The Dynamic Characteristics of “Jeong 情”: A New Perspective on the Korean Neo-Confucian Four–Seven Debate

Abstract

This article aims to elucidate the semantic gap between Jeong 情, discussed in the traditional Confucian intellectual society, and Jeong 정, understood as a conceptual cluster in contemporary Korean language and life. During the period when Joseon Korea was converted into Confucianism, part of the centrality of a native word, tteut, shifted to jeong, a naturalized word. In other words, “jeong” has grown into a new concept cluster with centrality in relation to the emotional aspect of the mind, while “tteut” still remains as a concept cluster associated with the mind. This phenomenon could be related to the spread and sharing of discourse on various emotions represented by “sadan 四端” and “chiljeong 七情” in the Confucian literature. As the discussion on the Four–Seven continued, emotional vocabulary extracted from Chinese Confucian literature was reconstructed by reflecting the Korean people’s pursuit and understanding of emotions. From this, we can evaluate that the Four–Seven debate not only contributed to the elaboration of Neo-Confucian emotion theory, but it also developed in the direction of moral emotion with social values implied by Korean “jeong”.