In 1558 Ki Dae-seung, newly through the state examination, met Yi Hwang, head of the Royal Academy and a generation his senior. The next year he wrote to tell the older man that one line of his was wrong. Yi wrote back. The letters went on until 1566.
THE DEBATERS
Yi Hwang
이황 · pen name Toegye
1501–1570
Head of the Royal Academy in 1558.
Ki Dae-seung
기대승 · pen name Gobong
1527–1572
Passed the state examination in 1558.
Twenty-six years apart in age, and further apart in rank.
The line was about feelings. Confucian texts name four moral impulses, such as compassion at another's suffering, and seven everyday emotions, such as joy and anger. Yi had written that they come from different sources: the Four from principle, the pattern of how things ought to be, and the Seven from material force, the stuff of body and world.
THE FOUR · 사단 四端
from Mencius
Compassion
Shame
Deference
Right and wrong
THE SEVEN · 칠정 七情
from the Book of Rites
Joy
Anger
Sorrow
Fear
Love
Hatred
Desire
Ki disagreed. Every feeling involves both, he argued, so feelings cannot be sorted into two origins. The Four are simply the Seven when they come out undistorted and in due measure: one reality seen from two angles.
TWO ANSWERS
Yi Hwang: two sources
Seven
from material force 氣
Ki Dae-seung: one source
Principle and material force are never apart. The Four are the Seven in due measure.
理
i (Chinese: li). Principle: the pattern of how things ought to be.
氣
gi (Chinese: qi). Material force: the stuff of body and world.
Yi softened his wording twice but kept his core claim, and Ki eventually let the matter rest. Then in 1572, two years after Yi's death, the scholar Yi I took up Ki's side again, and the question divided Korean Confucians for generations.
WHEN
1553
Yi Hwang revises a line in a colleague's Diagram of the Heavenly Mandate.
1558
Ki Dae-seung passes the state examination and meets Yi.
1559
Ki's first letter questions the line.
1566
The last letters on the question.
1572
Yi I reopens the argument in letters with Seong Hon.
ON THE MONEY
Yi Hwang and the man who later argued against him are both on South Korea's banknotes.
THE SERIES
3
In two days
The Second Round
Tomorrow: Yi answers, and rewrites his own sentence twice.