ABSTRACT
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, intellectuals in Korea began to doubt the efficacy of Neo-Confucianism as the state ideology. Some intellectuals tried to return to primitive Confucianism of Confucius and Mencius through textual criticism, while others were looking for practical learning by way of science and western thought, which raised interest in “Western Learning” as introduced by Matteo Ricci and his companions. Tasan wrote commentaries on the Confucian classics comparing and synthesizing the old and new commentaries as well as textural criticism of Ch’ing scholars and even commentaries of Japanese scholars such as Ito Jinsai and Ogyu Sorai. crux of Confucian teaching is not on systematization of philosophical theories but rather on the cultivation of discerning capacity to make ethically right choices in concrete situations. In the Confucian tradition, the “unity of Heaven and Human” is regarded as the highest state of sagehood, but the Confucians seldom used the term “Image of Heaven”.
