Yi Ik on Compassion and Grief

Abstract

This article examines the thought of Yi Ik 李瀷 (1681–1763), a prominent Confucian scholar in the late period of the Joseon 朝鮮 dynasty (1392–1910). In a broader context of the Confucian classics, as well as in the later development of neo-Confucian tradition in China and Korea, Yi Ik built an elaborate and comprehensive account of human psychology in his New Compilation of the Four–Seven Debate (Sachil sinpyeon 四七新編). He offers us a new perspective on the unresolved tension between the universal concern for others in general and the natural affection for the family by introducing the binary concepts of gong 公 and sa 私. In his system, successful moral agents do more than develop and strengthen their compassion with respect to the suffering of others, and they regard the suffering of others in the same way that they regard their own suffering. I believe that Yi Ik’s thought sheds new light on the Mencian program of cultivation and how to better lead our complex moral lives.

1. Introduction

In order to demonstrate that human nature is good, Mencius constructed a hypothetical scenario. He claimed that when seeing a child on the verge of falling into a well, any person would feel alarm, distress, compassion, and commiseration in response. This spontaneous concern for the well-being of other people, according to Mencius, is evidence that human beings have a natural tendency toward morality.1 This is the most famous thought experiment in Chinese philosophy, comparable to the trolley problem in Western philosophy. Just as the original trolley problem gave rise to different variations of the original version, Wang Tingxiang 王廷相 (1474–1544), a Confucian scholar and politician of the Ming 明 dynasty, presented a modified version of Mencius’ original case. Suppose one sees one’s own child and a neighbor’s child about to fall into a well; whom will one save first?2 This modified version pinpoints a moral conflict between one’s universal obligation to others in general (a neighbor’s child) and one’s special obligation to particular others (one’s own child). How would Mencius respond to this type of moral conflict?

In 7A35, Mencius presented another hypothetical scenario. Suppose the father of Shun 舜, a legendary sage king, had murdered someone—what would Shun do? Without hesitation, Mencius answered that Shun would abandon the throne like an old shoe and run away with his father. This became one of the most important sources for attributing qualities of nepotism and favoritism to Confucianism. Despite many scholars’ ardent and continuing attempts to address and challenge this criticism in one way or another, the tension between universal compassion and familial affection has not yet been clearly resolved.

In this paper, I introduce Yi Ik 李瀷 (1681–1763), a prominent Confucian scholar in the late period of the Joseon 朝鮮 dynasty (1392–1910).3 In a broader context of the Confucian classics, as well as in the later development of the neo-Confucian tradition in China and Korea, Yi Ik built an elaborate and comprehensive account of human psychology in his New Compilation of the Four–Seven Debate (Sachil sinpyeon 四七新編). I believe that his account of human psychology offers us a new perspective on the relationship between universal compassion and familial affection. As a result, he presents a distinctive model for the Mencian cultivation program, which I call the “privatization model” of cultivation.

In the first section, I provide a brief outline of Mencius’ thought experiment and discuss the unresolved tension between the universal concern for others in general and the natural affection for the family. In the second section, I explain Yi Ik’s distinction between the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings and his notions of gong 公 and sa 私. In addition, I also outline the limitations of Mencius’ thought experiment. In the third section, I examine Yi Ik’s conception of the sage and argue that the sages sublimate the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings into an optimal moral force and are, thus, able to overcome the limitations of Mencius’ case. I believe that Yi Ik’s account of human psychology makes an important contribution to the understanding and development of the ethical program of Mencius.

2. Mencius’ Ambivalence

Mencius is best-known for his doctrine of the goodness of human nature. According to him, human beings possess a natural tendency toward morality because we are born with moral inclinations. Even though our moral inclinations are not perfectly good in themselves, if we tend to them and cultivate them into full virtues, we can all become sages. Mencius divides our moral inclinations into four categories: the mind of compassion and commiseration; the mind of shame and disdain; the mind of deference and reverence; and the mind of approval and disapproval. As cultivation successfully proceeds, each moral inclination turns into the virtues of benevolence, righteousness, ritual propriety, and wisdom, respectively. This process unfolds in a fashion similar to how sprouts grow into flourishing trees. Therefore, our moral inclinations are described as the Four Sprouts (sadan 四端), as they are the beginnings of the Four Virtues (sadeok 四德).4

In order to show or to convince others that human beings all possess these moral sprouts, Mencius constructs a relevant thought experiment.

