Finding God in the Classics: The Theistic Confucianismof Dasan JEONG Yagyong

Don Baker

Published online: 30 December 2012# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012

Abstract Dasan JEONG Yagyong (1762–1836) is regarded in South Korea today asone of pre-modern Korea’s best philosophers. This article examines one of thereasons he is so respected. He modified traditional Korean Confucian moral philos-ophy to include notions of human nature as desires rather than innate virtue, theimportance of free will rather than mere determination, and the existence of a LordAbove as a necessary incentive to proper behavior. Though he supported thesechanges to traditional Korean Confucian philosophy with references to the Classicsand his own personal moral experience, observers have noticed the possibility ofWestern influence on his thinking. He is thus hailed by Koreans as a cross-culturalphilosopher, an example of how Koreans can borrow from the West while nonethe-less remaining authentically Korean.

Keywords li . Human nature . Free will . Sangje (Shangdi)

1 Introduction

Dasan JEONG Yagyong (1762–1836) is usually listed among the three greatest Con-fucian philosophers in all Korean history, along with Toegye YI Hwang (1501–1570)and Yulgok YI I (1536–1584). However, if you ask Koreans how he merits thatreputation, you will get a variety of answers. Some will point to his practical guide tolocal administration for district magistrates (Chŏng 2010), though that subject is notusually placed under the category of “philosophy.” A few will point to his commen-taries on the Confucian Classics, though they will usually deemphasize the traditionalConfucian elements in them (Chŏng 1992). Most, however, will simply reply that hewas a modern thinker who proposed reforms that, had they been adopted, would havefreed Korea from the grip of Confucianism, which, they will tell you, kept Korea

Dao (2013) 12:41–55DOI 10.1007/s11712-012-9303-0

Don Baker (*)Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z2e-mail: don.baker@ubc.ca

from modernizing for centuries (Han 1983). None of those answers will tell you thereal reason Dasan is so highly regarded in contemporary South Korea.

The real explanation for Dasan’s reputation lies in the fact that he was a brilliantConfucian scholar writing at a time when Korea was on the verge of moving intomodernity. His brilliance is displayed in the fact that he was one of the first Koreanthinkers to begin shifting away from the Neo-Confucian worldview in which theindividual was less important than the community and the cosmos. He began thephilosophical process of, in the words of one American scholar of Confucianphilosophy, “extricating man from the universe” (Kalton 1981: 18). That allowedhim to envision options to the socio-economic order Neo-Confucianism had erectedin Korea. Though he didn’t move very far from the Neo-Confucian worldview, hemoved far enough for Koreans today to see him as a harbinger of modernity. Insupport of that assessment, they point to his advocacy of land reform, his argumentsfor adopting the latest technology, and his call for a just government. Except for a fewprofessors in philosophy and history departments, Koreans rarely talk about his new(for Korea) vision of human nature, and how that underlay many of the ideas they seeas pointing toward modernity.

Koreans today want to be a modern people (anybody who visits Seoul can see thatthey clearly are), but they also want to be proud of their ancestors and of theirtraditional culture. Dasan is interpreted today as someone firmly rooted in Korea’straditional culture, who nevertheless promoted many modern ideas and practices. Hetherefore allows them to be both proudly Korean and proudly modern, since they canpoint to Dasan as evidence that modernity in Korea has Korean roots, even thoughfew are familiar with the philosophical underpinnings of his ideas.

In his own time, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Dasanwas not seen as particularly modern. Instead, he was seen by most of his peersas a criminal and, in fact, was sent away from his family and forced to live inrelative isolation for 18 years because of his role in the founding of the KoreanCatholic Church in the 1780s. When he was interrogated during an anti-Catholicpersecution in 1801, shortly before he was exiled, he was not asked about hisphilosophy. Instead, he was asked what he knew about the Korean Catholiccommunity, which the staunchly Confucian government of that day viewed as asubversive organization.

Dasan had little impact on philosophical currents in his own day. He engaged insome philosophical exchanges with friends in the decade and a half before he wasbanished from the capital, but he didn’t produce much serious writing until he wasalone with his books in the distant countryside. During his eighteen years living in ahut on Korea’s southwestern coast, from 1801 to 1818, he wrote volume after volumeof commentaries on the Confucian Classics, including ten volumes on the Analectsplus two volumes on Mencius, two volumes on the Doctrine of the Mean, and twovolumes on the Great Learning, totaling over 1,500 pages in the 1992 version of hiscollected works. (That’s in addition to the thousands of pages he wrote on the Book ofOdes, the Book of History, the Book of Changes, and ancient ritual texts.) At first thecommentaries were read by few beyond his immediate family members, since he hadbeen expelled from the respectable intellectual circles in Seoul. During his ownlifetime, and for decades after his death in 1836, he had almost no impact on whatother Koreans were thinking.

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Dasan’s philosophy didn’t really come to public notice until the 1930s, a centuryafter his death. Koreans grappling with the struggle to adapt to the modernizing worldwithout cutting all ties to their own history and traditions discovered what they saw assprouts of modernity in his writings. Dasan has since become a cultural hero, with amajor road named after him in Seoul and his statue on Namsan, the mountain thatrises in the middle of Seoul. Those of us who are not searching for signs of modernityamong our ancestors may, at first, find Dasan’s philosophy not particularly exciting.After all, many of his insights, such as that human beings are torn between the desireto be good and the desire to feel good and that human beings can choose to do goodor evil appear commonplace today, though they were radical ideas in Korea in theearly nineteenth century. Moreover, his approach to philosophizing, carefully readingrevered ancient texts to uncover the insights of the sages, appears rather old-fashioned.

Nevertheless, there is much we can learn from Dasan. First of all, the primaryproblems he addressed, how to explain the fact the human beings find it difficult toconsistently act the way they know they should act as well as how best to overcomethat undeniable human moral frailty, are as real and important to us at the beginningof the twenty-first century as they were to him at the beginning of the nineteenth.Moreover, at a time in human history when advances in communication and trans-portation have thrown us into a maelstrom of contradictory assumptions andconflicting beliefs and values, Dasan’s attempt to import a few concepts from Europeinto the sophisticated Neo-Confucian philosophy of his own culture, creating whatone Korean scholar has labeled a “creative bridge between the East and the West,”can show us both the promise and the limits of such cross-cultural philosophizing(Kim 1996).

2 Dasan’s Approach to Philosophizing

Dasan did not approach philosophy the way most modern professors of philosophydo. He wasn’t interested in understanding the world per se but in finding out how bestto develop the ability to operate morally within the world. He was a practical thinker,interested in finding solutions to concrete problems. And for him, the most urgentconcrete problems were moral problems, especially how to cultivate the ability toalways and everywhere, and in every situation, act appropriately. Since he was aConfucian, he believed the best place to look for such solutions was the ConfucianClassics. He looked at old texts from ancient China and tried to figure out whatthey were trying to tell him in his day, not about the nature of the world butabout what it meant to be a moral human being. Dasan tells us explicitly that thiswas the proper goal of scholarship. In an essay he wrote criticizing the way mostof his contemporaries approached the study of the Confucian Classics, he stated,“It is through studying xing 性 (human nature) and li 理 (the dynamic patternsthat define and direct appropriate interactions) that we both learn the Way andlearn about ourselves in order to give ourselves both the will and the way to dowhat we ought to do” (Chŏng 1992: 1XI.19a). That is a very broad statement. Ittells us what Dasan believed was the aim of scholarship, but not how heintended to approach it.

Finding God in the Classics 43

However, an examination of the specific problems he wanted the Classics toprovide solutions for reveal that he was motivated by his own personal moralexperience. He appears primarily concerned with finding explanations for the diffi-culty he, and all those he knew, had in trying to consistently act the way they knew heshould act. That Dasan found consistently acting properly was difficult is obvious inhis commentaries on the Classics. For example, in a discussion of the Zhongyong(which he read as “Consistency in Following the Right Course” rather than “Doctrineof the Mean”), he points out that the second character of the title of that Classic refersto consistency in the pursuit of virtue, which is not an easy task: “In the Zhongyong,we can find such lines as ‘the Way cannot be left even for an instant,’ ‘rare are thosewho can follow the Way,’ and ‘there are those who cannot not follow it for even amonth’” (Chŏng 1992: 1VIII.28b).

In a commentary on the Zhongyong, Dasan notes, “Following one’s [virtuous]nature requires effort. It is fair to say that human nature is fundamentally good andpure, but human desires consistently lead people to sink into evil. We must devote allof our energy to following our human nature” (Chŏng 1992: 2IV.3a). In a moreconcrete statement of his recognition of human moral frailty, Dasan adds thatconsistently doing the right things and sticking to the moral path is as difficult asclimbing up a steep hill, but following our preference for physical pleasure is as easyas rolling down that same hill (Chŏng 1992: 2V.33a).

Moreover, he criticizes ZHU Xi for teaching that “yong,” in Zhongyong, refers toordinary patterns. In Dasan’s opinion, it would be a grave mistake to think that theZhongyong was telling us to adhere to ordinary normative patterns of behavior.“What people in the world are familiar with is called ordinary principle. When theyhear the doctrines of the Way and human nature, they think these are counter toordinary principle and everyday customs. Indeed, if the Sages had taken ordinaryprinciple and set it up as a model for guiding All-under-Heaven and regulatingordinary people, would there be anyone who would not adopt vulgar customs andjoin the corrupt world, becoming accustomed to the actions of village worthies?”(Chŏng 1992: 2IV.9b) In Dasan’s view, to act morally we must rise above theordinary. Although Dasan recognized from his own personal moral experience thatit wasn’t easy cultivating the sort of moral character that would allow him to riseabove the ordinary and consistently act virtuously, he nevertheless assumed that itwas possible to do so. Moreover, he assumed that the Classics provided advice andtechniques that would help him do so. However, he felt that the advice others beforehim had excavated from the Classics wasn’t much help. So he attempted what he feltwas a better approach to reading the Classics, one that would allow him to determinewhat the Sages were actually saying.

Though Dasan never explains in detail what his approach to reading the Classicswas, it is possible to study his commentaries and see what techniques he applied touncover what he believed was the practical advice they contained. First of all, hebelieved the same logograph could have different meanings, depending on thecontexts in which it was used. Therefore for him it was important to pay attentionto the context in which a word appears to make sure one understood it correctly.Second, Dasan believed that it was important to leave behind the layers of meaningsfor important logographs that had been imposed on them over the centuries andinstead try to recover the original literal meaning.

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We find an example of his first operating assumption, that it was important todistinguish different meanings for the same character, in a letter he wrote to a youngerConfucian scholar, YI Chaeŭi (1772–1839). In that letter, he stated that the best wayto understand what the Classics really mean is to examine important individualcharacters in them, see how they are used in different contexts, and then determinewhich particular meaning is the correct meaning for those individual characters intheir specific context. He warns that you can’t force a meaning on a character butmust let the context in which it is found tell you what it means. He gave as anexample the character “heart-mind” (xin 心). Sometimes, he says, it refers to theactual physical heart. At other times, it refers to the organ of consciousness in theindividual body. At other times, it refers to the moral feelings that organ of con-sciousness produces. If you read that character with one meaning in a context inwhich another meaning is appropriate, then you will misunderstand the passage youare studying. Even worse would be to intermingle the three different meanings of thesame character. That would lead to the serious mistake of identifying the moralfeelings generated by the mind with ki 氣, the material stuff and energy out of whichthe universe is composed, since the physical heart is composed of ki (Chŏng 1992:1XIX.29a-31a).

Dasan’s insistence on distinguishing three different meanings for the character“mind-heart” is an example of a second assumption guiding his interpretative strat-egy. Not only did he believe that the best way to locate the message of the Classicswas to focus on what the individual characters in those Classics actually meant, healso assumed that much of the confusion he found in the Neo-Confucianism of hisday was due to the error of trying to expand important terms to embrace so manydifferent phenomena that they became unwieldy, making it impossible to get a solidgrip on a phrase under examination. In unraveling the meaning of a particular phraseor sentence, Dasan preferred the scalpel of analysis over the glue of synthesis. Inother words, when he encountered a phrase that could be interpreted in a number ofways because a key word or two in it had multi-layers of meaning, Dasan would pullthose various layers apart and then decide which one, and only one, of those manypossible meanings applied in that particular phrase. He was uncomfortable with thetraditional Neo-Confucian approach of stretching key terms so wide that they em-braced as wide a range of phenomena as possible. Moreover, when faced withmultiple readings of an important term, when he encountered that term in an oldertext Dasan preferred a literal interpretation, which he believed was closer to theoriginal meaning.

An example of Dasan’s preference for a literal interpretation of important Neo-Confucian terms is his explanation of what yin and yang really mean. In a response toa question his king posed on the line in the Doctrine of the Mean that reads “WhatHeaven has ordained is called human nature,” Dasan began by arguing against ZHU

Xi’s explanation that human nature is the same as Patterning Principle [li] created byHeaven through the interaction of yin and yang, and the five phases (ZHU Xi 1999:734). First, Dasan points out, yin and yang are nothing more than terms used to referto shade and sunlight, respectively. There are no physical entities that we can point toand say “that is what yin is” and “that is what yang is.” Instead, those terms are usedin a relative way. When we want to identify something as brighter or more active thansomething else, we give it the yang label. Similarly, we apply the yin label to

Finding God in the Classics 45

something we want to identify as darker or less active than something else. But, sinceyin and yang are not themselves actual things, they cannot produce things. Thatwould be contrary to the normal ways things are produced (contrary to li)(Chŏng 1992: 2IV.1b-2b).

Dasan made a similar criticism of the related Neo-Confucian claim that the FivePhases, after they were generated by yin and yang, went on to generate the myriadthings in the universe. He insisted on a literal reading of the characters for water,wood, metal, fire, and earth, saying that those were only five things among the myriadthings in the universe. He asks, how could those five things alone produce everythingelse? It is especially irrational, he argued, to give the Five Phases any role in thegeneration of human nature. After all, those Five Phases are material entities, buthuman nature, as that term is used in this phrase from the Zhongyong, refers to ourinnate tendency to prefer what is good over what is bad. Such a preference for thegood over the bad is immaterial, not material, and therefore cannot be generatedby mere material objects. Besides, he points out, the “Announcement of Tang”section of the Shujing says that “August Heaven has conferred on the peoplebelow a moral sense.” That makes it clear that it is Heaven, not the Five Phases,that is responsible for human beings having a natural preference for the good(Chŏng 1992: 2IV.3a).

