REVIVING THE CONFUCIAN SPIRIT OF ETHICAL PRACTICALITY: TASAN’S NOTIONS OF SŎNG (‘NATURE’) AND SIM (‘HEART/MIND’) AND THEIR POLITICAL IMPLICATION

International audienceChŏng Yagyong (1762-1836), or Tasan, one of the representative figures from the late Chosŏn period who criticized the idealism of Chosŏn Neo-Confucian learning, looked forward to re-establishing a Confucian worldview that would be inseparably united with life and action. His deist interpretation of Sangje or ‘Lord on High’ as being moral and sensitive to human affairs provides an ontological basis to his theory on original human nature. He defines human nature, which everyone is granted, as myǒng (‘decree’), in terms of kiho (‘moral inclination’). It is the latter that gives human beings the impulse necessary to self-realization. To the Neo-Confucian theory that aims at understanding and developing li (‘pattern’) inherent in the universe and to the human being, he substitutes a theory that, according to him, allows us to act and realize the Confucian ideal through practices and human relations.This paper aims to present some broad outlines of Tasan’s Confucian thought around the concepts of sǒng (‘nature’) and sim (‘heart/mind’). His deistic interpretation of the Lord on High as being sensitive to moral and human affairs allows him to give an ontological foundation to his theory on sǒng, or the original ‘nature’ of the human being. In the Confucian tradition, the notion of sǒng is constantly related to the way we understand the fundamental character of the human being, on which the theory of self-perfection depends. While the Cheng-Zhu school proposed sǒng to be the basis of any human act, some Chosǒn scholars of the second half of the dynasty doubted that the li of human action is a priori provided, and that any human act is already programmed in an innate nature. Here are some examples. According to Hong Taeyong (1731-1783), a unique basis for action cannot be commonly transmitted to humans, and human nature differs from one culture to another. For Tasan Chǒng Yagyong), human nature is simply given as an orientation or an inclination, and is then fine-tuned through practices and social actions. As for Ch'ǒe Hangi (1803-1879), he considers that the basis of action is neither directly nor a priori given, but acquired through the repetitive process of awareness (Ahn 2002, 170-171).Tasan’s position on this subject in particular encapsulates some interesting points, not only for its challenging originality against the Neo-Confucian orthodox cosmology of the Cheng-Zhu school, but also in its reflection of the intellectual current and the political turmoil in which he was engaged