퇴계의 시대성찰과 선비의식

Abstract

The entrance of Toegye in the 16th Century Joseon brought a huge change in the existing image of seonbi. Toegye pinned down “becoming sage” as the final goal of learning. He reconstructed the idea of self-cultivation suggested by the Neo-Confucianists of the Song dynasty to a form appropriate for Joseon society. He also extended Zheng zi and Zhu Xi’s study of self-cultivation. What he established in Joseon society was the understanding that seonbi is a being who seeks after the state of “inner sagehood”. Namely, seonbi is a “being which studies (homo academicus)” with a goal of becoming a genuine human being. Through his principle-centered philosophy, Toegye thus confirms that seonbi is to strive academically for discovering the universal value that transcends the differentiating of the self and the other. However, such image of seonbi could end up as a dull and burdening ideology which ceaselessly demands a moral awakening. Ever since the late Joseon period, we have engrossed ourselves in extracting the image of “rational seonbi” based on a moral law and the sense of ethics from Toegye’s thoughts. Now we should turn to look for an image of a “loving” seonbi that recognizes the sincere human emotion and sensibility in his philosophy. There lay also the warm and affectionate seonbi that loved poetry and arts in Toegye.