Confucian philosophy, Korean

Confucianism came to Korea in the late fourth century AD. While Buddhism, which had arrived at the same time, was for centuries the central spiritual and intellectual tradition of Korea, Confucianism was viewed as largely limited to the world of government functionaries. In China during the Song dynasty (979-1279) a creative Confucian movement revitalized and reshaped the tradition, giving rise to what Western Scholars call ‘neo-Confucianism'. By the end of the fourteenth century neo-Confucian learning had penetrated deeply among young scholar-officials in Korea, who used it as a lever against the deeply entrenched Buddhist establishment. In 1392, in history's only neo-Confucian revolution, a new dynasty was founded in Korea. The Chosôn dynasty (1392-1910), ruling a country smaller in scale and more centrally unified than China, was to make Korea the most (neo-) Confucian of all East Asian societies. The scale, control, and temper of Korean society had important consequences for the development of the neo-Confucian tradition. In China the Cheng-Zhu school of neo-Confucian thought held privileged status as the orthodox standard for the all-important civil service examinations. Zhu Xi (1130-1200) was the great creative synthesizer of this school and its foremost authority, but his synthesis drew especially upon the work of the Cheng brothers. The Cheng-Zhu school was rivalled and even eclipsed in popularity later by the school of Wang Yangming (1472-1529), whose more Zen-like approach also found great favour in Japan. Korea, in contrast to both China and Japan, remained almost exclusively devoted to the Cheng-Zhu school. This exclusive and intensive development of the Cheng-Zhu school of neo-Confucian thought is the most generally distinctive characteristic of Korean neo-Confucianism. When the thinkers of a culture devote themselves for centuries to a single complex body of learning, as was the case for example with Aristotle and medieval Europe, the result is a mode of philosophical discourse described as ‘scholasticism'. Scholastic philosophy is renowned for the intricacy and closeness of its argumentation, though this may be an obstacle for the outsider for whom it is often difficult to recapture the intense and absorbing vision which inspired major controversy about seemingly minor differences. Korea, with its exclusive cultivation of Zhu Xi's complex synthesis, produced the most scholastic version of neo-Confucian thought. The writings of scholars or scholar-officials of note were commonly collected and published after their death, so the centuries of ‘collected works', written in literary Chinese, are a vast resource in which the twists and turns, the problems and potentials for development in the Cheng-Zhu school are examined with unequalled thoroughness. To understand the particular contribution this Korean scholasticism made to neo-Confucian thought one must be aware of the scope and complexity of Zhu Xi's synthesis. The intellectual culture within which the Confucian revivalists of the Song dynasty worked had for seven or eight centuries been predominantly shaped by Daoist and Buddhist influences, so the questions in their minds as they returned to the Confucian classics included dimensions neglected by more traditional Confucianism. Read with new eyes, an entirely new level of meaning was uncovered in the ancient texts: they discovered a Confucian foundation for the meditative cultivation of consciousness that had been a particular strength of the Buddhists, and to frame it and provide an account of sagehood equal to Buddhist talk of enlightenment, they found a complete metaphysical system, a Confucian version of the kind of thinking that had been elaborated mainly under Daoist auspices. Thus Zhu Xi's synthesis knit together not just disparate thinkers of the Song dynasty, but contemporary questions with texts well over a thousand years old. It incorporated Daoist metaphysics with Buddhist meditative cultivation in a new structure with Confucian moral values and social concerns at that structure's core. Implicit in this was the conflation of the distinctive world views of India, the origin of Buddhism, and China. This has important metaphysical consequences, for the central paradigm for Indian reflection on the nature of existence was consciousness, while for the Chinese it was the image of a single living physical body. A synthesis of this scope cannot be a seamless whole, though the conceptual system with which Zhu Xi knit it together achieved a remarkable degree of verbal consistency. This, in fact, is where Korean neo-Confucian thought makes a special contribution. For it is at the seams, where differences and tensions inherent in a synthesis are conceptually masked, that the kind of problems occur that become the source of endless scholastic controversy. Korean neo-Confucianism contains two such controversies; each has occupied minds for centuries. Though the points being debated resist any ultimate solution, the disputes themselves disclose the creative tensions at the heart of Zhu Xi's synthesis. The first of these controversies arose in the middle of the sixteenth century and decisively shaped the intellectual agenda for the remainder of the Chosôn dynasty. The protagonists in the controversy, Yi Hwang and Yi I, are the two most famous names in Korean thought, and allegiance to each became the central dividing line of Korean neo-Confucianism. Known as the ‘Four-Seven Debate,' this controversy is the most famous philosophical dispute in Korean history. On the surface it involves the question of feelings and how they arise. Some feelings, such as commiseration or shame at doing evil, seem spontaneously human and correct, while others, such as fear, anger, or pleasure, seem more questionable. Are there then two kinds of feelings that arise from different sources? The question is of great philosophical importance, because ultimately it discloses tensions at the heart of the dualistic monism/monistic dualism which is the fundamental structure of Zhu Xi's metaphysical system. The second great controversy arose among followers of Yi I in the early eighteenth century. Neo-Confucian metaphysics views the entire universe as possessing a single nature, which is manifested differently at different levels of existence due to the differing capacities of the concrete, psychophysical component of various sorts of creatures. The Horak controversy swirled about the question of whether the fundamental or ‘original' nature of things is the same or different. The fundamental nature is normative, and it would be absurd to say the norm for a cow is the same as for a human; but the fundamental nature is fundamental and normative precisely because it is considered as anterior to the limitation/distortion of the imperfect psychophysical component. How then can it be considered as differentiated into cow and human? Pulling at these seemingly verbal loose ends leads again deep into Zhu Xi's metaphysics, revealing between its Indian and Chinese (Buddhist and Daoist) motifs tensions which come to a focus more clearly here perhaps than anywhere else in neo-Confucian thought. 