Here is why I say all human beings have a mind that commiserates with others. Now, if anyone were suddenly to see a child about to fall into a well, his mind would be filled with alarm, distress, compassion, and commiseration. That he would react accordingly is not because he would hope to use the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the child’s parents, nor because he would seek commendation from neighbors and friends, nor because he would hate the adverse reputation [that could come from not reacting accordingly]. From this it may be seen that one who lacks a mind that feels compassion and commiseration would not be human. … The mind’s feeling of compassion and commiseration is the sprout of benevolence.

(Mencius 2A6)

Because much ink has been spilled over this case, I will simply summarize a few points that are worthy of attention. This case concerns the first sprout, the feeling of compassion, thereby showing that human beings have a concern for the well-being of others.5 Mencius also emphasizes that it is only human beings who possess these moral inclinations and that this is what makes human beings different from other animals.6 However, provided that certain animals, particularly mammals, do show concern for other animals, the purpose of his thought experiment is probably not so much aimed at proving the distinctiveness of human inclinations as it is designed to evoke moral feelings in people’s minds.7 As Philip Ivanhoe aptly points out, this stirring of compassion in our minds not only testifies to the existence of moral inclinations but also has “gotten us to take the first step in our own moral self cultivation” (Ivanhoe 2000, p. 19; 2002, p. 40).8

If this is an important aim for Mencius, we can better understand the setting of this scenario. Mencius needs to create a setting that most reliably evokes the feeling of compassion in people’s minds. If this is the case, we should direct our attention to the prominent components of this scenario: (1) the gravity of the consequence, i.e., it is a matter of life and death; (2) the urgency of the event, i.e., it is an impending threat; and (3) the main character—a young child who is just beginning to walk.9 When compared to a remote threat of insignificant consequence, an imminent threat of death certainly plays a substantial role in stimulating our feelings. However, why a young child? What are the characteristics of the young child?

Young children are vulnerable, innocent, and cute. If we change the main character to another object, we can clearly see the force of a young child at play in this scenario. Suppose an excellent swimmer is about to fall into a well. People will believe that he/she is diving, not drowning. Suppose a serial killer who had murdered a dozen innocent people is about to fall into a well. A tenderhearted person would still commiserate with the killer, but some people would feel relieved or even delighted due to the fact that the bad person will be gone. Moreover, according to a psychological study, the cuter a baby is, the more strongly it tends to elicit motivations for caretaking (Glocker et al. 2009).10 Young children are, in general, much cuter than adult humans. All things considered, it is not surprising that Mencius choose a young child—vulnerable, innocent, and cute—as the main character of his thought experiment.

However, there is another important characteristic of the child. This child is a stranger. If Mencius’ aim is to find the most powerful object that can evoke an intense feeling in people’s minds, why did he not choose one’s own child? Interestingly, we find a case of using one’s own child in the Mozi.

Nowadays, if a mother who is carrying her child on her back drops the child into the well while drawing water, she will certainly follow and drag it out. Nowadays, if there is a disastrous year with famine among the people and they are starving by the roadside, this is much greater source of distress than dropping a child. How can one not examine this?

(Mozi, “The Seven Kinds of Anxiety”)11

The purpose of Mozi’s scenario is different from that of Mencius. Here, Mozi tries to draw an analogy between a mother’s saving of her imperiled child and a king’s saving of his people from starvation. Nevertheless, the setting of Mozi’s scenario is almost the same as that of Mencius’, except that it is one’s own child.12 Even though we cannot draw a clear connection between these two scenarios, it is quite reasonable to think that Mencius’ choice of an anonymous child was no accident.13

