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Ch6ng Yagyong: Korea's Challenge to Orthodox Neo-Confucianism, by Mark Setton. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. xiv, 232 pp., appendix, notes, glossary, bibliography, index.
In their research on Choson intellectual history after the seventeenth century, Korean historians have noted the development of Sirhak, or Practical Learning, thought. Practical Learning had long ties with many of the reforms of the late Chosen period and is believed to have developed in opposition to the orthodox Singnihak, or Neo-Confucianism, of Choson. Neo-Confucianism, because of its close links to the painful collapse Korea experienced in the late nineteenth century, is viewed as being antithetical to modernization. Practical Learning, on the other hand, which struggled to enact reforms and took a view highly critical of Neo-Confucianism, is seen as being a pioneer movement leading to the modernization of Korea and a new philosophy to replace Neo-Confucianism. Furthermore, Chong Yagyong (Tasan) is considered to be a thinker who brought Practical Learning to fruition and was in the vanguard of modern Korean philosophy. Mark Setton, in presenting a well-rounded critique of this view of Chong Yagyong and Practical Learning offered by Korean academics, has given us new interpretations of this subject.
Although Cheng Yagyong left numerous writings on all sorts of topics, Korean academics have focused on Chong's criticism of political, economic, and social realities. Setton, however, shows that he not only wrote about current reforms but also about the Confucian classics. And although many of his reform proposals were written on the necessities of the age, his analysis of the Confucian classics from the start was systematic and detailed. Of course, other Korean scholars have studied Tasan's writings on the Confucian classics, but none has studied this issue as deeply as Setton.
Although Tasan presented considerable criticism on the realities of late Choson, he was a product of the Chosen elite and was reared in the Confucian culture. In terms of political alignments, he was not a member of the Noron (Old Doctrine) faction, the group in power, but rather a part of the Namin (Southerners), who had been removed from authority. Nevertheless, his philosophical foundations rested firmly in Neo-Confucianism. The reforms that he offered went beyond Neo-Confucian prescriptions, and the source of these ideas can be found in...