The Jesuits, particularly Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), were the first enlightened missionaries who once in China discovered that the association of the God of the Bible with the old Chinese belief in the Lord of Heaven (Sangje) neatly conformed with the supplemental doctrine of the Deity they were reintroducing in the Middle Kingdom. Ricci’s idea of God revealed a profound and apodictic interpretation of the Deity. If on the one hand, it built on the old revered Chinese notions of religiousness, on the other hand, it had little to do with a metaphysical, compassionate concept of self-expenditure one could associate with the experience of love-pain, or <i>jeonghan.</i> Since the early 1970s, the Korean concept of <i>han</i> – the conventional meaning of which may be expressed in the English term resentment – has been the subject of theological discourse amongst Korean theologians who identify it with liberation theologies that have developed in Latin America and elsewhere. <i>Han</i> suggests a wide range of meanings and ‘pathologies’. Dominant amongst them in recent Korean Christian discourse is <i>wonhan</i>, which implies the bitterness of one who has been treated wrongly and who harbours resentment and hatred. While recognising that this is the traditional understanding of <i>han</i>, this thesis will fundamentally dwell on another dimension of meaning as conveyed in the term <i>jeonghan</i> which suggests a ‘pathetic’ – that is com-passionate, love-pain – rather that pathological dimension of meaning. The thesis chooses the term ‘com-passionate’ in recognition of the affinity of meaning between <i>jeonghan</i> and the Greek notion of <i>pathe</i> understood as self-expending affection, or in Cicero’s term <i>sensu amandi</i> which holds life suspended in ‘pathetic’ self-expenditure. This reflects the interpretation given by the Korean <i>seonbi</i> (scholar), Yi Byeok (1754-1786) whose main work provides the central focus of this study. The aim of the thesis is to invoke this more com-passionate and self-expending understanding of <i>han</i>. It will do so by examining the epistemological interaction between the Jesuit encounter with China’s religious traditions, with special reference to Matteo Ricci’s <i>True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven </i>(1603) and the Jesuit influence on a particular group of <i>seonbi</i> in Joseon (Korea) represented by Yi Ik, An Jeong-bok, Jeong Dasan and Yi Byeok. Against a background analysis of Joseon’s encounter with Ricci’s Western Learning (<i>Seohak</i>), the thesis includes an original translation of Yi Byeok’s main work, <i>Essence of Sage Teaching (Seonggyo yoji)</i>, together with the original Chinese version.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:657956 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Moon, Tahn |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/30536 |
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