A Korean Confucian’s Advice on How to Be Moral: Tasan Chŏng Yagyong’s Reading of the Zhongyong
Don Baker, "A Korean Confucian’s Advice on How to Be Moral: Tasan Chŏng Yagyong’s Reading of the Zhongyong "
English | ISBN: 082489362X | 2023 | 484 pages | PDF | 3 MB
English | ISBN: 082489362X | 2023 | 484 pages | PDF | 3 MB
Tasan Chŏng Yagyong (1762–1836) is one of the most creative thinkers Korea has ever produced, one of the country’s first Christians, and a leading scholar in Confucian philosophy. Born in a staunchly Neo-Confucian society, in his early twenties he encountered writings by Catholic missionaries in China and was fascinated. However, when he later learned that the Catholic Church condemned the Confucian practice of placing a spirit tablet on a family altar to honor past generations, he left the small Catholic community he had helped found and ostensibly returned to the Neo-Confucian fold. Nevertheless, the Christian ideas he studied in his youth influenced his thinking for the rest of his life, stimulating him to look at Neo-Confucianism with a critical eye and suggest new solutions to problems Confucian scholars had been addressing for centuries.
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