晩求 李種杞의 삶과 사상적 특징

Abstract

Mangu Lee Jong-gi(1837-1902) was a Confucian scholar who had played an active role in Toegye School of Yongnam area in the nineteenth century. He was a man of importance keeping company with various representative Confucian scholars of Yongnam, but, compared with others, had not been well known. However, based on the writings he had left, we cannot but evaluate him as a valuable figure on whom more active studies should be made. This article, first of all, is to concentrate on his personal life, and to trace his academic origin. By way of this, we can figure out some of the phase of academic exchanges of those days. Also, we can re-conform the inclination of Lee, Jong-gi's thought by way of teasing out the characteristics of his thought. The academic fields of his interest were in Neo-Confucian thought and in the Studies of Rites. Therefore, we, first, are planning to study on the characteristics of his thought. Then, for the clarification of his thought on heterodoxy, his standpoints on Buddhism and the Western Studies will be examined. In his Neo-Confucian thought, Lee, Jong-gi, most of all, maintained a flexible perspective attaching importance to a balanced attitude that emphasized the harmony of li and ki. Based on this, he criticized the thoughts leaning exclusively to li or ki. In regard to the Studies of Rites, he suggested a flexible perspective making much importance of reality. This sort of flexibility was also reflected in his thought on heterodoxy, so that he held fast to his own exclusive attitude toward the Western Studies which was noting but a real threat to the Choson society. However, he was not hostile to Buddhism which had been verified not dangerous. Thus, in this study, we can grasp the life and the stream of thought of a typical Confucian scholar of Choson society in the turbulent period of the end of the nineteenth century.