1 Historical development Neo-Confucianism has dimensions similar to Marxism in Western thought: that is, although it can be considered as a philosophical system its scope includes the practice of government, social structure and relationships, and the individual's way of life. The object of the life of the mind is not abstracted as ‘truth,' but is integrated with the whole of life: Confucian thought aims beyond intellectual apprehension at the actual practice of a full and integral human life in a harmonious, well-ordered society. (see Confucian philosophy, Chinese; Neo-Confucian philosophy). Thus the neo-Confucian revolution that inaugurated the Chosôn dynasty in 1392 was also a social revolution. Energies for the first century were largely absorbed in institution building and reform of unacceptable but deeply rooted custom such as matrilocal marriages. Contrary to Confucian theory, Korean society maintained its aristocratic structure, but the Korean aristocracy (yangban) in other respects became highly orthodox, correct adherence to neo-Confucian norms becoming a mark of their social distinction. The aristocratic social structure also had the effect of making the Korean ruler much more a first-among-equals, much more subject, as orthodox Confucian theory prescribed, to the remonstrance and persuasion of his ministers than was the case in Ming or Qing-dynasty China. Towards the end of the first century, remonstrance, the right of government officials to object, criticize, and offer contrary advice to superiors and particularly to the ruler, became a central and bloody issue. Zealous Korean neo-Confucians had enshrined the right to remonstrance in three government ministries, and when these acted in concert they were able to bring the government to a standstill: they could effectively thwart the king and his highest ministers, always on grounds framed in the language of lofty Confucian moral principles. The result of this systemic tension was a series of purges from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth centuries; the purged were the remonstrating officials, who paid with their lives or with exile when the throne and high ministers were pushed beyond the limit. These ‘literati purges' left a deep imprint on the Korean neo-Confucian tradition. All Confucian learning was supposed to be for the sake of character formation, but as the established core of civil service examinations it was also the way to get ahead, and the way to secure a high reputation. In the Cheng-Zhu school a movement by earnest scholars who focused on self-cultivation and despised the ambitious motives of ‘worldly Confucians' appropriated for itself the label ‘daoxue', (in Korean tohak), ‘the learning of the true Way'. The effect of the early history of purge and martyrdom was to give special luster to the tohak dimension of the tradition, making it a predominant feature in the lives and thought of virtually all major Korean neo-Confucians. The record of the development of neo-Confucian thought during this early period is somewhat sparse. The major focus initially was on institution building, while the philosophically interesting aspects of neo-Confucian thought are most closely linked with spiritual self-cultivation and its metaphysical framework. Those most likely to produce writings of interest were thus also the most likely purge victims, and what they may have written is lost. What we possess reflects the diversity and unevenness one might expect: during this period Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy had not fully settled in, nor was there a complete and systematic grasp of the integrated whole of this school's complex synthesis. The most famous name of the period, Sô Kyôngdôk (1489-1546), espoused a monism of material force (ki; in Chinese qi) similar to that of the early Chinese neo-Confucian, Zhang Zai (see Qi). Sô has a great reputation for independence and originality, but unfortunately what remains of his writings is not enough to give a very adequate picture of his ideas. Others, such as the famous martyr of the 1519 purge, Cho Kwangjo (1482-1519), reflect a situation in which those most involved with the self-cultivation side of the tradition had a very inadequate grasp of the delicate balance between theory and practice, study and meditation, that characterizes the Cheng-Zhu school. Cho's writings perished with him, but his students, we are told, often spent the day sitting in meditation rather than studying. It is generally agreed that a full, balanced, and mature grasp of Zhu Xi's complex synthesis first came with the work of Yi Hwang (1501-70). He and a thinker of the next generation, Yi Yulgok (1536-84), are considered the foremost neo-Confucian philosophers of Korea. Particularly important was the Four-Seven Debate, initiated between Yi Hwang and Ki Taesûng (1527-72) and continued by Yi Yulgok and Sông Hon (1535-98), with Yi I taking up the position advocated by Ki Taesûng (see §§3-4). The debate had the effect of permanently dividing the neo-Confucian intellectual world of Korea into two major schools professing allegiance to Yi Hwang and Yi Yulgok, a division further complicated by complex regional and factional ties as time progressed. Invasions first by the Japanese under Hideoshi and then by the Manchus devastated the country. The seventeenth century is remembered principally for extreme factional division and conflict by neo-Confucians in government and for the development of a rigid, orthodox tone that caused the persecution of several scholars labelled as ‘heterodox' because they questioned elements of Cheng-Zhu learning. Zhu Xi's synthesis was sufficiently vast, however, to permit major divisions and significantly different interpretations within it. The Yi Hwang-Yi Yulgok split was already evidence of this, and in the early eighteenth century the Horak controversy confirmed it. Named for the regions associated with the principle figures in the debate, the Horak controversy caught the attention and drew in major thinkers of the eighteenth century and beyond. Its participants were all followers of Yi Yulgok, and in some ways, as will be discussed below, the controversy could be considered a final working through of problems deeply embedded in Yi Yulgok's insistence on philosophical consistency in handling the Four-Seven question. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are also celebrated by Korean intellectual historians for the rise of sirhak or ‘practical learning', a broad and disparate movement among some neo-Confucian scholars towards focusing their scholarly efforts on more concrete issues of political, social and economic concern, bringing the borderless discourse of neo-Confucian thought more within the confines of actual life on the Korean peninsula. The movement historically did not develop a cohesive self-consciousness, and the label ‘sirhak' was applied to it by twentieth century historians, who saw in it the indigenous development of values and types of learning that have become the essence of modernity. Their attention has brought to light a sirhak dimension in a number of significant thinkers of the period, among whom the figure of Chông Yagyong (1762-1836) overshadows all. A true polymath, in addition to extensive writing on practical affairs his works include a voluminous review of the changing interpretation of the Confucian classics over the centuries and a critique of Cheng-Zhu metaphysics from a theistic perspective grounded in the most ancient classics. His restoration of a theistic Confucianism occurred under the influence of the writings of the Roman Catholic missionary to China, Matteo Ricci. The work itself is thoroughly Confucian, however, and since it was worked out by a thinker who also had mastery of the Cheng-Zhu synthesis it is possibly the most thoroughgoing and systematic theistic philosophy produced by a Confucian thinker. In his day Chông had no significant intellectual heirs, but he may well be the most studied thinker of the Chosôn dynasty. 2 The centre of philosophical reflection Among the East Asian neo-Confucian traditions what is most distinctive about Korea is the depth and continuity of its commitment to the orthodox Cheng-Zhu school. Thus even those like Chông Yagyong who struck out in new directions did so with a deep grounding in Cheng-Zhu thought. For the vast majority of thinkers the fundamental truth of Zhu Xi's vision was a given, and the essential task of every generation was to understand how their particular problems and insights fit into, or ‘already were', the original meaning intended by Zhu Xi or the ancient authorities such as Confucius and Mencius as interpreted by Zhu Xi. Over four centuries of Korean reflection in this mode served to develop both the potentialities and the problems inherent in Zhu Xi's synthesis to an unprecedented degree. Korean insight in this respect is captured particularly in the two great controversies mentioned in §1, the Four-Seven and Horak debates. Both debates focus on the same general area of neo-Confucian thought, sôngnihak (in Chinese, xinglixue), the study of the nature (sông) and principle (i) (see Xing; Li). It is no accident that the most complex and philosophically interesting controversies occur in sôngnihak, for it is the systematic nexus of every area of neo-Confucian thought: here converge what the West would call metaphysics, philosophy of man, psychology, ethics and ascetical theory or spiritual practice. The motive of Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist thought alike is the full realization of human potential, which demands self-cultivation. But self-cultivation involves an implicit or explicit metaphysical framework, which is necessary to understand in what the full realization of human potential may consist (see Self-cultivation, Chinese theories of). Buddhist meditative cultivation techniques assumed a monistic background. Huayan Buddhism used the indigenous Chinese term li (in Korean, i, meaning ‘truth', ‘rationale', ‘principle' or ‘pattern') to convey this monistic ‘Buddha nature', the ultimate single reality of all phenomenal existence. Chan (Zen) Buddhism focused less on such intellectual formulation and stressed instead the direct and immediate realization of this as the reality of one's own and all being (see Buddhist philosophy, Chinese; Buddhist philosophy, Korean). Neo-Confucians, in close touch with this background, were aware of the importance of techniques of cultivating consciousness, but wanted nothing of Buddhist monism; thus they sought a more concrete metaphysics with a more secure grounding in phenomenal reality. Their remedy was to pair i with another traditional term, qi (in Korean, ki), the animating ‘life force' of body and psyche and, philosophically, the very ‘stuff' of the universe (see Qi). In its most coarse, turbid and condensed form, ki thus accounted for the concreteness of the divisible world the West knows as ‘matter'; but in its original, pure and rarified condition it is also the stuff of psyche and mind, embracing the characteristics the West incorporates in terms such as ‘spirit' and ‘soul'. In neo-Confucian metaphysics, i is made concrete and existential through its embodiment in ki. The focal point in its spectrum of meanings also shifts somewhat: as a stand-in for Buddha-nature, i was more on the side of ‘ultimate truth', while in the neo-Confucian context its ancient connections with pattern or order are exploited in a way that makes it virtually interchangeable in many contexts with the much used dao, the Way, the inner pattern, the nature that structures all existence and activity. Instead of Buddhist monism, this dualism of i and ki gives us a modified, organismic monism: i is one, but embodied and manifested