2020, Vol.57, No.

Philosophical Investigation 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.41

pISSN : 1598-7213 / eISSN : 2671-7565
https://journal.kci.go.kr/philinst

This paper is looking for the pure thought of Confucius, focusing on his unique notions which are differ from traditional thinking in ancient time. Generosity(shu) which has never been accentuated in the established classics except The Doctrine of the Mean was emphasized by Confucius, for example, ‘my doctrine is that of an all-pervading unity.’ I think his generosity is a creative interpretation on benevolence (ren) which came from five virtues. It is a spirit of forgiveness which includes tolerance. There is a very special sentiment that is embossed in The Analects, which is a psychological posture or emotional attitude related with straightforwardness(zhi). It inquires a position of mind/heart that is upright, plain, frank, candid, and honest. The straightforwardness in the context of Confucius means not only honesty but also frankness. Son can hide his father even though his father is criminal. Forgiveness and straightforwardness in the philosophy of Confucius would be contradictory because one is a kind of mercy, another is a kind of revenge. On this paper, water symbolizes forgiveness, and knife revenge. When each of water and knife meet bravery of love, sometimes it brings forgiveness or straightforwardness. I could forgive because of loving people, at times also revenge my love on a person. According to Confucius, a man who is brave may love people; a man who loves people may forgive the others.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristic aspects of Toegye Yi Hwang李滉’s interpretation of Great Learning大學 in the context of history in the research of Confucian classics經學史, and to explore the implications of his interpretation of Great Learning in cultivation theory. Yi Hwang fully advocates Zhu Xi’s Interpretation of Great Learning大學章句, criticizes the curriculum of attempting revision. While he emphasizes the significance of Zhu Xi’s “Gewubuwangzhang格物補亡章” he believes that the cultivation of Great Learning ultimately makes the reverent mindfulness敬 the most important content, just like the cultivation presented in other Four Books四書. Yi Hwang believes that the debates attempting to revise Great Learning did not understand the significance of the “Gewubuwangzhang”, which was a mistake that came from not grasping the implications of the Guwuzhizhi格物致知 theory. This is natural for Yi Hwang’s academic position to reconstruct the original cultivation theory of Zhuzixue朱子學 by excluding the post-Zhuzixue thought and its influence at the time of criticizing the Guwuzhizhi theory. The characteristic aspect of Great Learning interpretation, which emerges from the perspective of Yi Hwang, is to actively associate the ‘Guwuzhizhi’ with ‘reverent mindfulness’ by drawing out the concept of ‘reverent mindfulness’ that is not directly presented in the context of Great Learning.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the implications of Adam Smith and Kant’s theory of sympathy in philosophical counseling. Present research on sympathy has transcended the boundaries of philosophy and moved toward the fields of neuroscience and psychology. Neuroscience interprets sympathy as the activation of the mirror neuron system. However, this impersonal explanation is not sufficient in the understanding of complex mental activities of humans. Meanwhile, psychological counseling emphasizes the importance of and necessity for sympathy in relation to practical problems faced by people. Psychologists use sympathy as a tool for psychotherapy. However, they do not explain how this is possible. Unlike these fields, philosophy has long demonstrated that sympathy is determined in relation to people’s mental capability. Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant are two of the best-known philosophers who investigated this. While Smith analyzed sympathy from the perspective of empirical psychology, Kant examined it from a transcendental perspective. Smith emphasized the aspects of imaginative sympathy of the emotional entity, whereas Kant focused on moral sympathy of the rational entity. However, their sympathy theory has a limit that the judge can not escape from egocentrism. So Kant goes to the discussion of aesthetic sympathy and seeks the possibility of conveying emotions and the possibility of consent, and through this, he tries to correct the possibility of illusion of individual subjectivity. His sympathy theory can play an important role in the new path in psychological counseling today, that is, Rogers' empathy theory, which suggests human-centered counseling theory. Rogers tries to solve client's problem behavior based on client's empathic attitude rather than treating client's problem behavior based on diagnosis, evaluation and prescription. In relation to this Rogers attempt, Smith and Kant's sympathy can have the following philosophical implications. The concept of sympathy viewed philosophically explains its possible structure that psychological sympathy cannot explain. In this sense, the concept of sympathy can be used as the meta-theory of psychological empathy. Furthermore, Kant’s aesthetic sympathy can be meaningfully used to expand Roger’s passive psychological empathy to active self-empathy. In addition, Kant’s arguments regarding aesthetic sympathy can play an important role in the failure of sympathy, which was not considered in Roger’s psychological empathy. The failure of sympathy will contribute to preventing the excessively optimistic or skeptical viewpoints we may hold in relation to sympathy.