Most likely, this is because, when compared to our compassion for others, our natural affection for family is not always considered moral. However, anyone who is familiar with Confucian teaching will know that our family is the most important part of our moral concern. Just as Mencius said that the feeling of compassion is the beginning of benevolence, he also said: “The core of benevolence is serving one’s parents” (4A27) and “to be affectionate toward one’s parents is benevolence” (6B3, 7A15).14 In other words, just as we cultivate our innate feeling of compassion into the full virtue of benevolence, we can cultivate our natural affection for family into benevolence. Of course, the feeling of compassion and familial affection do not necessarily conflict with each other. As Hagop Sarkissian points out, we can take full advantage of our natural inclination for our families toward moral aims (Sarkissian 2010, p. 729).15

Nevertheless, such a move posits two sources of morality: universal compassion and familial affection. This has generated a heated controversy among scholars concerning which one is more essential and important in the Confucian program (Sarkissian 2010). For example, in a series of articles, Liu Qingping argues that consanguineous affection is the ultimate foundation for all other Confucian values. According to Liu, even though Mencius lays distinctive groundwork for a loftier goal of universal compassion with his doctrine of human nature, he gives supreme significance to consanguineous affection when it conflicts with other social obligations (Liu 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009).16 On the other hand, a scholar such as Sin Yee Chan takes a more complementary position. She acknowledges the differences between universal compassion and familial affection: the former is directed at anybody who is suffering and tries to minimize others’ pain, whereas the latter is directed at particular individuals who have a special relationship to the agent and tries to maximize their well-being. Despite these differences, she argues, both of the two sources of morality can be understood as affective altruistic concerns, and they can work together in order to develop the virtue of benevolence (Chan 2004b).17 However, there is yet another group of scholars. Instead of siding with either of the two, this group of scholars highlights the fact that the hallmark of Confucianism is to provide due respect to all virtues involved in a given situation through balance and coordination.18 Furthermore, in relation to this issue, Alan Chan remarks, “The Mencius generally seems to prefer confronting one concept or course of action against another in order to force a moral choice, but in dealing with benevolence and filiality it can hardly favor one over the other”(Chan 2004a, p. 163). In a similar vein, Tao Jiang claims that an irresolvable tension between familial affection and universal compassion renders Mencius’ philosophy more compelling because human beings are irreducibly familial and irreducibly political (Tao 2020).

In any case, the scholars involved in this debate have provided their own interpretations of the intricate relationship between the two sources of morality. Not only are there contemporary scholars of Chinese philosophy but also traditional scholars who have struggled with the same problem. In the following, I examine the thoughts of an 18th-century Korean Confucian, Yi Ik 李瀷 (1681–1763) and then discover how his thoughts can offer us new insight into this moral challenge. This will shed new light on the Mencian program of cultivation and how to better lead our complex moral lives.

3. Yi Ik’s View on the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings

In his New Compilation of the Four–Seven Debate (Sachil sinpyeon 四七新編)19, Yi Ik provides a clear definition of the Four Sprouts (hereafter referred to as the Four Beginnings) and also that of the so-called Seven Feelings (chiljeong 七情).20 As we have seen, the Four Beginnings refer to the four types of moral inclinations, which appeared in the Mencius. However, they are simply a subset of human emotions. We know this as we find different sets of human feelings in other Confucian sources. Having said this, the most representative set is the Seven Feelings, as described in the “Liyun 禮運” chapter of the Records of Ritual (Liji 禮記). This set includes pleasure, anger, grief, fear, love, dislike, and desire.21 According to Yi Ik’s explanation:

Pleasure (hui 喜) is like we take pleasure in [certain] sounds and colors. Anger (no 怒) is like we are angry at something that goes against [our minds]. Grief (ae 哀) is like we grieve over death and loss. Fear (gu 懼) is like we are afraid of hierarchical power and military force. Love (ae 愛) is like we are fond of something likable [to our minds]. Dislike (o 惡) is like we dislike bad odor. Desire (yok 欲) is like we desire clothes and food.