3 Dasan’s Understanding of Human Nature

Dasan was particularly vigorous in challenging the Neo-Confucian understanding ofhuman nature as innate virtue and essentially the same thing as li. For example, hezeroed in on the standard Neo-Confucian interpretation of the line in Mencius thatreads, “Order and righteousness delight our hearts like meat delights our mouths”(Mencius 2008: 151). CHENG Yi had claimed that “order” is “patterning principle”and therefore is the same thing as righteousness. That interpretation leads further tothe identification of both patterning principle and righteousness with human nature,since they “delight our hearts.” Dasan insists that such an interpretation is a misun-derstanding of the logograph li, translated here as “order.” Again showing hispreference for a literal reading of the meaning of a character, he writes that Lioriginally referred to the patterns in a piece of jade. It was extended to meanappropriate patterns, since jade carvers were supposed to follow the natural patternsin the pieces of jade they were carving. It thus came to be used to mean naturalpatterns, and action that is in accord with those patterns, in the Zhongyong, in theBook of Changes, and by Mencius. As Dasan sees it, it is quite a leap from thatconcrete meaning of that term to use it for the cosmic immaterial force paired with ki,cosmic material force. It is also quite a leap to use that term for the moral natureheaven has endowed us with, and contrast it with the ki that generates the SevenFeelings. He insists there is no basis in the ancient texts for thus equating li withhuman nature (Chŏng 1992: 2VI.25b-26a).

A few pages later, Dasan again accuses Song Neo-Confucians of imposinginterpretations on Mencius the text itself doesn’t support. Commenting on the state-ment by Mencius that “To fully fathom one’s heart is to understand one’s nature. Tounderstand one’s nature is to understand heaven” (Mencius 2008: 171), Dasan

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charged CHENG Yi with distorting what Mencius actually said. Dasan noted that,starting with CHENG Yi, generations of Confucian scholars used that statement tosupport their assertion that everything in the universe, material or immaterial, con-scious or unconscious, is embraced by the one universal li, which is identified with“one’s heart” and “one’s nature” and even with heaven. However, Dasan notes, this isa relatively late development in Confucianism, derived from the way Buddhists talk,and has no warrant in the language of the Confucian Classics. Besides, he asks, howcould an all-embracing li, which would be immaterial, have no emotions, and beunconscious, possibly function as the li of entities that take a concrete material form,are conscious, and have emotions? Rather than a universal li, there must be separateand distinct li for the various separate and distinct entities and processes in thecosmos (Chŏng 1992: 2VI.38a-b).

Dasan went even further in demoting li from its central role in Neo-Confucianphilosophy. In delving into the intricacies of the debate in Korea over whether theFour Fonts (siduan 四端) and the Seven Emotions (qi qing 七情) should be treated asseparate, such that the Four Fonts (the four fundamental virtuous instincts) are seen asgenerated by li and the Seven Emotions by ki (T’oegye’s position), or whether theFour Fonts should be treated as a subset of the Seven Emotions and therefore ki aloneshould be granted generative power (Yulgok’s position), Dasan at first adopted aposition closer to Yulgok’s. However, his terminology went far beyond what Yulgokhad been willing to say. Dasan stated that, unlike ki, li was nothing more than anattribute, something dependent on something more substantial (Chŏng 1992:2IV.65a).

In another departure from the usual way Neo-Confucians thought of li, Dasanelsewhere argued that li should be divided into the li as a cosmic force, in whichcase his definition above, that li is dependent on ki, applies, and li as a moralforce, which is a more useful way to think of li when we are trying to distinguishbetween moral and immoral thoughts springing up in our mind (Chŏng 1992:1XII.17a-18b). Here is clear evidence that Dasan is more interested in how he canapply philosophical concepts to specific situations, including moral practice, thanhe is in trying to continue the Neo-Confucian project of constructing a unifyingvision of the cosmos. His personal moral experience told him that it was useful tothink of li having its own generative power within his heart-and-mind, thoughli appeared to be dependent on ki in the external material world. Therefore hewould define that single character li differently, depending on the concept towhich it was applied.

However, though granting that it was useful to think of li as having moralgenerative power, he refused to go further and identify li with human nature. In acommentary on the Zhongyong, Dasan clarifies how he defines human nature. Hewrites that the line “what heaven has ordained is called human nature” should beinterpreted in light of how Mencius uses the term “human nature.” Dasan saysMencius clearly uses that term to mean “human desires,” both moral desires anddesire for physical pleasure (Chŏng 1992: 2III.2b). Dasan points out that those twodesires, the desire for the good of morality and the desire for the good of physicalpleasure, are often in conflict, as he knew from his own personal experience. Forexample, he pointed out that if someone offered him a gift that could be interpreted asa bribe and therefore he knew it would be wrong to accept it, he would be torn

Finding God in the Classics 47

between a desire for the pleasure that gift would give him and the desire to actappropriately and decline it. Similarly, if he found himself in a difficult situation butknew he should deal with that situation, he nevertheless would be tempted to simplyflee and abdicate his responsibilities (Chŏng 1992: 2VI.19a).

