Self-Cultivation and Inwardness: How to Establish the Confucian Identity in Korean Neo-Confucianism

Abstract

The main goals of this essay are to describe and make clear the philosophical implications of self-cultivation concerning the concept of inwardness and examine how it contributes to the formation of the Confucian identity. In two representative Korean Neo-Confucian debates, the Debate on Supreme Polarity between Yi Ǒnjŏk and Cho Hanbo and one of the issues in the Horak Debate about the original substance of the tranquil state (mibal) of the mind, we can see that self-cultivation plays a crucial role in establishing the Confucian identity. For example, the debate between Yi and Cho shows how to teach people to achieve an ideal Confucian character by interpreting “learning human affairs below (hahag-insa)” and “reaching the heavenly principle above (sangdal-chŏlli)” differently. The concept of inwardness is significant as well as problematic in understanding the sense of rivalry against Buddhism earlier and the Yangming School later in the intellectual history of Korean neo-Confucianism. Those who think of themselves as true followers of Confucius and Zhu Xi criticize that a subjective way of experiencing inwardness is close to Buddhism and misleads one in the pursuit of some lofty metaphysical entity without any practical concerns. Despite such a criticism, some Neo-Confucian scholars have emphasized that the original substance of the mind is the tranquility of inwardness. In this vein, we will investigate what kind of philosophical identity most Korean Neo-Confucians have embraced as their own. Their consistent argument for keeping the balance between honoring the virtues and inquiring about learning leads to the claim that the achievement of self-cultivation should contribute to making the world peaceful. Thus, the matter of inwardness often described as deliberate solitude is not so much a subjective realm like religious confession, but vivid experiences of daily life that have never been separated from the manifestation of the Way (dao). In conclusion, the core issue of the Neo-Confucian identity having a sense of rivalry against heresy aims at the matter of practice, i.e., how actively and properly one participates in transforming the world.