퇴계 이황의 수양론과 대상 인식의 문제

Abstract

Confucianism has a creed that mankind can peacefully live together from the restoration of relation with each other, which is implicated in ‘jen’ (benevolence) that implies the state of the relationalities between human beings under the heaven. In a sense Confucian scholars have developed their own theory achieving the way of their learning originated in Confucius’ learning. Also in the same context Yi Hwang propose that we should not only cultivate our mind but also be in contact with the others and our own affairs through our kyeong (reverence) to achieve interconnected state with them. In his thought, there are the barrier to the way for appreciating the right knowledge of objects before us without our reverence on objects which are men or things in our history. As a result we would have met bad emperors who had became strongmen and led people violently and made what they ought to do wrong. At this point Yi Hwang considered it as very important that we appreciate things objectively and establish righteousness as the principle of things truly. Hence he made stress on the necessity of kyeong for doing all things whatever we might have met, building the right leadership both of oneself and for contacting others including things through the theory of kyeong ontologically in the middle of Chosun Dynasty.