(“2. Meaning of the Seven Feelings”)22

If the Four Beginnings are moral emotions, the Seven Feelings are everyday emotions. The relationship between these two kinds of emotions—namely, the Four–Seven Debate—became the hottest topic among the Korean neo-Confucians. This debate resulted in two contrasting views. One party, headed by Yi Hwang 李滉 (1501–1570), believed that the Four Beginnings are purely moral emotions and that they are categorically different from the Seven Feelings, which can become either good or bad. The other party, headed by Yi I 李珥 (1536–1584), believed that the Four Beginnings are the morally good emotions among the Seven Feelings, and thus, they are not different in kind from the Seven Feelings.23 Yi Ik follows the line of Yi Hwang’s position. For him, even though the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings have commonalities in that they are human feelings, they are characteristically different from each other. Accordingly, he emphasizes that discerning this intricate relationship between the two is the key to success in regard to moral cultivation.

In the following, instead of examining the whole sets of the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings, I focus on compassion and grief because they have a direct bearing on the case of a child about to fall into a well. First of all, compassion belongs to the Four Beginnings, and grief belongs to the Seven Feelings. However, their felt experience appears to be almost the same. Yi Ik describes the mind of compassion and commiseration as follows:

In my opinion, cheuk 惻 (compassion) is [a feeling of] sadness and pain, just as one feels sad and pain when one is stabbed. Eun 隱 (commiseration) is that sadness and pain shake each other subtly, just as a shout subtly echoes through a valley and knocking on a thing subtly affects the qi within it.

(“1. Meaning of the Four Beginnings”)24

The gist of the felt compassion is sadness and pain, and this is the same for grief. Yi Ik quotes Yi Hwang’s description: “Grief is the extreme state of pain and sadness.”25 It is not merely that their felt experience happens to coincide with each other. Indeed, the cause of these feelings is also the same: death and loss. In other words, we feel compassion or grief when the state of welfare is negatively affected. How, then, do they come apart and belong to different categories? The answer is that the objects of these feelings are dissimilar. Yi Ik explains:

Commiseration among the Four Beginnings is different from grief among the Seven Feelings. Commiseration is to commiserate with other things. This is gong 公. Grief is to feel grief for [things related to] oneself. This is sa 私. … When one sees something about to die, one commiserates with it, but this is not grief. When one is in trouble, hardship, sickness, or pain, one feels grief, but this is not commiseration. This is the distinction between commiseration and grief.

(“1. Meaning of the Four Beginnings”)

In order to distinguish these similarly felt feelings, Yi Ik introduces the binary concepts of gong 公 and sa 私. These terms are often translated into English as private/public, but they can also mean common/individual or fairness/selfishness, depending on the context. In this passage, gong refers to “the state of being unrelated to oneself.” and sa refers to “the state of being related to oneself.”26 Accordingly, if the welfare of someone related to myself is negatively affected, I feel grief. If the welfare of someone unrelated to myself is negatively affected, I feel compassion. If we apply this distinction to Mencius’ thought experiment, I would feel compassion for the drowning child because the child is a stranger.27 However, if my own child is about to fall into a well, I would not feel compassion, but feel grief.28

Then, what are the ethical implications of the distinction between gong and sa? First of all, gong, the state of being unrelated to oneself, renders compassion an impartial feeling, for there is no other factor affecting my feeling other than a person being drowned.29 On the contrary, sa, the state of being related to oneself, renders grief a partial feeling because my relationship to the object is factored in. Accordingly, the decisive attribute that makes the Four Beginnings purely moral and different from the Seven Feelings is impartiality, which is guaranteed by gong, that is, unrelatedness or detachment from others. Therefore, the Four Beginnings are not prone to err; further, they are always good.30 Yi Ik writes:

The mind of compassion and commiseration … are [morally] good affairs. As for grief…, the worthy and unworthy alike have them. Therefore, the Great Learning (Daxue大學) says, “People are partial in regard to what they feel grief over and pity for; they are partial in regard to what they consider lowly and detestable.” People are surely partial in regard to what they feel grief over and pity for and what they consider lowly and detestable. However, it is rare that people are partial in regard to what they feel compassion for and commiserate with.

(“1. Meaning of the Four Beginnings”)

Accordingly, these impartial moral feelings of the Four Beginnings serve as a source of objective and error-free guidance to our moral lives. That being so, our task in moral cultivation is to preserve and extend the Four Beginnings.

