Between Heaven and Earth: Tasan Chŏng Yagyong’s Understanding of Human Nature

Donald L. Baker, 2017, 

“Between Heaven and Earth: Tasan Chŏng Yagyong’s Understanding of Human Nature,” 

Acta Koreana, Vol 20, No. 1. 

Introduction

◦ “Rather than conceiving of human beings as primarily rational beings, Buddhist philosophers have preferred to view them as illusion-generating illusions. (…) In a sharp difference from Buddhists, however, Neo-Confucians assumed that human beings, though they had no separate stable inner core but instead were constantly being created and recreated by their interaction with other human beings around them, were nonetheless real. That real existence came from their social existence and the moral demands it imposed on them.”

◦ “Tasan challenged the traditional Confucian understanding of what a human being is, but he did so with terminology and concepts inherited from Neo-Confucianism. To understand Tasan’s thought in all its complexity, we must recognize that he was a Confucian challenging some of the core assumptions of Confucianism.”

Tasan and Mainstream Neo-Confucianism

◦ “One important Confucian assumption he[Tasan] shared was that it is much more important to focus on what something does, or at least can do, than on what it is. (…) A second important Confucian assumption Tasan shared is that everything in the cosmos can be discussed in terms of ch’e 體 and yong 用. (…) Tasan assumed that ch’e refers to what someone or something should do and yong refers to what it does could not be understood without the other.”

◦ “However, even though he remained within the mainstream Confucian potential-actualization paradigm, he broke with Confucian philosophical tradition by focusing more on what distinguished one thing from another, in terms of their ch’e and their yong, than on what united them.”

◦ “Moral cultivation, he argued, required a focus on actualizing the particular ch’e of the particular individual involved in cultivating a moral character so that that particular individual would act appropriately in situations he or she found himself or herself.”

◦ “Though he had done some reading of late medieval Catholic Western philosophy (in Chinese translations imported from China), he did not adopt their definition of human beings as thinking beings. Rather he defined human beings as actors.”

◦ “Once we understand that Tasan accepted the Neo-Confucian notion of human beings as social beings, and that he also accepted the Neo-Confucian notion that it is appropriate behavior in social interactions that determines whether we are fully human or not, we can then appreciate how creative he was with the challenges he mounted against traditional Neo-Confucianism from within it.”

Redefining Human Beings

◦ “Tasan defined human beings, not as ethical beings from birth but as beings defined by the fact that they were naturally pulled in two different directions. He pointed out that human beings have both natural desires for the moral good and natural desire for personal pleasure.”

◦ “Departing from the traditional focus on cultivating a determination to act appropriately, (…) he argued that as the only beings who are a mixture of both material and immaterial elements, human beings have the power to choose to follow the moral path or the selfish path. This made human beings different from animals, who lack free will.”

◦ “In his commentary on the Heart Classic, he wrote that human beings are formed from a union of the spiritual and the material. That union is called, he notes, ‘a person’ or ‘the self.’ In a sharp break with Confucian tradition, instead of li and ki coming together to form a human being, he sees human beings as mysterious combination of ki with something spiritual.”

◦ “Because of this dual nature of the mind-and-heart, Tasan rejects the mainstream Neo-Confucian claim (…) Tasan argued instead (…) that human beings are potentially moral but they are also potentially immoral (because our heart-and-mind generates physical emotions, which can be selfish rather than moral) and therefore it is a mistake to say that human nature is essentially good.”

Distinguishing Human Nature from the Nature of Animals

◦ “It is our penetrating insight, our ability to see how we are supposed to behave rather than juxt blindly behaving in a certain way, that makes us superior to animals. Animal nature also consists of propensities. It is the nature of an animal to want to eat, drink and stay alive. That is their nature. (…) Tasan adds that there are two types of propensity. One is the desire for something pleasurable, like a bird wanting to fly up a hill or a deer wanting to graze in a field. The other is the desire for something needed for the realization of something’s full potential, like millet needing a dry field or rice sprouts needing water. Since acting appropriately in our interactions will help us become more fully human, acting morally is the most appropriate way for human beings to behave (…)”

◦ “Tasan argues that not only are we not born instinctively acting appropriately, despite the standard Confucian equation of virtue with human nature, even as adults we cannot be said to be virtuous until we have actually acted appropriately. He insists that such labels for virtue as ‘benevolence’, ‘righteousness’, ‘propriety’, and ‘wisdom’ are applicable only to behavior, not innate tendencies.”

◦ “Neo-Confucians usually talked of a need for people to cultivate the determination to act properly. They did not spend much time talking about the possibility that human beings could be determined to act improperly. Tasan, however, insisted that human beings have free will, the ability to choose to do the right thing or to do the wrong thing (自主之權). (…) Tasan believed Heaven has given human beings the ability to make their own decisions. If they choose to do what is right, then they can do what is right. But if they prefer to act in an immoral fashion, then they can do that as well. This, in his opinion, is what makes human beings different from animals.”

Conclusion

◦ “When we examine how Tasan defined human nature and how he compared it to the natures of other material beings as well as to the natures of totally immaterial beings, it becomes clear that, for Tasan, human beings were between heaven and earth, neither lowly animals nor pure sprits. They were simply human beings, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entailed. They could look toward the earth and follow their baser instincts. Or they could look up toward heaven and make strenuous efforts to always and everywhere act appropriately. It is that ability to move up or down the ladder of appropriate behavior that, for him, defined human beings and made human nature a worthy subject for the decades of deep philosophical examination he devoted to it.”

◎ 짧은 논평

1. 베이커의 논문은 내가 읽은 텍스트 가운데 정약용의 인간관을 가장 깔끔하고 명료하게 정리한 글 중 하나다. 주자학과 비교해가며 정약용 사유의 고유한 측면을 드러내는 글쓰기 전략은 매우 인상적이다. 어쩌면 정약용과 주자학 사이의 공통점과 차이점을 가장 선명하게 드러낼 수 있는 글쓰기 전략이 아니었나 싶다. 

2. 정약용을 근대의 언저리를 맴돌던 사상가로 규정하지 않았다는 점이 이 글의 미덕이 아닌가 한다. 주자학을 비판적으로 검토하며 세워나간 정약용 학문의 기본 뼈대를 잘 설명했다고 생각한다. 특히 정약용이 인간을 '하늘과 땅 사이의 존재'로 규정했다는 결론은 매우 인상적이다.