diversely through the many diverse conditions of ki. The many beings of the universe may thus be likened to the members of a single living body, truly different from one another and yet ultimately manifestations of a single unity beyond all name or distinctness: i is the single pattern or principle running throughout, while ki accounts for the real but not ultimate diversity. This neo-Confucian metaphysics thus yields a very traditional East Asian organismic vision of the universe, in which every element at every level is interdependently woven together with every other in a patterned, normative whole (see Neo-Confucian philosophy). The cosmic dimensions of this tradition had found clearest manifestation in Daoism, while Confucianism had explored mainly the social ramifications; as united in neo-Confucian thought, these become respectively the framework for and the outcome of self-cultivation. The theory of self-cultivation is related to metaphysics much as epistemology is in western thought. The organismic unity of i solves the western problem of how distinct individuals can know ‘the other', for in spite of the manifold diversity of their ways of manifesting it, all share in the same i. In particular, because of the high purity of the ki which constitutes the human psyche, i, the pattern of all things, is possessed in its integral fullness by the human heart-and-mind (see Xin). This means we have within ourselves the guiding pattern for appropriate responsiveness to any thing or any situation. If we are out of touch and inappropriately responsive, that is because of some adventitious factor such as an element of turbidity or coarseness in the ki of our psychophysical constitution which blocks or distorts our true connectedness. Neo-Confucians compared this to the way a paralyzed limb, even though connected, no longer Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998) Confucian philosophy, Korean responds appropriately to the needs and messages of the body. The ideal sage, endowed with perfect ki, responds to all things with spontaneous perfection; being perfectly in touch, he need not be concerned about prolonged thought or self-discipline. Less perfectly endowed individuals, however, need both. They must follow the more laborious path, regaining their apprehension of i by the discipline of focused attention externally and clear calmness internally. Meditative practice, ‘quiet sitting', could nurture the quiet and calm that self-possession promotes and is a means to our harmonious integration in the i that is our nature within and also the structure of the world without. Sôngnihak, ‘the study of the nature and i', thus addresses itself to the anthropocosmic core of neo-Confucian learning, where the metaphysics of the universe transmutes into a description of the working of our inner life in relation to every life situation. I is not only the pattern of the universe, but the ground of our psyche which prepares us to participate properly in the universe; ki is not only the stuff through which all things have their concrete actuality and diversity, but also the factor that distorts the potentially perfect continuity of i without and within. Unlike dualisms of spirit and matter which carve out a unique and special place for human beings, the challenge here is to describe all the complexity and conflict of the human heart-and-mind in continuity with the conceptual system used for all other natural phenomena. Korean neo-Confucianism pushes the limits and reveals hidden tensions in the Cheng-Zhu version of this endeavour. 3 The Four-Seven Debate In the history of philosophy, the Cheng-Zhu metaphysics and anthropology of i and ki occupy a very special and interesting place. The patterning i and the concertizing, activating ki bring to mind the Aristotelian dualism of form and matter (see Aristotle §§11-14); but in this case, although i is manifested as many forms it is ultimately one form which runs through all things. Thus the universe is truly a single organic unity, rather than a plurality of formally and materially discrete beings as in the Aristotelian case. This is a monistic dualism. Recalling the Buddhist usage of i and the vitalistic background of the concept of ki, one also sees in the dualism traces of the mind-body split and the spirit-matter dualism of western thought. But here too the parallel is instructive because it breaks down: mind and body alike are comprised of i and ki, so they too are an organic continuum. As we shall see, each of the great Korean controversies pushes and tests the meaning and resources of the i-ki dualism along these lines. The Four-Seven debate arose in 1549, and was carried out in lengthy correspondence first between Yi Hwang and Ki Taesûng, then between Yi Yulgok and Sông Hon. The central question of the debate focused on the metaphysical explanation of good and evil. In a pluralistic western context this is commonly a question of will and choice, premised on the human individual's distinctive characteristic of rationality and self-determination (see Free will; Evil, problem of). But in a culture and philosophy of organicism the question is posed in terms of response rather than choice: as seen in §2, the question of evil is more like why a limb does not respond appropriately than why individuals choose what is wrong. Hence questions of will and choice are secondary in Confucian moral discourse. Of primary concern rather are the feelings and the nature which is manifested in the way the feelings respond. In a famous classical passage, Mencius had argued that human nature is fundamentally or originally good, citing as evidence the spontaneous feelings of alarm and commiseration that arise at the sight of a dire event such as a toddler about to fall into a well (see Xing). He expanded this argument by describing four such spontaneously good feelings or tendencies: in addition to commiseration, there are the feelings of shame and dislike for evil, the tendency to yield and defer to others, and the sense of right and wrong. These innate tendencies, he said, if nurtured properly become respectively the mature characteristics of humanity, righteousness, propriety and wisdom. The innate tendencies described by Mencius were referred to by later Confucians as the ‘four beginnings', and they constitute