18세기 조선, 錦帶 李家煥 서학 수용의 인식론적 기반

Abstract

By analyzing the publications and activities of Geumdae Lee Gahwan (錦帶 李家煥), who left his mark in the history of ideology, politics, and literature during the late 18th century, and focusing on his tendency of Kohak(ancient learning) and acceptance of Seohak (Western learning), the present study aims to examine his epistemological foundation and the significance of his caution-the-world proposal to rescue the world to save people and awareness of problems in the history of ideology during the late Joseon period. Before he encountered Seohak books and Western tools in person, Geumdae was already affected more by the Seongho School’s academic orientation of Kohak. The foundation of Kohak was provided to Geumdae as an embodied system that had been researched and criticized within the Seongho School for a long time, and it allowed him to take a more open and flexible attitude towards the West’s science, technology, and religion. Geumdae’s intellectual curiosity covered not only basic classics in Confucianism but also other various fields including history, Hundred Schools of Thought, Buddhism, Taoism, medicine, and military. In particular, he was open to publications resulting from the tendency of Kohak in the Ming dynasty, products of civilization (文物) in the Qing (淸) dynasty, and academic learning (學問) in the West (西洋). He was a typical Confucian intellectual as he argued that while it is good to seek to learn various academic fields (博學) including natural knowledge, expand (博聞) and develop them, one should be mindful (約禮) of ethical norms. Hence, although he highly praised and actively accepted the West’s science and technology from the perspective of development, he was skeptical about the Jesuits’ Catholicism, which had established a system organically aligned with the West’s science. He perceived Catholicism and the West’s science and technology strictly apart from one another, flipped Ricci’s ‘Christianity complementary to Confucianism’ on its head, and reinterpreted that the West’s technology ‘complements’ primitive Confucianism’s spirituality and religious nature. In the framework of cultivating the self to govern people (修己治人) in traditional Confucianism, governing people (治人) is complemented by accepting the West’s science and technology as a tool in learning to become the ruler, and in cultivating the self, primitive Confucianism’s concept of ‘Shangdi,’ which was referenced by the Jesuits, is highlighted and realigned in a way that reinforces training oneself (修身), serving parents (事親), and serving Shangdi (事天). In other words, he separated Seohak, which was more advanced in science and technology, from religion, recognized it as a useful tool to complement Confucianism, and established a caution-the-world proposal to ‘rescue the world to save people.’