『尙書』‘性’字와 그 含意

Abstract

There have been rather rich research achievements on human nature ideology, but most of them address the subject after Confucius with not enough researches conducted on the subject before him. It is because there was already literature that talked about the attributes of human nature in those days but it was far from enough both in quantity and quality. Since human nature ideology holds an important place in ancient philosophy, there is still a need to study it before Confucius in order to understand correlations between before- and after-Confucius human nature ideology. This study investigated the letter 'seong(性)' in Sangseo(尙書), one of the historical books covering the period before Confucius and Confucian classics, and analyzed relations between its implications and the following human nature ideology. In Sangseo, the letter 'seong' in 'cheonseong(天性)','seupyeoseong(習與性)', 'jeolseong(節性)', 'hangseong(恒性)' and 'toseong(土性)' is closely related to heaven-people’s implications for temperament and moral cultivation. In particular, the concept of ‘seupyeoseong’ is in relationships of uprising before and after with the discourse of "seongsanggeun, seupsangwon(性相近, 習相遠)" in the Analects of Confucius. The ideological internal implications of the letter 'seong' in Sangseo were relatively simple and humble but developed into a kind of philosophical category by the time of Confucius.