茶山 靈體論의 儒學的 背景 - 성호학파를 중심으로

Abstract

Tasan Chŏng Yag-yong (1762~1836) is widely known to be actively adopted Western learning including, despite his public renunciation of Catholic faith. Much research has been carried out to demonstrate that Western learning exerted quite an influence on formation of Tasan’s theory of human nature, while some studies argue that Tasan’s spirit shows little resemblance to Western learning and is still rooted firmly in the primitive, ‘original’ form of Confucianism. What is often left out in the whole picture is, however, how his contemporaries envisioned heaven, especially those of same ideological lineage. As a descendent of Kyǒnggi Southerners and a member of the Sŏngho School, Tasan gained much insight from his fellow scholars and developed most of his theory out of his early thoughts, which is largely identical to the dominant ideas of the Sǒngho School. This article investigates into the Confucian origin of Tasan’s theory of human spirit by examining the notion of human and Heaven as envisioned by scholars belonging to Kyonggi Southerners such as Chae Jae-gong, An Jeong-bok, Yi Byong-hyu, and Sin Hu-dam. It will be uncovered that Tasan's general notion of human is the reflection of Kyonggi Southerner's notion of Heaven, and in the same vein with, if not a replica of, the collective work done by his senior scholars of Sǒngho School. Contrary to western learning and ancient notion of Heaven, for them, human and Heaven are of same kind — in their nature, authority, and difficulty of action.