This conclusion that human beings, though they have only one human nature, areoften conflicted leads him to the logical, though non-orthodox, conclusion thathuman beings are not innately naturally virtuous. In fact, he argues, no one can becalled virtuous until he or she acts in a virtuous manner. Only after you act benev-olently toward another human being can you be called benevolent. Only after youentertain a guest with proper etiquette can you be called polite. Only after you actproperly can you be called righteous. And only after you show that you candistinguish between what is right and wrong, and then act accordingly, can you becalled wise (Chŏng 1992: 2V.22a-b).

The most we can say, he argues, is that human nature includes a natural attractiontoward the moral good. In his commentary on the first chapter in the third book of theMencius, Dasan explicitly rejects ZHU Xi’s claim that human beings are endowedwith a nature that is innately good without a trace of evil in it. Instead, Dasan insists,human beings are composite beings, formed from an intermingling of inseparablematerial and immaterial elements. Since that results in a natural desire for the moralgood co-existing with a natural desire for the good of personal pleasure, Dasan arguesthat we cannot say that human beings are naturally virtuous. However, since humannature includes an instinctive attraction toward the moral good, we can say thathuman nature is good. But we have to be aware that we also have a natural attractionfor what is pleasurable, even if that goes contrary to what the moral side of our naturetells us is right (Chŏng 1992: 2V.32a-35b).

Once Dasan determined, both from his own personal experience and from hisunderstanding of the Classics, that there are, in practical terms, two natures, he drewthe logical conclusion that being good requires more than just a determination to dowhat is right. It requires choosing between moral and immoral actions. MainstreamConfucians talked about the need to resolve to do what is right. The characters forresolve (lizhi 立志) imply determination, making up your mind to do what is rightrather than choosing between alternatives, one moral and one not. Dasan recognizedfrom his own personal experience that it was more difficult than that. For example, hewrote that there may be times when we find some delicious-looking food placed infront of us. That may cause our mouths to water and we will want to eat it. However,it may be food we are not supposed to eat. If we make the decision to not partake of it,we act in accord with the mandate of Heaven (Chŏng 1992: 2III.3b). But it takes adeliberate choice to refrain from eating that food. Therefore we cannot say that humanbeings are naturally virtuous.

Dasan points out that the main reason we cannot say we are born virtuous isthat, unlike animals, human beings have been given free will, the ability to chooseto do the right thing or to do the wrong thing (zizhu zhi quan 自主之權). Dasangoes on to elaborate that those who debate whether human nature is innately goodor bad are ignorant of the fact that human nature is nothing more than desires. It iswhat those desires are desires for, and whether they are nurtured or disregarded,which determines whether a person becomes virtuous or not. If we desire a moralgood, and act in accordance with that desire, we become virtuous. However, if we

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let a selfish desire for personal pleasure or benefit guide our behavior, then we willbecome evil.

If human beings were born virtuous, as Neo-Confucians claim, then for people toact appropriately and morally would be as easy as it is for water to roll downhill andfor fire to flame upwards. If that were the case, acting virtuously would be no greataccomplishment. We would no more praise a person for being virtuous than wewould praise a deer for acting in accordance with its nature and living in a forestrather than a village. However, Heaven has endowed human beings with the ability tomake their own decisions. If they choose to do what is right, they can do what is right.But if they prefer to act in an immoral fashion, they can do that as well. This is whatmakes human beings different from animals. And that is what makes living a morallife an accomplishment, and is the reason we condemn those who act immorally(Chŏng 1992: 2V.34b-35a).

Dasan then goes on to warn against an oversimplified picture of what leads humanbeings toward a virtuous life, and what draws them down into vice. He decries thetendency to blame all our faults on our bodies and the physical desires for food, sex,and comfort they generate. He points out that our immaterial minds are not com-pletely blameless. If all evil comes from things material, then, he asks, how can weexplain the existence of troublesome and even malevolent spirits? Moreover, humanbeings can be led astray by such emotions as inordinate pride and arrogance. Suchemotions come from our minds, not our bodies. We cannot blame our bodies whenwe get angry because someone has criticized our scholarship or our writing skills. It’sour pride, based in our mind, he argues, that causes us to get angry in such situations(Chŏng 1992: 2 V35a-b).

Dasan depicts a much more dangerous world than Confucians normally did. AsDasan saw it, not only were we not born virtuous, we couldn’t simply let our innatevirtuous tendencies direct our thoughts and actions, since they had to vie with selfishtendencies which were equally a part of our human nature. Instead, we had to chooseover and over again between a moral good and a tempting alternative. Moreover, wecouldn’t rely on simply disciplining our body to keep us on the right track, since ourmind could also lead us astray.

