고자의 인성론에 대한 주자의 인식 고찰

Abstract

The question of human nature has been a matter of great interest among philosophers for a long time. Especially the concern about human nature was already started in China from late Chunqiu Period and developed in the form of debate at the time of Mencius who succeeded to Confucius. This study aims to analyze Zhu-Xi’s remark about perceptions of other Chinese Confucian scholars on human nature based on『Mencius』 and 『Kao-Tzu Shang』and examine issues within his own view. Kao-Tzu argued that ‘Xing(性)’ is innate instinct of all creatures through the expression of ‘Sheng Zhi Wei Xing(生之謂性)’ and ‘Shi Se Xing Ye(食色性也)’ while Mencius defined ‘Xing(性)’ as moral properties that human beings only have. Even after a long time has passed since then, modern Neo-Confucian scholars still emphasize that human nature should be discussed based on morality rather than basic instinct. So they can be referred as descendents of Mencius. Mencius refuted Kao-Tzu’s explanation about the metaphor ‘willow tree’, saying that Kao-Tzu tried to accomplish righteousness at the cost of human nature and maintained that human nature is good in the first place because morality - righteousness - is already rooted in human nature. Also as to the metaphor ‘whirling water’, Mencius said that the very nature of water is to flow downward thus human nature is bound to be good initially. As a result, morality and righteousness already exist in human nature as they are inherent in human beings from the viewpoint of Mencius, while morality can be acquired at the course of lifetime because it is not embedded within human nature originally from the standpoint of Kao-Tzu. Kao-Tzu told about human nature through the metaphor of ‘willow tree(杞柳)’ and ‘whirling water(湍水)’ and Zhu-Xi took that Kao-Tzu’s metaphors as human nature is fundamentally evil. But what Kao-Tzu really implied in metaphor ‘whirling water’ was acquired characteristics of humanity and what he actually meant in the ‘willow tree’ was that human nature has no distinction between good and evil. Both metaphors just demonstrated that ‘Xing(性)’ has no aspect of either good or evil respectively. That is, What Zhu-Xi interpreted about Kao-Tzu’s theory of human nature is far from Kao-Tzu’s original intention.