Nevertheless, Yi Ik makes clear that the partial feelings of the Seven are not always bad. For example, grief for my child’s misfortune is not bad in itself. However, if I grieve too much to the extent that I steal a lifejacket of another person in order to save my own child, then this becomes bad. Therefore, Yi Ik warns that the Seven Feelings tend to become bad. However, as far as they do not fall into a wrong path, the Seven Feelings are also morally good. This case can be called “the correctness of the Seven Feelings.”31

The sages and the stupid all have the desire for food and sex and the dislike of death, loss, poverty, and hardship. [However,] when the desire stops at what is proper to desire and the dislike stops at what is proper to dislike, they are the correctness within sa (私中之正). What does it mean to be correct? Even though one’s feelings are not separated from [what is related to] oneself, they do not go astray.

(“4. The Seven Feelings of Sages and Worthies”)

Therefore, unlike the impartial moral feelings of the Four, the Seven Feelings cannot guide our moral actions because of their propensity to direct us toward moral lapses. However, we can keep the Seven Feelings on the right track with the guidance of the Four Beginnings. This demands us to hold different attitudes: whereas we should preserve and extend the Four Beginnings, we should constrain and restrain the Seven Feelings, not setting them free.

In relation to this, Yi Ik identifies another important distinction between the two: one can experience the Seven Feelings without learning, but one cannot experience the Four Beginnings without learning.

In general, the Seven Feelings are what one is capable of [experiencing] without learning… [On the contrary,] the Four Beginnings are not what one is capable of [experiencing] without learning. What does this mean? Suppose there is a person who does not learn. In the beginning, he cannot but also have the Dao Mind; however, if this mind is repeatedly fettered, he will lose this mind completely.32 Therefore, some people are incorrigibly unfeeling and do not show the Four Beginnings at all.33 [On the contrary,] there is no one who does not possess [the Seven Feelings] such as pleasure and anger. The Seven Feelings do not have anything to do with learning. They are not separated from oneself, and that’s all.

(“4. The Seven Feelings of Sages and Worthies”)

Yi Ik’s point that one cannot experience the Four Beginnings without learning sounds counterintuitive because Mencius claimed that all human beings have spontaneous moral inclinations by nature. If Mencius is right, then why should we learn? This is because the Four Beginnings can be lost if one does not make efforts to nourish them. They are given to us by nature, but we cannot keep them without strenuous efforts. This explains the reason why we should preserve and extend the Four Beginnings. On the contrary, Yi Ik emphasizes that the Seven Feelings can never be lost. The Seven Feelings concern what is related to oneself. What is the most closely related to oneself? Presumably, it is our bodies. We have eyes and ears so that we take pleasure in colors and sounds. We have bodies so that we desire to be warm and dislike being hungry. Insofar as we exist, there is no way for us to avoid the Seven Feelings. To put it another way, the fundamental reason for us to experience the Seven Feelings is us, the agent, whereas what triggers the Four Beginnings are external, morally significant situations. Accordingly, the Seven Feelings can never be lost, but we may lose contact with the Four Beginnings.

This difference has an important bearing on the intensity and vividness of feelings. As noted earlier, grief is the extreme state of pain and sadness. When Wang Tingxiang asked a hypothetical question about choosing between one’s own child and a neighbor’s child, he assumed that one would save one’s own child first because people tend to have intense feelings toward their own family.34 In other words, the Seven Feelings elicit visceral responses from the agent. However, you may wonder, is it not that people would experience an intense feeling of compassion in Mencius’ original case as well? In other words, the Four Beginnings can be as strong and vivid as the Seven Feelings. This is, however, only half-true.

