THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONCEPT OF MIBAL 未發 IN THE HORAK DEBATE

Abstract

The eighteenth-century Neo-Confucian scholars in Korea were deeply concerned with two questions, namely, whether human nature and non-human nature are the same or not and whether all human nature is the same or not. In answering the second question, they focused on the moral nature of mibalsimche 未發心體 by asking whether the state of the mind or mind-substance before the arousal of feelings (or thoughts) is morally good or not. As noted, in Neo-Confucianism the unaroused state of feelings chŏng情 is generally identified with a state of nature sŏng性 which is pure and clear, and which is therefore characterized as morally good. However, Korean Neo-Confucian scholars noticed that this characterization could be controversial since the account of the unaroused state given by the Chinese Neo-Confucian, Zhu Xi, was not clear enough, but ambiguous. The problem of mibal was a matter of interest since the Four-Seven Debate in the sixteenth century in Korea, and it once again became the subject of intense contention in the eighteenth-century debate between Yi Kan and Han Wŏn-jin, who endeavored to reveal the exact moral characteristics of human nature in terms of the qualities of human constituents, i.e. li and ki. In what follows, I shall begin by examining Zhu Xi’s diverse accounts of mibal, show the emergence of the problem of mibal in the Four-Seven Debate between Yi Hwang and Yi I, and, finally, discuss the moral nature in the state of mibal presented by Yi Kan and Han Wŏn-jin.