paper).
Reviewed by John I.
Goulde
Sweet Briar College
[This review first appeared in
Acta Koreana, 1
(1998): 160-63]
The Chosôn Period (1392-1910) in Korea is well known as a period
when
Neo-Confucian orthodoxy dominated the political, philosophical,
religious,
and social landscape. It is also a period when this same orthodoxy
became
so inextricably tied to factionalist politics and regionalist agenda,
that
by the late Chosôn period it had become an obstacle to
modernization,
national independence, and the creation of a democratic state. Before it
was abandoned, though, there were serious attempts to re-envision the
Confucian tradition, to make it more practical and more responsive to
the
ethical and social needs of the Korean people, to reestablish the
relationship between Confucian self-cultivation and political
application,
and to free it from its centuries-long preoccupation with metaphysical
questions. It was these two latter issues, the supposed conflict between
self-cultivation and political practicality and the endless debates
about
metaphysical problems that had divided Korean scholars regionally during
the 16th century and had led to political factionalism in the court. By
attacking the metaphysical theory of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, these late
Chosôn scholars sought to recover something of the practical
Confucian
humanism of the pre-Ch'in period and to overcome the apathy of an
entrenched bureaucracy in regard to the lives of the common people.
Foremost among these reformers was Chông Yagyong (1762-1836), also
known as
Tasan.
Setton's study of Tasan, his intellectual heritage, his place within the
history of Chosôn Confucian philosophy, and his philosophical
innovations
and reforms is a timely one. At no other time has there been as much
interest in Korea's early modern period as there is today. Tasan
represents
for many today a seminal thinker and founder of political modernization.
His writings about the relationship between government and the people
appeal to modern Koreans concerned with democratic values. His call for
reform of administrative structures and law so that government may
better
serve the needs of the people resonates in the minds of modern Koreans
who
wish to make their own society more equitable and just.
While the modern use of Tasan is dictated by the needs of Koreans
confronted by issues of modernization, participation in the global
economy,
and the shift from authoritarian military rule to civilian government,
Tasan's own world and world outlook was very different from that of
Koreans
today. Understanding what Tasan's philosophical contributions meant
within
the context of 18th and 19th century Korea and how those contributions
were
related to conditions created in the 16th and 17th centuries is a whole
other matter.
Setton's study does much to clarity and to contextualize what Tasan and
other reformers of the period were attempting to do. Native Korean
scholarship and current Korean interest in Tasan assumes that as a
member
of the Practical Learning Movement (the Shirhakp'a), Tasan
attacked
Neo-Confucian learning and orthodoxy in order to replace it with some
form
of modern utilitarianism or pragmatism. This is far from the case.
Setton
demonstrates in his first chapter ("Tasan's Intellectual Heritage") that
Tasan's critique of Ch'eng-Chu Learning was done from within the
Confucian
tradition, not from outside it. His concern with developing an
integrated
ethical philosophy that would transform the nature of Korean government
was
in fact as much a continuation of the earliest Chosôn period
Confucian
concern for "practical affairs" as it was a critique of the excessive
Korean dependence on and sacralization of the authority of the
Ch'eng-Chu
tradition of Neo-Confucian Learning. Setton also demonstrates that Tasan
built this philosophy upon the work of his immediate predecessors, who,
like Tasan, were influenced by the writings and insights of members of
the
Evidential Learning Movement in Ch'ing China and the Ancient Learning
Movement in Tokugawa Japan. Setton rightfully argues that it was not "in
spite of Neo-Confucian learning" but as a part of a centuries-long
Neo-Confucian attempt to understand the classics, that Tasan's
philosophy
and critique of Ch'eng-Chu learning should be understood. Tasan was as
orthodox a Confucian scholar as the Sung scholars he criticized.
Setton also does the reader a service by dealing with the issue of
factionalism in the Chosôn period. Modern Korean scholarship on
the
Practical Learning reformers all but ignores this issue, as though
Practical Learning emerged as a new stage in Korean thought only after
factionalized Neo-Confucianism had declined. Tasan was himself a member
of
the opposition Southerner lineage, and we should expect that his
philosophical critique of Ch'eng-Chu orthodoxy was as much motivated by
the
need to attack the establishment ideology that kept Southerners out of
the
government as it was an attempt to recover the true and practical
meaning
of Confucian texts. Setton demonstrates that factional disputes were
indispensable in the development of Practical Learning and served to
open
up new areas of inquiry and investigation into the meaning of Confucian
ideas. Southerners benefited from their own exclusion from government
and
when they turned to the investigation of such "unconventional" and
"unorthodox" traditions as "Western Learning" (Catholicism). Evidential
Learning, and Ancient Learning they did so in the full knowledge that
they
were defending their right to freedom of interpretation in the face of
an
increasingly conservative and narrow-minded bureaucratic adherence to
Ch'eng-Chu orthodoxy. Southerners adopted from these movements the
spirit of
"verification of the facts" and applied it not only to their
reexamination
of the classics and the Ch'eng-Chu commentarial tradition, but also in
such
fields as history, geography, technological development, and policy
proposals for reform. Tasan's own call for a return to "classical
learning"
(susahak) though not the direct result of a factional dispute,
was
nevertheless a product of his own factional allegiance to the
Southerners
and their tradition of criticism that began with Yun Hyu (1617-80) and
was
carried on by Yi Ik (1681-1763).
