다산 정약용의 심성론

Abstract

The relation between human mind and moral mind is a traditional theme for Confucian mental theory, whose object is to overcome human inclination towards the externals and realize humanity. Dasan Jeong Yak-yong praises it since he thinks that Zhu Xi’s interpretation of human mind and moral mind succeeded to and revived the legitimacy of Confucianism. He denies the cosmology of principle which regards nature as principle, then advocating the cosmology of personality. He puts up God instead of the principle of Heaven, the universal principle inherent in all things, because he thinks that the world cannot be created or manipulated by the principle, which is random and has no apprehensions. He also argues that God’s brilliance dwells in human mind, and the preference for goodness and aversion to evil are no other than nature. Dasan criticizes the view in which human mind is regarded as psychophysical nature and moral mind as original nature, and interprets human mind and moral mind employing Mencius’s idea of ‘part of themselves which is great’ vs. ‘part of themselves which is little’. According to his view, good and evil is decided not by psychophysical nature but by mind, and ‘the original’ shaping personality is a Buddhist term, whose semantic range does not accord with that of Confucianism. He dissolves the frame of original and psychophysical nature as he asserts that original nature, which comes from Heaven, varies from humans through beasts to vegetation. It is only humans who can tell right from wrong and make an independent choice. Dasan says that humans, during their lifetime, are faced with endless conflict, and even a sage can not be exceptional in that. He rejects the idea that the difference between the sage and the ordinary man, the superior and the stupid, and the noble and the mean results from that of psychophysical nature, and insists that the difference depends upon one’s efforts, eventually paving the way to moral practice. He puts emphasis on one’s moral practice, explaining that virtues also come from the consequences of action, not from innate virtue. It can be said that his emphasis on one’s independent moral practice implies a new human type, which breaks away from the medieval principle of Heaven where norms are derived from nature.