4 Combining Confucianism and Theism

If we are not instinctively virtuous, and if we cannot even trust our minds to alwaystell us the right way to behave, then what can we do to ensure that we lead as moral alife as possible? Dasan again comes up with an untraditional answer, grounded in hisuntraditional reading of the Confucian Classics. He says that we need to be shamedinto doing the right thing. And the only way we can be sure that we will be ashamedevery time we do something wrong is if we keep in mind that, always and every-where, we are being watched to see if we think and act properly. Who can possiblywatch us always and everywhere? There is only one possible answer: the LordAbove, whom he called by the ancient Confucian name Sangje 上帝.

Dasan’s belief in a Lord Above was probably stimulated by his encounter withCatholicism in his youth. Missionary-authored books published in China had beenentering Korea since the first Jesuit presence in China in the early seventeenth

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century. However, unlike books on mathematics, astronomy, and geography, theJesuit books that discussed Catholicism were treated as mere curiosities until the lastquarter of the eighteenth century, when a brother-in-law of Dasan named YI Sŭnghun(1756–1801) returned from accompanying his father on a diplomatic mission toChina as a baptized Catholic, and began preaching his new faith to friends andrelatives. Dasan was among those who were drawn into the infant Catholiccommunity. As he told his king a little more than a decade later, “I was infectedwith Catholic ideas when I was young, delighting with them as a child would witha toy” (Chŏng 1992: 1IX.45b).

In 1791, however, Dasan’s cousin YUN Chich’ung (1759–1791) was executedfor refusing to enshrine a spirit tablet for his recently deceased mother. Yun wasobeying instructions from Rome, relayed through the bishop in Beijing, whichforbade Catholics from including spirit tablets in mourning rituals. If Dasan hadstayed an active member of the small Catholic community, he would have beenexpected to obey the same instructions, and risk the same fate. However, Dasantold his king, “I was startled when I found out that was part of Catholicteachings. How could I not but feel a chill in my bones when I learned howimmoral those Catholics were?” (Chŏng 1992: 1IX.44a). Dasan then left thatCatholic community, though he remained under suspicion (Baker 2004). In1801, he was arrested, tortured, and then banished to the distant southwest coast,where, as noted earlier, he found the time to write volumes and volumes ofcommentaries on the Confucian Classics.

Though he withdrew from active participation in Korea’s beleaguered Catholiccommunity, he continued to believe in a personal deity. He may have convincedhimself that it was safe to do so, as long as he did not violate the ritual demands of hisConfucian government. (That was a safe assumption. Though he spent eighteen yearsin exile, and lived for another eighteen years after he returned home, he was left aloneand was able to write his commentaries freely.) He also probably convinced himselfthat belief in a Lord above was not necessarily only a Catholic idea. He wasconvinced that he had found in the Classics references to an actual supernaturalpersonality overlooking the affairs of humanity. And he could point to other KoreanConfucians who had thought the same way.

One such Confucian who included the Lord Above in his philosophy was YUN

Hyu (1617–80). Yun died over a century before Catholicism emerged in Korea, so itis highly unlikely that he was influenced by Catholic ideas. However, Yun, a memberof the same Confucian faction Dasan was a member of, was convinced that theancient Chinese had believed in a living God. For example, Yun wrote “Ancientpeople experienced fear and trembling, and were uneasy in mind; they behavedprudently as if they were being watched from above or on all sides, and used tospeak of ‘the Lord on High’ in everything” (Miura 1985: 430). This is language verysimilar to the language Dasan used to describe how people should feel and act oncethey realized that a Lord Above actually existed.

Dasan never refers to Catholic sources in his commentaries. Nor does he givecredit to YUN Hyu for his arguments for the existence of God. We know Dasan wasinfluenced by Jesuit publications from China. Some of his distinctive terminology,such as “attribute” and “free will,” could only have come from Catholic materials.However, he must have been concerned that if he openly acknowledged Catholic

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influence he would again be caught up in an anti-Catholic persecution. In addition heappears to have sincerely believed that both his own personal experience with moralcultivation and his careful reading of the Classics supported his argument that theLord Above was more than a metaphor.

Dasan’s assertion of the actual existence of a supreme spiritual being is partiallybased on his preference for reading key terms literally rather than metaphorically. Inthe earliest Confucian Classics, such as the Shujing, the terms Sangje and Heaven doappear at times to refer to an actual supernatural personality. Reversing the Neo-Confucian tendency to impose on ancient texts a metaphorical meaning of terms likeSangje and Heaven, Dasan insisted that they should be read literally as referring to anactual supernatural personality dwelling in heaven above. Dasan also extrapolatedthat reading from such early texts as the Shujing to later texts, such as the Menciusand the Zhongyong, in which the anthropomorphic reference of those terms is not asclear.

