•  20
    This essay investigates Dasan Jeong Yak‐yong's (1762–1836) account of human‐nature‐as‐taste, by comparing his commentaries on significant chapters in the Mengzi to Zhu Xi's commentaries. Dasan argues that human nature is understood through giho, taste sentiments and desires, and not as Principle (li). I first introduce Dasan's account of human‐nature‐as‐taste in his commentaries to 3A1 and 7A4. Next, I argue that giho is most appropriately translated as “taste,” because this term captures the di…Read more
  •  12
    Mencius and Hume
    In Yang Xiao & Kim-Chong Chong (eds.), Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Mencius, Springer. pp. 667-683. 2023.
    This chapter expores the similarities and differences between the virtue theories of Mencius (372–289 BCE) and David Hume (1711–1776 CE). Their individual explications of virtue, the main topics of their moral philosophies, focus on the sentiments. Mencius, concerned with teaching moral self-cultivation, believes that the sentiments are the grounds for achieving virtue. Hume, who aims at an empirical theory of moral evaluation, maintains that we determine a character trait as virtue through the …Read more
  •  10
    In this paper, I examine the notion of the ‘psychological dynamics’ that Professor Shun uses for explicating Confucian moral anger, based on David Hume’s (1711–76) psychological account of mind, to reconsider the role that object-based distinctions of emotions play in the Confucian moral tradition. First, by appealing to Hume’s investigation of the mental processes involved in feeling moral sentiments, I suggest that imagination, as a component in the ‘psychological dynamics’, explains how ‘dust…Read more
  •  13
    Artistic Motives in Korean Art Traditions: Self-Cultivation, Self-Enjoyment, and Self-Forgetting
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 80 (3): 362-7. 2022.
    In this essay, I discuss Korean artists’ multi-layered, internal motives for engaging in artistic practices: their artistic devotion derives from their desires for moral self-cultivation, self-enjoyment, and self-forgetting. I speculate that these tendencies were intensified in Korean cultural traditions by distinctive sociopolitical circumstances of the Joseon period under the dominance of Neo-Confucianism, such as a fixed social hierarchy and Sino-centrist perspectives. This interpretation pro…Read more
  •  10
    These two volumes of the Analects of Dasan indicate that Hongkyung Kim's translation project has passed the halfway mark to the completion of a six-volume set of Noneo Gogeum Ju ) written by Dasan Jeong Yak-yong. This series basically delivers Dasan's commentaries on the Analects, but his meticulous and critical investigations about all the resources accessible to him, from the ancient Chinese commentaries of He Yan to the views of Japanese scholars such as Dazai Zun, allow us to engage comprehe…Read more
  •  94
    Mengzi’s Maxim for Righteousness in Mengzi 2A2
    Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 18 (3): 371-391. 2019.
    In this essay, I argue that in Mengzi 2A2 Mengzi 孟子 proposes his method for cultivating righteousness by showing that on the way of achieving yi, such topics as the unperturbed hearts, cultivating courage, Gaozi’s 告子 maxim, and the flood-like qi 氣 ultimately converge. Toward this aim, first, I argue that Mengzi’s short remark “bi you shi yan er wu zheng, xin wu wang, wu zhu zhang 必有事焉而勿正, 心勿忘, 勿助長” can be read as his maxim for achieving yi that structurally parallels with the preceding maxim of …Read more
  •  55
    The Heart of Compassion in Mengzi 2A6
    Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 18 (1): 59-76. 2019.
    This essay examines the structural position of Mengzi’s 孟子 heart of compassion within his theoretical goal of teaching moral self-cultivation. I first investigate Kim Myeong-seok’s account that views ceyin zhi xin as a higher cognitive emotion with a concern-based construal. I argue that Kim’s conclusion is not sufficiently supported by the text of the Mengzi, but is also tarnished by the possibility of constructing a noncognitivist counter-theory of ceyin zhi xin. Instead, I suggest that David …Read more
  •  69
    Moral Artisanship in Mengzi 6A7
    Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 17 (3): 331-348. 2018.
    This essay investigates the structure and meaning of the Mengzi’s 孟子 analogical inferences in Mengzi 6A7. In this chapter, he argues that just as the perceptual masters allowed the discovery of our senses’ uniform preferences, the sages enabled us to recognize our hearts’ universal preferences for “order and righteousness.” Regarding an unresolved question of how the sages help us understand our hearts’ preferred objects as such, I propose a spectator-based moral artisanship reading as an altern…Read more
  •  15
    Dasan Jeong Yak-yong has been revered as one of the national intellectual heroes in Korea. Dasan's dramatic life career—acclaimed as a young elite government official, beloved by the King, but exiled for 18 years due to his family's association with Catholicism —is common knowledge to contemporary Koreans, as he is a frequent character on various television dramas, and his birth and death sites are places of pilgrimage. Dasan's cultural fame is underpinned by two intellectual pillars: one is his…Read more