the ‘four' of the Four-Seven debate. Neo-Confucians took the four mature characteristics as descriptions of the composition of human nature, which metaphysically is equated with i, the normative inner pattern of all things. Concrete, actual feelings such as the Four Beginnings, are the manifestation of i on the level of the active, phenomenal world, the level of i combined with ki. Because i, the norm, is inherently good, so the feelings which manifest it are also naturally good unless imperfections in ki, the stuff of our psychophysical constitution, somehow interrupt and distort the way in which it is manifested. The ‘seven' of the Four-Seven debate comes from a different source, the classic Lijing (Book of Rites), which describes a list of seven feelings: desire, hate, love, fear, grief, anger, and joy. These conventional human feelings are obviously the sort of tendencies that can be either right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate. They are the object of endless Confucian exhortations to cultivate careful attention and discernment of the movement of the feelings. The initial movement in particular is critical, for a tiny discrepancy at the beginning can become a gap of a thousand miles as things unfold. On the level of traditional moral discourse none of this poses any special problem. The disruption of feelings and responses from their appropriate course could be accounted for by individualistic self-centredness, long identified as the root of all evil. But the special advance of neo-Confucian thought was that its new dualistic metaphysics could support a metaphysical explanation of the source of evil/disruption as well. This was of critical importance, for the description of the distorting role of ki with regard to the inherently perfect i provided a precise description of sagehood and the hinderance to sagehood, and hence an understanding of the rationale and effectiveness of approaches to self-cultivation. In Western thought, spirit-matter dualisms, or rationality versus animal nature, set up clear value hierarchies which become the basis for explaining why it is wrong to subordinate higher values to lower. I and ki, being associated respectively with the normative and distorting roles, appear to invite a similar value discrimination. There is then an initial plausibility in suggesting that inherently good feelings such as the Four Beginnings are on the side of i, while more doubtful ones such as the Seven Feelings must be on the side of ki. This is what Yi Hwang did, almost incidentally, in the course of going over a diagrammatic treatise by another scholar. However, Ki Taesûng, a younger contemporary, reproached him. I and ki are absolutely interdependent, have no separate existence, and cannot separately be the source of different kinds of feeling; rather, he argued, there is really only one kind of feelings, for all feelings arise in precisely the same way, i being the formative source and ki the element of concrete actualization. There is, he said, actually no real (metaphysical) distinction between the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings: the Seven Feelings are a general term for all human feelings, and the Four Beginnings are just a subset, singling out feelings when they are appropriate. Yi Hwang fought for a real distinction, even finding a passage in which Zhu Xi himself paired the Four Beginnings with i and the Seven Feelings with ki. Finally he came up with a formula that attempted to take full account of the inseparability and interdependence of i and ki and at the same time could support some feelings which are inherently more whole and human than others: in the case of the Four Beginnings, he said, i gives issuance and ki follows; in the case of the Seven Feelings, ki issues and i mounts it. Ki Taesûng eventually yielded to Yi Hwang's formula, but after Yi Hwang's death the debate was resurrected when Yi Yulgok's friend Sông Hon read Yi Hwang's treatise in conjunction with some similarly dualistic remarks by Zhu Xi and was persuaded. Yi Yulgok, perhaps the most brilliant and systematic philosophical mind produced by the Korean neo-Confucian tradition, countered forcefully that such extreme dualism was absolutely wrong. I and ki could not vary their role and relationship as if they were two independent entities; in the metaphysics of the cosmos, he argued, it was always ki that was in the concrete issuing role and i ‘mounting it' as the formative pattern that made things be and act as they did. If this was the cosmic case, it could be no different when it came to the human psyche. The dualistic expressions frequent in Zhu Xi and other authoritative sources should be understood appropriately in their moralizing context, but not transformed into a metaphysical dualism that would disrupt the delicate one-but-two, two-but-one perfect interdependence and complimentarity of i and ki. The Korean neo-Confucian intellectual world subsequently split between followers of Yi Hwang and Yi Yulgok; infrequent thinkers attempted various sorts of syntheses, but the problem has never been resolved. On Yi Hwang's side are the dualistic phenomena common to the moral life; self-cultivation above all was the controlling factor in Yi Hwang's thought. However, Yi Yulgok has the appearance of greater philosophical consistency and rigor; he truly removed insupportable ambiguities in Zhu Xi's system and brought it to a new level of coherence. 