After giving the context for understanding Tasan, the history of
Confucian
factionalism, and the various issues that became part of the Practical
Learning movement, Setton turns to a philosophical analysis of Tasan's
"classical learning." This is the longest and most complicated section
of
the book since Setton is dealing with Tasan's own commentaries on
classical
texts, which include comments and criticisms of the Ch'eng-Chu
commentaries
on the same texts. Setton focuses on Tasan's reinterpretation of the
Four
Books and the Book of Changes, texts that were at the heart
of Ch'eng-Chu
Learning. Through philological and historical reconstruction of the
meaning of those texts and through an analysis of how those texts were
interpreted in the commentarial tradition of the Ch'eng-Chu school,
Tasan
was able to demonstrate that on the issues of human nature,
self-cultivation, and the practical ordering of society the Ch'eng-Chu
school had misinterpreted the meaning of the classics. He showed how
extraneous (Buddhist and Taoist) elements such as principle and material
force (li / ch'i) had been introduced into Confucian
tradition by the Sung
philosophers and had become the basis for the elaboration of a system of
fixed cosmological objects (virtue, mind, nature, heaven, principle)
that
had no basis in the classical texts and even obscured their meaning. In
Tasan's view, the introduction of static ontological categories into the
discussion of ethics robbed the Confucian tradition of its dynamic and
person-engaging character. Tasan argued from the classics that human
nature
was dynamic and characterized by graded levels of appetites, desires,
and
affective tendencies that seek fulfillment through right action. Human
nature was not the embodiment of a cosmic principle (or a Buddha-nature)
that had been obscured by physical, social, and mental endowments, as
Ch'eng-Chu commentators had argued. This reformulation of the
understanding
of human nature allowed Tasan to enunciate an understanding of
self-cultivation (the pursuit of the morally satisfying) as a
psychological
process of deliberate and autonomous choices that would result in human
happiness. It also allowed him to abandon the cosmological dualism that
was
present in Ch'eng-Chu Learning and had been the focus of centuries of
debate
and speculation. Since self-cultivation or moral action could only be
done
through engagement with the outside world, Tasan argued that there could
be
no conflict between the Confucian goals of self-cultivation and the
right
ordering of society. The right ordering of society through moral action
was
itself self-cultivation and the only medium through which one could
personally acquire sincerity of the will and the rectification of the
mind.
When applied to the area of politics and social leadership, Tasan could
argue that all humans were equal in their ability to produce right
relations (virtue) and were not hampered in doing so based upon their
mental or physical endowment. Moral leadership or the ability to arouse
the
people to moral action came from the people as a whole, who, according
to
Tasan, selected leaders from among themselves.
Tasan's "classical learning" thus is a repudiation of the moral
determinism
implied by Ch'eng-Chu Learning and its inability to accept the Mencian
proposition that all humans were potentially sages. Tasan restricted the
meaning of virtue and self-cultivation to the objectification of moral
tendencies. Great sages like Yao and Shun were not moral by nature, but
by
self-nurture. The practical ethics taught by Confucius and Mencius was
nothing more than the nurturing of natural moral tendencies, not the
uncovering of a virtuous nature endowed at birth.
Finally Setton compares Tasan's critique of Ch'eng-Chu Learning to that
of
Ch'ing Evidential Learning scholars and Tokugawa Ancient Learning
scholars
and notes where there were direct influences and where there were
differences. Setton demonstrates that it was the Tokugawa scholars who
seemed to have had the greatest influence on Tasan and themes and
attitudes
developed in Japanese scholarship resonate in Tasan's personal writings.
This last chapter is intended to show how Tasan's philosophy represents
a
major contribution to the development of Korean Confucanism in the 19th
century even while it benefits from and builds upon contemporary
scholarship from abroad.
This study does an admirable job in advancing our knowledge of Tasan's
philosophical contribution to late Chosôn period Confucian
philosophy by
demonstrating how Tasan built upon the intellectual trends and insights
of
Chinese, Japanese and Korean predecessors and contemporaries. By doing
this
comparative analysis, the peculiar nature of Tasan's philosophical
reformulation comes into sharp focus. Setton also grounds Tasan firmly
within the history of Confucianism within Korea and demonstrates that
Tasan's work, though a direct challenge to the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy
of
the day, must be seen as being part of an ongoing tradition of Confucian
scholarship, rather than, as some moderns think, being opposed to
it.
Citation:
Goulde, John I. 1998
Review of Mark Setton, Chông Yagyong: Korea's Challenge to
Orthodox
Neo-Confucianism (1997)
Korean Studies Review 1998, no. 11
Electronic file:
http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr98-11.htm
[This review first appeared in Acta Koreana, 1 (1998):
160-63]
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