박지원의 명심(冥心)과 상생(相生)의 생태사상

Abstract

In an attempt to contribute to the resolution of the world ecological crisis caused by environmental destructions, the research on Confucian thoughts that revealed organicistic and ecological elements has been carried out from 1990s. The author himself, during that period, has investigated ecological elements and characteristics inherent in pre-Qin Confucianism, Song-Ming Confucianism as well as Korean Neo-Confucianism and Yang-ming studies. In this paper, proceeding to this research, the author aimes to find the ecological elements and characteristics existing in the thought of Park Ji Won, one of the great figures of Korean Practical Study (實學), and then clarify the meanings of them. In the first part of this paper, the author investigates the present state of ecological discussions in European and Confucian thoughts and their outstanding questions, as well as the necessity to carry out the research on Park Ji Won’s ecological thought. In the second part, the author investigates the equalitarianism mentioned in Park Ji Won’s thought. Park Ji Won searched for the basis of the equality of human beings and other things in the world in the concepts of ‘reforming Ether’ (氣化) and ‘character conferred by the Heaven’ (天命之性). In the third part, the author considers the viewpoint of Park Ji Won in which he explained the reasons why human beings and other things in the world could not be equal. Park Ji Won looked for those reasons in the consciousness of distinguishing ‘me’ and ‘others’ into two, in the limitation of language and writing that was fixed and restricted to the space and time, and in the limitation of unchanging conceptions as well as sensory organs. To resolve those limitations, Park Ji Won presented the concepts of ‘empty heart’ (虛心), ‘deep heart’ (冥心) and ‘inter-promotion’ (相生). Empty heart was the condition for the understanding and acceptance of things as they were in reality. ‘Deep heart’ meant the heart reached the boundary in which the inner and the outer had no division (內外無間), and ‘I’ and ‘other things’ in the world became one (物我一體). Inter-promotion was the equal and complementary relation between human beings and other things in the world, they did not exist in an one-sided relation in which only one side could receive the benefits from others. This kind of ecological thought of Park Ji Won gave us many suggestions on how to resolve the problems existing in Neo-Confucianism, Ecocentrism as well as Anthropocentrism nowadays.