For example, Dasan interjects spiritual beings into the passage in the Zhongyongwhich reads, “the man of noble character exercises utmost restraint and vigilancetowards that which is inaccessible to his own vision, and he regards with fear andtrembling that which is beyond the reach of his hearing” (Plak 2003: 25). Dasan’scommentary states that, “As for ‘what is not seen’ and ‘what is not heard’, these comefrom the spirits, so how could they be called material things? There is an old sayingthat, ‘In a dark room, you may deceive yourself, but the spirits’ eyes can see rightthrough the dark.’ This is the way to interpret what this classic is saying here. IfHeaven didn’t watch over us both when we are quiet and when we are active, therewould be no need to remain circumspect and attentive after we finished quiet sitting”(Chŏng 1992: 2IV.5a). As noted earlier, Dasan argued against the Neo-Confuciantendency to give important terms such a wide range of meanings that they were indanger of losing any specific reference. Consequently, he warned against interpretingreferences to Heaven in the classics as reference to the actual sky above or to liinstead of reading them as references to the Lord Above. He believed that various useof the term Heaven should be clearly differentiated, and if one term could be usedwith more than one meaning, which meaning was used in a particular context shouldbe identified.

It was on these grounds that Dasan explicitly criticized the assertion by CHENG Yithat, to properly understand the statement by Mencius that “to fully fathom one’sheart is to understand one’s nature. To understand one’s nature is to understandHeaven,” we need to realize that the heart-and-mind, human nature, and Heavenare simply different names for the same thing: Patterning Principle (Mencius 2008:171). Dasan insists that it is quite obvious that in these sentences Mencius uses threedifferent names to refer to three different things. For Mencius, the heart-and-mind isnot the same thing as human nature. Human nature is not the same thing as Heaven.Moreover, Dasan argues, in this phrase Mencius used Heaven as a synonym for theruler of heaven, Sangje. He calls him Heaven instead of the Lord Above just as wesometimes refer to our king as the State because we don’t want to show disrespect bycalling him by his proper name. The bright-blue sky above us that we also call heavenis nothing more than a material entity, like the roof above our head. It’s no different inkind from such things as dirt, water, or fire. How can it possibly have anything to dowith human nature or morality? (Chŏng 1992: 2VI.38a-b)

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Dasan applies the same interpretive strategy to his reading of the opening passageof the Doctrine of the Mean. He reads the line saying “What Heaven has conferred iscalled human nature” as stating that Heaven, by which he means the Lord Above,endows every human being with a tendency to prefer the good over the non-good. Itis that desire for the good that is human nature (Chŏng 1992: 2III.2b). However, weneed an incentive to make sure that we follow our preference for the moral goodrather than the good of physical pleasure. He believes the Mean tells us what thatincentive is a couple of lines later: “The man of noble character exercises utmostrestraint and vigilance towards that which is inaccessible to his own vision, and heregards with fear and trembling that which is beyond the reach of his hearing” (Plak2003: 25). We saw earlier that Dasan interjected spiritual beings into his reading ofthis passage. In a different commentary on the Zhongyong, he makes clear that by“spiritual beings,” he means Heaven, the Lord Above:

What is it that we can’t see? Heaven as it really is. What is it we can’t hear?Heaven’s voice. How do we know that is what this passage means? Becauselater on in the Zhongyong we can see the lines “The Master has stated:‘Bounteous, indeed, is the moral force exerted by ghosts and spirits.’ One turnsone’s eyes to them but sees them not; one hearkens to their voices but hearsthem not. Yet they inform the substance so completely that their presence cannever be ignored. They motivate all the people in the world to undergo fastingand purification and to don splendid garments, in order to carry on the traditionof sacrificial rites. Their vital force billows like a great sea, as if overspreadingthe world from above, as if compassing the world about on every side” [Plak2003: 33]. What is it that we cannot see nor hear? It cannot be other thanHeaven.

There is no human being born on this earth without base desires. What keeps usfrom following those desires and doing whatever we feel like doing? It is thefear that our misbehavior will be noticed. Noticed by whom? Whose gaze keepsus in a state of constant caution and apprehension? We are cautious andapprehensive because we know there are enforcement officers responsible formaking sure rules are followed. We are cautious and apprehensive because weknow our sovereign can punish us if we behave improperly. If we did not thinkthere was someone watching us, would we not simply abandon all sense ofmoral responsibility and just do whatever we felt like doing?…

But what makes us behave properly even in the privacy of our own room andmake sure that even our thoughts are proper thoughts? The only reason why asuperior person is watchful over his thoughts and behavior even in the privacyof his own room is that he knows that there is a Lord Above watching him. Ifwe think that the term “Sangje” is nothing by a metaphor for li, PatterningPrinciple, then we wouldn’t be cautious and apprehensive. Li, after all, is not aconscious being. It is unable to inspire caution and apprehension. (Chŏng 1992:2III.4b-5a)

Dasan goes on to say a couple of pages later, “Heaven’s numinous consciousnessis able to look right into our hearts and minds. There is nothing it cannot see.There is nothing that we do or think that Heaven doesn’t know about. Even the

52 Don Baker

bravest person can’t help but feel apprehensive when he realizes this” (Chŏng1992: 2III.5b).