4 The Four-Seven Debate (cont.) What do we learn from this controversy? The two positions and the unresolvable dispute offer a unique window on the Cheng-Zhu philosophical enterprise. Yi Hwang is a faithful reflection of the motivation behind the neo-Confucian project, which is ultimately to bring about good character formation and proper order in society and the world. Yi Yulgok shows us the most careful philosophical crystalization of the deep East Asian assumption that there is no final distinction between humanity and the rest of existence: we are an integral and organic part of Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998) Confucian philosophy, Korean the universe. In the West morality has often been treated as a uniquely human phenomenon, something that marks us off from the rest of the world. As seen through the frame of the Four-Seven debate, the challenge taken up by neo-Confucian metaphysics is whether a philosophy of organic unity can adequately account for the phenomena of human moral experience, particularly the conflicting tendencies to which we are subject and which seem less evident in the life of the rest of nature. In its historical context the Four-Seven debate concerns the adequacy of the neo-Confucian incorporation of Mencius' explanation that human nature is good. The deep issue is, how can the normative human nature (i) be considered a dynamic element assisting in this process? Health and life are normative but not abstract: the body fights for health, injured trees and plants heal themselves if given time. Mencius used such examples in a more than metaphorical sense: he saw human psychic or moral life as part of the same natural system with a similar dynamism, and the neo-Confucians certainly meant to carry forward this vision. Equating the nature with i, the normative of each and all things, seemed to be a metaphysical version of Mencius' view. But ki, its counterpart, raises questions: it was introduced not only to insure an objectively real world versus the Buddhist monism of consciousness, but also to objectify the moral problem. The latter was perhaps the more important issue in Confucian eyes: Buddhism claimed ultimately to transcend the dualism of good and evil, and neo-Confucians were bitterly critical of the anti-nomian potential in such views. With its degrees of coarseness or turbidity, ki, by contrast, objectifies the problem of moral distortion. The neo-Confucian elaboration of a systematic philosophical explanation for a source of evil within the human constitution that does not negate the inherent goodness of human nature was a great triumph. But the solution may have succeeded too well, for the turbidity of ki in the psychophysical constitution seemed to put a formidable barrier between the person and the kind of spontaneously good tendencies of which Mencius spoke. In China this resulted in the radical split in which Wang Yangming simply equated the human heart-and-mind with i and thus opened the way to immediate intuition and spontaneous perfection in stark contrast to the kind of prolonged book learning and rigorous ascetical practice demanded in the Cheng-Zhu approach. The orthodox followers of Zhu Xi claimed this amounted to another form of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, but Wang's school was nonetheless immensely successful in China and Japan, although not in Korea. The position worked out by Yi Hwang is an answer to this problem that remains totally within the Cheng-Zhu tradition; in comparison, the Wang Yangming solution appears an extreme and perhaps unnecessary alternative. By granting i the possibility of some kind of initiative to set the current in the proper direction before the disrupting influence of ki could take over, he was providing grounds for the spontaneous and appropriately human responsiveness Mencius had spoken of: ‘I gives issue and ki follows.' But the price is emphasizing the dualistic potential in Cheng-Zhu thought, for perfect complimentarity demands ki alone have such a concrete actualizing function. This was Yi Yulgok's objection; but in demanding that Yi Hwang's formula for the more dubious Seven Feelings, ‘ki gives issue and i mounts it', be the only one, he is hard pressed to really save Mencius. It would seem that if imperfect ki is in at the origin of all feelings in exactly the same sort of way, then the normative goodness of i is a mere abstraction, not something that is manifest in the actual tendencies of our inner life. The only way the perfection of i can spontaneously manifest in the phenomenal world would seem to be through the agency of perfectly pure ki. The tightness of Yi Yulgok's consistent insistence on the absolute complementarity and interdependence took Cheng-Zhu thought to a new level of systematization. At the same time, the question remains as to whether this systematization could settle the kind of issues solved by Yi Hwang's more dualistic approach. The real test of his system came more than a century later with the Horak debate. 5 The Horak Debate The Horak debate arose in the early decades of the eighteenth century among scholars belonging to Yi Yulgok's school of thought. Once launched, it was the source of philosophical debate down to the twentieth century, second only to the Four-Seven debate in length, notoriety and intellectual importance among Chosôn dynasty neo-Confucian controversies. Its chief protagonists were Han Wônjin (1682-1751) and Yi Kan (1677-1727). Both were students of the same prominent master, Kwôn Sangha, and both at different times held the prestigous position of Royal Lecturer, reflecting their recognition as leading scholars of their time. The debate takes its name from the geographical regions with which the major participants were associated: the ‘ho' group was centred in Ch'ungch 'ôngdo and supported the position of Han Wônjin, while the ‘Nak' scholars who supported Yi Kan hailed mainly from Kyônggido. The Horak controversy began on grounds that can be considered in some ways a continuation of the Four-Seven debate, driving Yi Yulgok's position to its final ramifications. However, in addition to pushing to the ultimate the question of a non-dualistic metaphysics of i and ki and its meaning for self-cultivation, the controversy took a new turn that brought out hidden tensions and ambiguities in the concept of i itself. The Four-Seven debate pushed the issue of the ramifications of the metaphysics of i and ki for the responsive life of the heart-and-mind; the Horak debate revisited the question, but this time with a focus on how to understand the meditative practice that was an important feature of self-cultivation. After centuries of Buddhist predominance, it was natural for early neo-Confucian thinkers to assume that consciousness itself, not just moral habits and self-discipline, is a key object of cultivation. Likewise, long familiarity with meditative discipline affected the way they understood the paradigmatic yin-yang pattern of alternating activity and quiet as it applied to consciousness: quiet was taken to mean not just relative inactivity, but absolute inactivity, that is, the condition of objectless consciousness familiar