According to Myeong-seok Kim’s analysis of Mencius’s thought experiment, we tend to confuse the spontaneous reactions of alarm and surprise with the purity of motive that is found in one’s compassion for the child. Kim points out that the motivational purity of compassion is not necessarily derived from the spontaneity of reactions and that compassion does not have to be either sudden or spontaneous (M.-s. Kim 2010, pp. 412–15). Another point we should keep in mind is that the aim of Mencius’ thought experiment is a modest one. Mencius simply needs to evoke a modicum of compassion in people’s minds. The actual saving of the child is a separate issue and does not affect his point (Van Norden 2007, p. 218; Zhao 2014, p. 348; Back 2018, pp. 109–10). Of course, as many traditional commentators have pointed out, the stronger the compassion we feel, the more likely we are motivated to act. However, this is the very reason that we are confused about Mencius’ thought experiment. As indicated earlier, Mencius designed his scenario in such a way that it evokes the most intense feeling of compassion. For that purpose, he heightened the level of urgency and gravity of the situation and chose a young child to be the main character.35 In other words, we are primed to experience compassion. Our urge to save the child is not solely induced by our compassion but also triggered by the combination of various factors. As such, we can feel a gush of compassion in certain occasions, but under the same conditions, as in the case of having to choose between one’s own child and a neighbor’s child, we can assume that the Seven Feelings elicit a stronger response than the Four Beginnings.

If this is the case, we need to ask the following question: what if the situation is not as urgent and grave as in Mencius’ case? For instance, what about a child who is suffering from malnutrition on the opposite side of the earth, but the child is not in danger of death anytime soon? We may feel compassion for this child, but are we motivated to act as spontaneously and strongly as in Mencius’ case? 36 If our aim is to demonstrate the presence of moral stirring in our minds, Mencius’ case is quite successful. However, what if our aim is beyond that? If our aim is the actual saving of the child, how can we motivate people to act out of compassion?37 With respect to this, we can find an answer from Yi Ik’s conception of the sage.

4. Yi Ik’s Conception of the Sage

Unlike the impartial feelings of the Four Beginnings, the Seven Feelings are partial because they arise from a concern for what is related to oneself, i.e., sa 私. It is in the ultimate form of sa that lies one’s physical existence. As such, no one can avoid experiencing the Seven Feelings. In addition, the Seven Feelings are not bad in themselves, but they can easily go wrong. However, if one constrains them under the guidance of the Four Beginnings, they are also morally good. We call them “the wrongness and the correctness of the Seven Feelings,” respectively.

Then, are the sages those who are simply good at constraining the Seven Feelings? In Yi Ik’s view, sages go beyond the level of the correctness of the Seven Feelings. They achieve the “gong of the Seven Feelings.” In my interpretation, this would be “the impartiality of the Seven Feelings.”38 How could partial feelings ever become impartial? Yi Ik explains:

If one desires together what people in the world desire and one dislikes together what people in the world dislike, this is the gong within sa (私中之公). How come is this gong? Even though [people in the world] are not related to oneself, one regards them in the same way one regards oneself.

(“4. The Seven Feelings of Sages and Worthies”)

When I am hungry, I desire food, and if my desire does not cause harm to others, this is the correctness of the Seven Feelings.39 When other people are hungry, I desire food for them as if I suffer hunger myself; this is the impartiality of the Seven Feelings. In this case, I feel the Seven Feelings for those who are not related to myself. How is this possible? This is because I consider other people to form one body with me, and thus, I share other people’s feelings as if they are mine. Most of us experience this kind of connectedness with other people to a certain degree. Yi Ik writes, “In general, among the common people, there is no one who does not care for one’s family. This is because one regards one’s family as one person.”40 He further explains:

When ill and sick, people are fearful. When hungry and cold, they are sad. These are the root of the Seven Feelings and they do not have anything to do with the Four Beginnings. [However,] when my child is ill and sick, I am also fearful. When my child is hungry and cold, I am also sad. This is not necessarily so for the child of another person. This is because father and son share the same body and there is no gap between me and him. Therefore, when my son is sad and fearful, I am also sad and fearful. [However,] in the case of the son of another person, these [feelings] ought to become slow and mild, because there is a gap between me and a son of another person. My sadness and fear do not yet extend [to him].

(“11. The Seven Feelings are also issued from the Dao Mind”)

When my child is suffering, I am fearful and sad, as if I am suffering. This is because I am closely connected with my child. When a neighbor’s child is suffering, however, I am not necessarily fearful and sad. This is because I do not have such connectedness with a neighbor’s child. This suggests that the connectedness with other people extends the scope of my sa and, accordingly, the object of my Seven Feelings broadens in response. Yi Ik, however, notes an opposite case:

In the world, some people are incorrigibly unfeeling. Even though their own sons are ill, sick, hungry, and cold, they are not sad and fearful for them. However, when such people are themselves ill, sick, hungry, and cold, there has never been a time when they are not sad and fearful for themselves. As for these people, the beginnings of compassion and commiseration are blocked and do not penetrate, not reaching even to their own child.

