丁若鏞, <尙書古訓>의 의례(義例)와 존고(存古)의 문제

Abstract

Judged from our modern day perspective, classical studies in pre-modern times look vague, conservative and even anachronistic. Compared to the dynamic historical progress that modern historians have described, classical learning scholars’ fixation with the ‘classics’ appears detached from the changing realities of society. Even if somebody discovered a very important fact in the history of classical studies, we tend to ask: so what? To us, ‘the classics’ are just one of many possible canons and we regard exegeses of them as merely academic or philosophical ‘thoughts’. Although the Sangsŏ gohun was a laborious work throughout Chŏng’s life, it has received relatively little scholarly attention, unlike Chŏng’s so-called ‘literary’ and ‘practical’ works. In fact, it is difficult for us to find his uniqueness here since this book was more of a compilation than an original creation. What matters here is not ‘what he thought’ but ‘how he organized’. Therefore, in this paper I examined the book’s ‘Ŭirye’ 義例, or ‘program’, in order to find out the meaning of Chŏng’s original conceptualization of this work, namely the ‘Retaining of the Old’ 存古, which he referred to in the preface. This ‘program’ on discourses over the Sangsŏ, a controversial issue in Confucian history, is thought to aim at not only the feasibility of reading but also carries a social dimension that was inseparable from Chŏng’s experiences, circumstances and ideals. Cai Shen 蔡沈(1167-1230) presented the “original truth” of the Old Text Documents but didn’t refer to different versions of the text. Conversely, Sun Xingyan 孫星衍(1753-1818) concentrated his efforts on restoring the “original text” using different versions, but didn’t recognize the different explanations in history. However, Chŏng tried to offer different versions of the text as well as different opinions on the text in the Sangsŏ gohun, which was made possible because he developed a system, namely Ŭirye, to discriminate and classify materials properly. Furthermore, he could make a space to state his opinions on the present based on the past by standing at the end of exegetical tradition. Chŏng suggests to us a narrow and rather troublesome way to the “original truth” of antiquity in the Sangsŏ gohun, which starts with the recognition of incomplete texts and passes through historical studies on various exegeses, rigorous comparison with textual materials and synthetic generalization. It is only upon the basis of this foundation that messages flow from the antiquity to the present. Chŏng’s so-called “Retaining the Old” was this methodological roadmap.