to trance meditation. Thus classical references to a condition before the feelings were aroused became a warrant for a meditative discipline known as ‘quiet sitting': the mind resting in objectless consciousness, in this view, is but the natural compliment to the mind actively engaged with some sort of object. Both of these conditions should have their appropriate role in self-cultivation. Just as they framed the understanding of the feelings, i and ki served to interpret the place and meaning of meditation practice. Turbid ki translated easily into literal psychic turbidity and tumult; clarifying and calming one's consciousness was also a matter of clarifying and calming one's ki. In this conceptualization there is an easy movement from the philosophical usage of the term ki in metaphysics to the more popular use of the term in which ki is the life force and the force of the feelings. What then would be the meaning of a perfectly clear, calm, objectless state of consciousness? Obviously this would be a condition of pure, undistorted unity with i, one's perfect nature which is, as we have seen, the formative grounds for all activity of the heart-and-mind. From this integral contact with the inner pattern for relating to all things, one might expect to gradually develop an ease and spontaneous appropriateness of one's responses in the active life; and this would also be facilitated as the practice fostered increased calm and mental focus in all areas of life. I as our own nature and the nature of all things lays the grounds for our appropriate interaction in all circumstances, and this practice seems highly effective as a means of removing the distortions introduced by our turbid ki. One can see here the life context of the i-ki metaphysics of the neo-Confucians. Clearly, philosophical reflection here grows out of and returns to the task of spiritual cultivation. The importance in practice of i as not only an abstract norm but as a formative, dynamic factor in spiritual cultivation is evident. Conceptually this was captured in the idea of the ‘original nature', that is, i as it is in itself, undistorted by the imperfection that may be present in ki. This again, like the Four Beginnings, is a reference to Mencius, for neo-Confucians explain that his argument that human nature is good was in fact pointing to the ‘original nature' before there ever was such terminology. Of course the negative side is equally important in understanding self-cultivation. The potentially ‘bent out of shape' natures of actual human beings with all the concrete reality of imperfect ki was conceptualized, in contrast with the ‘original nature', as the ‘physical (kijil; in Chinese, qizhi) nature'. Neo-Confucians stressed that the double terminology did not mean we have two natures: the ‘original nature' terminology was necessary because if one only observed the actual humans with their imperfect ‘physical nature', the original perfection of i would not be evident. In actuality, of course, there is only one nature: the only nature (i) is i embodied in ki. The point of the dual terminology is that even as embodied and hence manifested in a distorted and imperfect way, the original perfection of the nature is never lost. But what then is the point? Since all actuality occurs only in the context of i-with-ki, is the original nature anything but a way of paying lip-service to Mencius' teaching about a good human nature? The same problem we saw in the Four-Seven debate regarding the issuance of the feelings recurs here on the level of the nature, the source of the feelings. The issue is more explosive, however, for the original nature is a central aspect of self-cultivation theory: it is the dynamic base of tendencies to be cultivated and enlarged upon in activity, and meditative quiescence, the ‘condition before the mind is aroused', was commonly understood as putting one in touch with the original nature. 6 The Horak Debate (cont.) Han Wônjin ignited the controversy by remarks he made in 1707 in a short treatise on the original nature and the physical nature. As a typical follower of Yi Yulgok, his main concern was to attack dualistic misunderstandings that sometimes stemmed from this terminology. Almost incidentally, he remarked that, regarding the original nature in the condition before the mind is aroused, since it must still inhere in ki, one could also take that fact into account and refer to it as the physical nature. The pure perfection of the original nature could be reached only by an ‘exclusive reference' that simply did not take ki into account; in reality, of course, ki had to be there. In quiescence, Han observed, the imperfection that might be present in ki could not be observed, but that does not mean it is not there. To speak of the condition before the mind is aroused and the physical nature in the same breath was novel and provoked a storm of protest, for it deeply challenged the conventional conceptual framework of self-cultivation theory. Han's chief opponent was Yi Kan, a man deeply steeped in self-cultivation practice who himself had experienced the problems of a turbulent consciousness and the benefits of quiet sitting. The original nature was a reality that functioned in his spiritual practice and explained his positive experience. It could not, he argued, be reduced to a mere matter of ‘exclusive reference'. In the course of the controversy, Han's position proved intellectually unassailable and he never modified it, even though more scholars sided with Yi Kan than with him. The logic of a consistent, non-dualistic interpretation of Cheng-Zhu metaphysics supported him: no i without ki, and hence no i-originated actuality without the mediation of ki. It was rather Yi Kan who was forced, step-by-step, to modify his position. Finally, in order to support a living contact with the original nature, he introduced the notion of an ‘original mind', arguing that the turbidity of ki applied to the body but that the heart-and-mind remained essentially pure. This is the closest neo-Confucian thought approaches the mind/body dualism common in western thought; but it is a dualism of ki, reflecting that the stuff of both, unlike spirit/matter, is ultimately the same. In the Four-Seven debate, Yi Hwang gave a dualistic twist to i-ki metaphysics in order to