(“11. The Seven Feelings are also issued from the Dao Mind”)

In this worst case, one does not feel grief even for one’s own child because one does not feel any connection with the child. Nevertheless, as noted before, even this selfish person cannot avoid experiencing the Seven Feelings because he is at least connected to himself. The Seven Feelings are, thus, ineluctable.

From these various cases, we know that sa, the state of being related to oneself, does not refer to the factual state. Sa concerns how one perceives oneself in relation to others. Therefore, if I feel connected with my child, my child falls within the scope of my sa; but if not, even my own child falls outside the scope of my sa. In addition, sa is a resilient concept with a spectrum. At one extreme, sa refers only to oneself, but usually, its scope extends to include one’s family and friends. Therefore, when my own child is about to fall into a well, I feel grief as if I am falling. This still belongs to sa, and thus, the feelings toward my own child belong to the Seven Feelings. Only when one extends the scope of one’s sa to include all the people in the world does it become gong, i.e., complete impartiality.41 Indeed, this is none other than the level of sages. Yi Ik quotes the famous passage in the “Liyun”: “The sages are able to consider the whole world as one family and the whole state as one person.”42 To illustrate this concept with a diagram (see Figure 1),

It is important to note that this diagram is not a spectrum that is evenly graded between gong and sa. In order to transcend sa and become gong, one needs to cross the threshold, that is, embrace the entirety of people within the scope of one’s sa.43 Only at that point can one achieve complete impartiality and become gong.

Accordingly, there are two levels of gong in Yi Ik’s system. In the definition of the Four Beginnings, gong refers to the state of being unrelated to oneself. This impartiality of the Four Beginnings is guaranteed by the unrelatedness or detachment between the self and others. I call this level of gong “Impartiality I.” However, the gong achieved by sages is different from this. The impartiality of sages is obtained through the inclusion of others, not through detachment from others. This point is succinctly expressed in Yi Ik’s seemingly paradoxical and provocative statement: “Sages are partial to humanity.”44 In other words, no one is excluded from the partial concern of sages. Sages are partial to everyone, and for this reason, sages are impartial. I call this level of gong “Impartiality II.”

In summary, there is the “Impartiality I” of the Four Beginnings and the “Impartiality II” of the Seven Feelings. Interestingly, the ways that these two levels of impartiality are obtained appear to be in line with the distinction between compassion and empathy that was identified by Sin Yee Chan. According to Chan, compassion presumes a distinction between the self and others, whereas empathy presumes an identification with others. For example, as for compassion, we feel sorry for the person in distress out of concern, but we do not actually feel their pain.45 On the other hand, empathy is to imagine oneself in another’s situation and to share the same feelings with another person (Chan 2004b, pp. 177–79). According to this distinction, Impartiality I appears to be derived from compassion, and Impartiality II appears to be derived from empathy.

In my view, however, compassion tallies with the impartiality of the Four Beginnings (Impartiality I), but empathy does not fully cover or capture what Yi Ik means by the impartiality of the Seven Feelings (Impartiality II). For example, Yi Ik takes Mencius’ pleasure as a paradigmatic case of the impartiality of the Seven Feelings.46 When Mencius heard the news that his virtuous disciple Yuezhengzi 樂正子 would be employed in the court of Lu, he said, “I am so pleased that I could not fall asleep (6B13).”47 Pleasure is one of the Seven Feelings, but why did he feel pleasure on this occasion? If he were pleased because his favorite disciple obtained a job, this would, at most, belong to the correctness of the Seven Feelings. However, his pleasure is impartial because he was pleased by the fact that the people in the state of Lu would benefit from the good government of Yuezhengzi. In other words, he felt the Seven Feelings toward the people who are not directly related to himself. Accordingly, this renders his pleasure impartial. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that Mencius did not empathize with the actual feelings of the people. Rather, he projected his thought toward other people’s minds, thereby interpreting the occasion as pleasurable on their behalf. In other words, sages do not empathize with simply whatever other people actually feel. Instead, sages empathize with what other people would feel if they were decent moral agents. That being so, unlike empathy, Impartaility II is achievable only by sages. First, sages can expand the scope of their sa to the whole world, and second, sages can feel for other people in their truest interest.