5 Conclusion

It’s not so much his belief in a God above, though, that was a rare belief amongConfucians, but the way he justified that belief that makes Dasan’s philosophy sointeresting. Dasan’s attempt to peel away layers of interpretation laid down over theClassics over the centuries, and to discover a God underneath them, was notparticularly unusual. Nor, of course, was his focus on uncovering the moralmessage the Sages conveyed through the Classics. What was unusual within hisConfucian tradition was his argument that led from the assumption that humannature consists of two sorts of desires, for that which is good and for thatwhich feels good, to an argument that therefore people must choose whichdesire to follow and then onto the argument that the only way people could bemotivated to consistently choose the moral course was if they believed a Godabove was watching them.

The first step in his argument, recognition that we have both moral and selfishdesires, is not unknown to Confucian thinkers. After all, the distinction between theMind of the Way and the Mind of the Human has a long history in Confucian moralphilosophy. However, because of the Confucian tendency to conflate the “is” with the“ought” and deny complete reality to that which does not behave the way it ought tobehave, a tendency we find as far back as the call by Confucius for a “rectification ofnames,” the Mind of the Way was seen as more real than the Mind of the Human. TheMind of the Way was presented as true human nature, and the Mind of the Humanwas not. Dasan, however, viewed both types of desires as equally real. He definedhuman beings by what they thought and did, not by what they should think and do.

This willingness to allow imperfections in the real may be a product of Dasan’sdenial of the key Neo-Confucian assumption that li, dynamic normative patterns,united every thing and every event and process in the universe into one all-encompassing cosmic network of normative patterns. Once he had fragmented theuniversal li into many separate and distinct li, Dasan could focus more closely onindividuals as they actually were. And once he freed individuals from the cosmicnetwork, he could conceive of them as operating autonomously. In the mainstreamNeo-Confucian universe, individuals were supposed to simply align their hearts-and-minds with the cosmic network so that they could spontaneously act in accordancewith it. Separated from that network, individuals in the universe as Dasan saw it hadto decide for themselves how to act. That required that they have a free will. OnceDasan decided that human beings could freely choose how to behave, he reasonedthat they would need a powerful incentive to encourage them to not only choose themoral option but to also follow up on that choice. This led him to his assertion that asupernatural personality watched from heaven above.

To prove the existence of the Lord Above, Dasan didn’t use the argument fromdesign so widely used by theists in Western history. He wasn’t particularly interestedin how the world came into existence. He was more concerned about how best to getpeople to act properly. His God was not a Creator. Nor, even though Dasan argued

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that belief in God was essential if people were going to be able to overcome theirdesire for the easy road of pleasure rather than the hard road of duty, was Dasan’s Goda judge who rewarded good behavior and punished bad. There is no heaven or hell inDasan’s theism. Dasan remained Confucian enough that he believed that doing goodin order to earn an individual reward or avoid an individual penalty was not reallydoing good. He still defined morality as placing concern for the common good aheadof concern for personal benefit. His God was a Confucian God, and his morality wasConfucian morality. His arguments were also Confucian. He remained within thetradition of philosophizing by writing commentaries on the Confucian Classics.Nevertheless, his argument for the existence of his Confucian God required him tobreak with his Confucian tradition on several key philosophical issues, starting withthe role of li in the cosmos and the definition of human nature.

It is his departure from so many important features of Neo-Confucianism whilestill staying within the broader parameters of Confucianism that makes Dasan such afascinating philosopher to study. He is particularly fascinating when we notice thatmany of his ideas have much in common with ideas introduced to the Confucianworld by Jesuit missionaries from Europe. For example, many of the new conceptsDasan interjected into Neo-Confucianism, not just his call for belief in the LordAbove, can be found in Matteo Ricci’s early seventeenth-century catechism, Tianzhushiyi [The true significance of the Lord of Heaven], a book we know Dasan read inhis youth (Chŏng 1992: 1XV.42a). Dasan may have been influenced by Ricci in hisrejection of the notion that li can be the foundation of the universe (Ricci 1985: 115–119), in his belief that human nature should be defined as human desires or appetites(Ricci 1985: 151–153), in his belief that virtue was something earned rather thaninherited (Ricci 1985: 355–57), and in his belief in free will (Ricci 1985: 291–93), inaddition to his belief that there is a Lord in Heaven above (Ricci 1985: 335–337).Dasan’s philosophy thus suggests a way to create a philosophical bridge between Eastand West. That is a project his Confucian government frowned on two centuries agobut one that many living in South Korea today, both Christians and non-Christiansalike, would welcome.

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Chŏng, Yag-yong [Jeong Yagyong 丁若鏞]. 1992. Yŏyudang chŏnsŏ (The Complete Works ofYŏyudang -與猶堂全書). Seoul: Yŏgang Ch’ulp’ansa.

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