敬窩의 憂患意識과 修己復禮

Abstract

Gyeongwa Eom Myeong-seop was one of the intellectuals during the Japanese rule. He was also a Dohak scholar that kept the Confucian ideology and value right into the modern days. His consciousness of worries over the troubled world during the transition of times can be examined in two aspects of "study of Confucian ways" and "education." The study examined Gyeongwa's consciousness of worries over the troubled world based on his Chinese poems: first, there was the severance of the traditional Confucian ways. Secondly, his consciousness of worries over the troubled world was rooted in the decline of the Confucian tradition. Trying to fulfill his sense of duty to bring up Confucian successors, he devoted his entire life to education and encouraged younger students to study diligently. His most prominent viewpoint of education was "cultivating oneself(修己)." This was to restore one's own human nature and in line with the Neo-Confucian thinking that "The human nature is logic." Such a voluntary and active academic attitude was the most desperate one for Confucian scholars in his days. In cultivation, the emphasis was on "reverent mind and careful action(敬)," "truthful with no lies(誠)," "careful" and "hard working." Gyeongwa took ‘敬’ as his criterion of study and life.