maintain the the status of Mencius' Four Beginnings. Here Yi Kan, in a similar defence of a Mencius-inspired vision of self-cultivation, when Yi Hwang's kind of i-ki dualism is unthinkable, must resort to a division of ki itself in terms of mind and body. In the overall structure and intent of Cheng-Zhu thought, the role of i goes beyond merely explaining formal intelligibility or grounding an intellectual norm: it is a dynamic, active force in the process of becoming a full human being, but this dynamic side threatens to cast i and ki as competitive forces in a form of dualism out of tune with the deep structure of neo-Confucian metaphysics. The language of Zhu Xi's synthesis is continuously ambiguous, sounding in some passages quite dualistic and then, especially in more systematic metaphysical discussion, sounding non-dualistic and emphasizing perfect complementary and interdependence between i and ki. The history of these two controversies in Korea shows clearly that the ambiguities cannot be removed without a significant and creative recasting of the basic conceptual framework. The question of the original nature in the condition before the mind is aroused led Han Wônjin into reflection on the whole question of the nature. Cheng Yi's famous dictum, ‘I is one but manifested diversely', is one of the cornerstones of the Cheng-Zhu understanding of the nature. The comprehensive one i of all things is the ‘Supreme Ultimate', as Zhou Dunyi put it in his famous Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate. Zhu Xi's comment reflects Cheng's dictum: ‘Each thing has its own nature and all things are the one Supreme Ultimate'. This metaphysics accounts for the diverse manifestation of i whereby each thing has its own nature in terms of the varying degrees of the coarseness or turbidity of ki. Just as this accounts for the different degrees of intellectual and moral qualities of humans, so on a broader scale it accounts for entirely different species. In self-cultivation discourse, it is of course the perfectly good original nature which is normative, and this led to a stress on i's transcendence of the concrete limitation of ki: the pure and vital original nature remains unsullied, however bent out of shape it may be as manifested in a given individual. A criminal with a turbid psyche thus strives to become a better human, not a better criminal. But how does this apply to other species, similarly differentiated by the imperfection of ki? Is the normative, original nature of a cow the same as the original nature of a human? Han observed that according to the classics each creature should follow its nature, which implies that it is the nature as differentiated by ki that is normative: a good cow acts like a cow, not like a human. Such reflections led Han Wônjin in 1708 to propose a novel, tripartite way of viewing the nature: (1) the nature as pure i, with no reference to ki, and hence no differentiation (the nature in this sense is unitary and ineffable); (2) the nature as ‘based on ki', that is, as differentiated into species but undistorted and hence normative; and (3) the concrete physical nature according to which every individual, even of the same species, is different from every other. The ‘original nature', he suggested, is a differentiated norm, and this demands the distinctive second category, the nature as based on ki. Han's opponents, led by Yi Kan, mocked the novel language of a nature ‘based on ki' which somehow was not yet the real, concrete physical nature of an individual being. Yi held firmly to the common understanding of a unitary i as the ‘single origin', common to and within all things, and i as concretely manifested in diverse individuals. With ki comes limitation and distortion, and hence separation from the norm; hence the original nature must be identified with the ‘single origin,' and its diversity as norm must somehow be likewise contained in that. This dispute involved the most fundamental elements of Cheng-Zhu thought, the equation of i with the nature of things and the use of ki to account for both individual (especially moral) differences and the differentiation of various kinds of creatures. It thus was pursued with intensity, but over the years no consensus could be reached. Part of the reason for this lies in a deep ambiguity in Cheng Yi's foundational proposition, ‘I is one and manifested diversely'. Is the diverse manifestation totally the consequence of ki? Such was the understanding of Han Wônjin, who demanded the explicit reference to ki to account for any kind of diversified norm. Or is ki the means of implementing a diversity that has its more profound source in i itself? Such was the understanding of Yi Kan, who treated the ‘Single Origin' as a self-diversifying, normative i. One can find support for both of these interpretations of Cheng's dictum in the writings of Zhu Xi, but the ambiguity runs through most discourse treating of the diversification of i through ki. The fundamental ambiguity explored in the Horak debate points ultimately to the seam by which the organismic metaphysics typified by Chinese Daoism is stitched together with the consciousness-oriented participation metaphysics (all creatures are the manifestation of One Mind) which is part of Buddhism's Indian heritage (see Daoist philosophy). I as self-diversifying follows the organismic paradigm of the single pattern which accounts for both the unity and the diversity of a living body; i as unitary but manifested in varying degrees of fullness through the varying perfection of ki represents a kind of monism quite different from this one-body image, bringing to mind more the One Mind which never becomes plural in spite of its manifold manifestation. Mind and body have been subtly united here in a way unparalleled by any other of the world's great traditions. Bodies are differentiated by kinds and consciousness permits of degrees. neo-Confucians utilize i in both these ways, explicating through it the distinctness and commonality of all things, the transcendence of a normative nature, and the universal responsiveness of human consciousness which is the highest degree of participation in i. As the Horak debate makes clear, this feat involves a varied conceptualization of i's relationship with ki as the price of such an accomplishment.