順菴 安鼎福의 文學과 學問

Abstract

Ahn Jeongbok, since he was born, had lived in many parts of the country through his boyhood and youth, until he finally settled in Gwangju. Ahn Jeongbok was not one of the native gentry who lived and grew in a country village and had it as a social background. It would be reasonable to consider that his life during the time he brushed up his studies was led rather in city background. The characteristic of Ahn Jeongbok during the period of learning is that he was a writer pursuing polymathy. It was after he settled in Gwangju that Ahn Jeongbok started to devote himself to Dohak(ethics). Before this time, Ahn Jeongbok pursued polymathy rather than Dohak(ethics). This polymathy, because of its wide-ranging objects of studying, reminds of a writer or statesman above all things. Ahn Jeongbok didn't remain a narrow-minded moralizer concentrating on inner sageness even after he turned to Dohak(ethics). Ahn Jeongbok was interested in having both inner sageness and outer sovereign, which would be partly due to his polymathic interest. For 12 years from the time when he settled in Gwangju when he was 25～6 years old to the time when he started his official career when he was 38, and for the 18 years from the time he gave up government service when he was 43 to the time he started government service again when he was 61, the official life of Ahn Jeongbok amounting to the 25 years, except for the days in Gwangju when he devoted himself to studies and writing while closely associated with Seongho Lee Ik and his disciples, surely proves his positive interest in the reality, or the outer sovereign. Ahn Jeongbok, in pursuing inner sageness, especially stressed realization of metaphysical truth through studying practical matters. Ahn Jeongbok always bewared of an attitude of discussing human and natural laws without studying or carrying out practical matters. In fact, to Ahn Jeongbok, all topics about ethics, whether humanity, nature or energy, or even Catholicism of the west, could be a subject of discussion on condition that the ethical precepts were put in practices. The attitude of separating an argument from its advocate, or admitting reasonable points of unorthodox theories was the basic view point of Ahn Jeongbok. In this point, Ahn Jeonbbok was not an inflexible but an open moralist.