尤庵 宋時烈의 主體意識

Abstract

Concerning about the current crisis, many emphasize the economic condition while a few people realize the moral issues. Without strong traditional moral and spiritual foundation, many people did not realize that economic affluence and technical development became meaningless. The sense of identity consists of many things such as racial identity, national identity, ideological identity, religious identity and so on. That is, the sense of identity in general deals with a complex issues. This article examines characteristics and special nature of the concept of sense of identity by the Uam Song Si-yeol. Uam, the penname of Song Si-yeol(1607-1689), was born at the chaotic time just after the Japanese Invasion of 1592 and experienced the Manchus Invasions of 1827 and 1636. Because of that Joseon’s national agenda was to revenge the national shame of the defeat by the Manchus who force the Korean king to knee down in front of the enemy general outside the wall of Seoul. Overcoming this national shame, Joseon planned to attack Manchuria by military reform while investing in national strength. It was marked as a beginning of the Joseon’s national awakening of the self-esteem and identity. As a result, Joseon’s general atmosphere was witnessed as a strong anti-Qing while maintaining pro-Ming attitude. Uam developed the concept to respect the tradition while rejecting barbaric Manchus by the ideology, which emphasizes the way of literary tradition to respect the great-will of Confucianism. Definitely, it reflected the Uam’s attention to inherit the tradition of Confucius and Mencius to overcome the crisis. In the seventeenth century when Uam lived was the time of the full blooming of the study of Neo-Confucianism by Toegye and Yulgok after receiving it during the end of Goryeo and the beginning of Joseon. Uam inherited the scholarly tradition of Yulgok and remain as a strict Neo-Confucian scholar rejecting any heresy including any interpretation not based on Neo-Confucianism. For that Uam’s sense of identity based on the premise of the traditional way of achieving tao(the way), which succeeded from Yo-Sun-Uh-Tang-Mun-Mu-Jugong- confucius-Mencius-Chu His-Toegye-Yulgok tradition. From this premise Uam believed that Neo-Confucian identity promoting a literary activity and proper behavior precedes the racial identity. It does not mean that Uam underestimate the importance of racial and national identity. He believed that Neo-Confucian identity must be preceded to create the strong racial and national identity.