The Four-Seven Debate in Silhak: On the Gong Hino Ribal Theory of the Seongho School

Abstract

This paper examines the gong hino ribal (公喜怒理發) theory in Silhak (實學), which was the center of debate in the Seongho (星湖) school of thought. There were two main debates. The first was the distinction between cosmology and morality. Yulgok (栗谷) claimed gibal iseung ji (氣發理乘之), stating the necessity to understand sadan chiljeong (四端七情, the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings) theory in the extension of the universe’s process of change. However, Seongho claimed that the dimension of sadan chiljeong, namely the mind of humans in which good and evil generated, was different from the mindless natural world. Furthermore, those members of the Seongho school asserting the gong hino ribal theory adopted that idea and claimed that Yulgok was right in cosmology, in which there was no distinction between good and evil, while Toegye (退溪), who explained good and evil based on the distinction between ribal (理發, the issuance of ri) and gibal (氣發, the issuance of gi), was right in morality. This was an attempt to understand the Four-Seven theory by differentiating the moral world from the natural world. Secondly, those who asserted the gong hino ribal theory rejected the Toegye school’s common theory that ribal explained sadan (四端, the Four Beginnings) and gibal explained chiljeong (七情, the Seven Feelings) and created a new scheme that ribal was considered to be gong (公) and gibal was considered to be sa (私). A sage’s gong chiljeong (公七情), which is appropriately moderated, namely gong hino (公喜怒), is still categorized as ribal because, despite being chiljeong, it is still gong. This is the gong hino ribal theory, which invalidated the received distinction between the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings while searching for a new distinction. As a result, scholars who upheld the existing distinction came into conflict with those who supported the new distinction, which led to a division within the Seongho school of thought.