양명학에서 바라 본 함석헌의 생명사상

Abstract

Ham Seok-Heon was born in late Chosŏn period. He embodied the image of intellectuals to practice, feeling the pain and suffering of the people and the nation under the Japanese colonization, 6,25 war and dictatorship. He set his life goal to saving the people based on religious sensibility under the traditional Christianity. He extended his broadness of thoughts through reading books about Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Furthermore, he established a pluralistic thought and identity while in jail when he was arrested by Japanese military police because of his nationalistic tendencies. He formed a fundamental shift in the interpretation of the Christian doctrine, which was atonement converted to self-atonement, through the encounter with the oriental traditions. He established his own identity through finding the truth from the inside instead of finding it outside. This could be the basis of the practical life. It is like Wang Yang-ming finding the principle of morals from inside instead of finding it from Zuxi’s theory which also became the power to practice the principles. It can be argued that the reason Wang Yang-ming could strongly state the importance of the unity of knowledge and action was because he had found truth from inside. Significance of Ham Seok-Heon’s sprit in history of human intelligence is that he required that one put reflection and self-awareness in the center of the philosophical reasons. He lived a practical life believing that it is God’s will to have self-awareness of moral life. Although Ham Seok-Heon accepted the immanent religious philosophy of East and West, he formed immanent ideas under transcendental theism. Yang-ming’s whole life was the progress of achieving ‘moral mind’ from the inside. For Ham Seok-Heon, who thought that God exists in us as the essence of morals, wouldn’t it be right to say that his God is ‘God without God’ seeing it from Wang Yang-ming’s theory?