성호 이익의 철학사상에 있어서실천성의 의미

Abstract

So far, research on Seongho has been on the subject of individual problems such as his social reform theory, epistemology, four-seven debates. But it is hard to say that the precise understanding of the philosophical thought of the Seongho has been done. His philosophical consciousness was on how to secure the universal basis of human conduct. The greatest feature of the Seongho’s philosophy is that it has no longer accepted Heaven’principle(天理) as traditionally grounded in the principle of conduct as a basis for moral action. If so, where do we acquire the universality of moral principles? He claimed that the objects of big ki(大氣) and small ki(小氣) were determined according to the operating category of material(氣) and the objects of big ki encompassed objects of small ki. Thus, the principle(理) of a particular object is the public principle(公理) in the context of the objects of small ki contained in it. Every principle is strictly speaking an public principle because all entities are in belonging-affiliation relation with the higher-level entity. However, the public principle of the actual meaning is a human problem with the ability to distinguish between the public and the private, and has meaning in the family, the nation, and the world that are formed around the human being. Moreover, securing absolute moral principles without falling into relativism while being limited by time and space is solely a human being’s task. The process of knowing, which he described in terms of recognition and accumulation(藏往), mystic response(靈應), and judgement and treatment(處), was presented as a solution to this task. It is here that Seongho was able to demand a high level of moral practice while emphasizing the objective perception of things, and the source of strong moral consciousness consistently.