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T’oegye’s Arguments on the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings: A Phenomenological Inquiry

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Abstract

This article aims to phenomenologically examine T’oegye’s arguments on the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings, attempting a theoretical reconstruction through “founding” and “alterity”, so as to reveal the relations and differences between the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings. On the one hand, the Four Beginnings constitute a founding substratum, on the top of which the Seven Feelings may be founded. Moreover, whereas the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings share the same assumption of alterity or intersubjectivity, they differ in their emphasis on whether li (理 principle) or qi (氣 material force) shall be prioritised. The priority of principle over material force is inherent in the notion of the Four Beginnings, while for the Seven Feelings, it is the other way around. When confronted by an “other”, one will invariably face a choice to make, in “deontological consideration of the other’s interest” or “private preference”. There is an emphasis that “deontological consideration shall prevail” in the Four Beginnings, for which it is “purely good”. By way of comparison, the Seven Feelings may be affected more often than not by “private desire or preference”, for which reason it will manifest the Janus faces of being both good and evil.

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Notes

  1. Cf. Tan (2006) on the dualism of principle and material force, a topic touched upon by Kim (2007), Yoo (2012a, b, 2016, 2017), on such concepts as mibal and yibal in the debate; Ahn (2014), on the issuance of principle; Ivanhoe (2015), Walden (2015), and Glomb (2017), on the historiography and contemporary relevance of this debate.

  2. Cf. Zhao (2009, 142–143), Chen (2018, 125–126) and Kalton (1994, 10).

  3. Cf. Husserl (1968, 261–263), Diemer (1956, 113–115) and Ni (2012, 28–35).

  4. Such a regulatory, defining function is borrowed from Kant. For him, he discusses different kinds of intuition, one sensible, while the other intellectual. The sensible intuition is sui generis to humanity, and the intellectual intuition serves as a point of comparison. The sensible intuition refers to the representation of thing-in-itself (Ding-an-sich) through our sensing bodily organs, while its intellectual counterpart is based on pure imagination. For instance, in Genesis of the Bible, when God said, “Let there by light” and there was light. For a being like God or other deity, the means of constructing an object is directly through intellectual imagination. The moment this object is conceived in the intellectual faculty of imagination, it will come into being. Such an intellectual intuition is apparently beyond our human capacity. By way of comparison, when an object is constructed in our mind, such an activity will of necessity be channelled through such intermediaries as our bodily senses, tools, consciousness, or practices. It is precisely due to the intermediary feature of this sensible intuition that human beings are dwarfed by God or other forms of deity, whose being has exceeded the comprehensibility based on human experiences or sensibility. It is precisely this human-specific sensible intuition that defines what is conceivable to us, and the range of actions possible to human beings. It thus regulates how we are, what we think, and where to conceive objects. See Kant (1998, 51, 254–256).

  5. T’oegye (1992, vol. 2, 194), translation quoted from Kalton (1994, 109–110); for comments, see Li (2018, 21–26).

  6. For a detailed discussion of the etymological connection between the altar and the alter, see Taylor (1987, xxvii–xxxi, 91–95).

  7. For a justification of such partiality, see Keller (2013, ch. 1). See also Kim (2002) for a discussion of connecting Levinas with T'oegye.

  8. For a discussion of how such partiality may defeats universal principles, see Nagel (1991).

  9. For an analysis of how such feelings may intermingle with international relations, see e.g. Patalakh (2018). Furthermore, for a discussion of the relations between particularity and universality, see Lu (2016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IAS-Fudan, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Xi Lin

  2. Centre for Korean Studies, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Liju Xing

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Lin, X., Xing, L. T’oegye’s Arguments on the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings: A Phenomenological Inquiry. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 12, 631–647 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-019-00273-3

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