薝園 鄭寅普의 주체적 實心論

Abstract

Damwon Jeong In‐bo is a scholar who was engaged in Korean studies from a more independent perspective than any others in a period in which pursuit of Western culture and academism was invogue without criticism. He inherited the subjective thought of Ganghwa Yang-ming studies, i.e., Sil‐Sim‐Ron ‘theory of substantial mind’ via his student‐teacher relation with Nan‐gok Lee Geon‐bang, and claimed that the substantial mind that could distinguish void and falsity was the true core of Yang-ming studies. Sil‐Sim ‘substantial mind,’ as is referred to by Jeong, was a universal philosophical idea beyond the contemporary Zeitgeist for saving the nation from a crisis, and any human being was supposed to pursue it. This is a different point that made his Sil‐Sim‐Ron distinct from other contemporary viewpoints that advocated the compact and practice‐oriented utility of Yang-ming studies. Jeong In‐bo defined Sil‐Sim as Bon‐Mit Maeum ‘mind in the base’ with which we could not deceive ourselves, and also as Eol ‘spirit’ on the side of the sympathy with other existences. The core of Sil‐Sim‐Ron as he claimed is to live a consistently truthful life without any falsity and deception at all via the establishment of identity. Also, the process of such a life is carried out in relation with everything rather than limited to individuals, and the identity here can be extended to the dimensions of the cognate blood kinship and people that are felt as us. In other words, individuals’ Sil‐Sim is expressed as affection for the cognate kinsmen and people, and the extended subject, the ‘National Eol’ is formed via such an emotional comprehension. He believed that every academic research was meaningless if it was not based on the ‘National Eol.’ While claiming that the subjective Sil‐Sim was the foundation of his scholarship and the core of Yang-ming studies , Jeong was alarmed not to consider himself as a ‘scholar of Yang-ming studies.’ He was so engaged in the importance of the subjective mind that he could not help overseeing the problem of compromising his identity due to his affiliation with a school even if the school put weight on identity.