• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
• /
• no.49
• /
• pp.39-71
• /
• 2012

This paper examines Jang Hyeongwang's cultural awareness and the way of practice by focusing on his spirit of humanities in relation to the understanding of territory and bibliographic materials. In fact, this starts from conflicting evaluations on Jang Hyeongwang's way of learning in the field of Korean history. Jang Hyeongwang emphasizes realization of humanity, which is considered as basic framework of culture. He claims the indivisibility of Dao(道) and culture(mun文) by arguing that almighty principle of Dao manifests itself through phenomena of culture. In other words, Dao is the root of culture and, at the same time, culture is the necessary element of making Dao valuable. Furthermore, he insists that realization of human culture is the gist of manifesting the pattern of nature. In this vein, the roles of human beings are so important in creating humanistic civilization. He considers all kinds of human affairs as the contents of humanistic culture, which are contained in six classics. Especially, He says that the moral is reality of human culture and that literature is a literal expression of humanistic spirit. Thus, he criticizes that there are literatures without moral practices. He pays a special attention to his indigenous culture. He links the cultural understanding of geography, which is the foundation of realizing humanistic spirit, to awareness of Korean territory and grasps the territory in the light of topography of geographic power. Thus, he defines it as "Central Field" which bears comparison with China (middle kingdom). With the positive understanding of his country, he insisted that Korean indigenous culture and custom are as much advanced as China and was so proud of the moral characters and norms that Korean people had formed so far. Moreover, Jang truly exhibited affection to Korean literature, which had formed through Korean history. Kim Hyu, one of his students, activates Jang's will to preservation of Korean culture. Over twenty years, Kim completed Collected Record of Korean Literatures(haedong munhon ch'ongnok 海東文獻總錄). Actually, he started the preparatory works for compiling them. We should keep in mind that this compilation was completed following Japanese Invasion of Korea in 1592. It means that he has cultural awareness of preserving Korean literal heritages. Hence, it can be evaluated as the results of the enhancement of national studies. We have seen that He truly highlights realization of humanistic spirit by insisting the practices of moral values. In fact, his mind is linked to genuine affection to Korean territory, culture and literatures. Such affection can be paraphrased as moral awareness of humanity and its practices. In conclusion, his humanistic spirit should be understood as strong belief on universality of human morality. His cultural awareness of homeland and the will to practices should be considered as cultural pride of Korean intellectual traditions rather than following Chinese culture blindly.