Philosopher
Gi Daeseung
1527–1572
Also known as Kobong, Ki Taesŭng
Joseon Neo-Confucian, known as Gobong, whose letters to Yi Hwang began the Four-Seven Debate, arguing that principle and material force cannot be separated in the feelings.
Gi Daeseung, better known by his pen name Gobong, began the Four-Seven Debate, which a modern scholar has called the most important intellectual controversy of the Joseon dynasty, in a series of letters to Yi Hwang. Yi Hwang had suggested that the four beginnings and the seven feelings had different origins, and Gi did not agree.
The debate turned on why people whose nature is good still act badly. Yi Hwang revised his view in response, though he kept the primacy of principle, and the argument was later carried on by Yi I and Seong Hon.
Key ideas
- Principle and material force are inseparable
- Gi Daeseung did not accept Yi Hwang’s dualism, in which principle is the source of the four beginnings and material force the source of the seven feelings. He held that principle and material force are inseparable, especially as they are present in actual things.
- The work of material force
- Gi was more interested than Yi Hwang in the moral and activating role of material force (gi) in the life of the mind.
- How good nature goes astray
- The question Gi pressed was how principle, wholly good and fully present in human beings, could be led astray, so that people do not always act kindly. Separating the sources of good and bad feelings, he argued, does not answer it.
Influences
Where these links come from
- Gi Daeseung argued against Yi Hwang. Source: Kevin N. Cawley, Korean Confucianism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Terms on this page
- gi
- Material force (氣), the Korean reading of the Chinese qi. In the Four-Seven Debate, Yi I argued that material force issues both the four beginnings and the seven feelings, and principle rides on it.
Sources
- Kevin N. Cawley, Korean Confucianism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy