Abstract

The sixteenth century marked the high point of Korean Neo-Confucian development wherein major thinkers were distributed across three geographic locations: in Yeongnam嶺南, Yi Hwang 李滉 and Jo Sik 曹植 ; in Honam湖南, Yi Hang 李恒, Kim Inhoo 金麟厚, and Gi Daeseung 奇大升 ; and in Gyeonggi 京畿, No Susin 盧守慎, Yi I 李珥 and Seong Hon 成渾. These scholars engaged in profound study and discussion of Neo-Confucianism. Among their numerous philosophical debates, those concerning the “four buddings” and “seven feelings” and theory of “human mind” and “moral mind” received the most attention. The former arose from a distinctly Korean Neo-Confucian problem of consciousness, while the latter was related to the eastward spread of the philosophy of the Ming era Chinese Cheng-Zhu scholar Luo Qinshun 羅欽順. By the sixteenth century, the Korean understanding of Zhu Xi’s thought had already attained an extraordinarily high level of philosophical maturity and displayed the critical apparatus characteristic of philosophical reflection. Because the Korean Neo-Confucians had a sufficient understanding and grasp of Zhu Xi’s thought that they were able to further develop this realm of discourse and examine the similarities and differences between the work of Zhu Xi and Luo Zheng’an. In other words, sixteenth-century Korean Neo-Confucianism was not merely a carbon copy of China’s Zhu Xi thought; they possessed their own level of intellectual autonomy and developed ideas with respect to their own philosophical problem of consciousness. So while they inherited Zhu Xi’s thought, their grasp of the tradition was penetrating enough that in the course of interpreting Zhu Xi’s thought, they were further able to make creative transformations, developing their own unique philosophical ideas.