If this is the case, what are the ethical implications of the two levels of impartiality? Let us return to Mencius’ original case. When a child is about to fall into a well, most people would feel alarm, distress, compassion, and commiseration. This is Impartiality I. Then, what if a sage sees this child? How would she feel? Instead of compassion, she would feel grief as if her own child is falling or she herself is falling. This is Impartiality II. Given that under the same conditions, the Seven Feelings will elicit a stronger response from the agent than the Four Beginnings do, sages are more likely to save the child than ordinary people, who would simply feel compassion for the child.

However, Yi Ik also thinks that ordinary people would feel a strong emotion in Mencius’ scenario. With respect to this, he gives this analysis:

When one sees a child about to fall into a well, the principle of benevolence immediately responds without relying on the qi of one’s physical form. As soon as there is this response, it immediately touches and stimulates the qi of one’s physical form, and the feelings of grief and fear come forth and arise.

(“11. The Seven Feelings are also issued from the Dao Mind”)

According to his explanation, we first feel compassion for the child, and then, we also experience grief and fear. In his view, Mencius’ thought experiment is not a pure case of the Four Beginnings but the combination of the Four and Seven. Then, why do we feel the Seven Feelings toward those who are not related to us? Yi Ik’s answer is found in the following passage:

If a son of another person is so ill, sick, hungry, and cold that he is about to die, I also feel grief and fear for him. [This is because] upon encountering the most urgent and intense cases, the mind of compassion and commiseration is suddenly manifested.

(“11. The Seven Feelings are also issued from the Dao Mind”)

As he explained before, unlike how I would feel if my own child were in danger, when a neighbor’s child is sick and ill, I am not fearful and sad because I am not closely connected with that child. However, there is an exception. When a neighbor’s child is gravely ill, we would not merely feel compassion but would even grieve for the child as if he/she is mine. This is because the urgency and gravity of the situation momentarily tears down the boundary between me and the child. According to his explanation,

In the case of a child crawling into a well, life and death is decided in a moment. Therefore, one certainly feels alarm, distress, and fear, and one feels compassion, commiseration, and grief. When facing a moment of the most urgent and intense situation, in that moment the thought of [what is related to] oneself has not yet occurred [in one’s mind], … Like a river bursting its banks or a torrent of rain pouring down, there is no time to distinguish me and another person so that the pain feels as if it is mine.

(“11. The Seven Feelings are also issued from the Dao Mind”)

According to Yi Ik, in such an exigent situation, ordinary people would save the child for the very same reason that sages would save the child. In both cases, the distinction between me and the child disappears, and we form one body. However, a substantial difference still remains. A momentary elimination of the boundary between ordinary people and the child is contingent upon external conditions, whereas the sustainable connection between sages and the child is subject to the character of sages, i.e., as virtuous agents. As a result, sages would still be motivated to help others in non-urgent situations, whereas ordinary people would be less likely.

If this is Yi Ik’s vision, the focus of his cultivation program is not simply on preserving and extending the Four Beginnings or on constraining and restraining the Seven Feelings. On the one hand, the Four Beginnings maintain their role as reliable moral guidance, but on the other hand, the motivation to act in accordance with this moral guidance is fueled by the Seven Feelings. In Yi Ik’s view, sages privatize impartial moral feelings, thereby upgrading the impartiality from Level 1 to Level 2. Therefore, sages achieve the impartiality of the Seven Feelings. This is possible through the extension of the self, the forming of one body with other people.48 As a consequence, successful moral agents do more than merely keep the Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings on their right track. They sublimate human feelings into an optimal moral force. Sages are partial to all the people in the world.

5. Conclusions

Most Korean Confucians developed their thought based on the neo-Confucian metaphysics of li 理 and qi 氣, which postulates the underlying unity of the whole world. Therefore, it would be unthinkable to fathom a highly sophisticated philosophical discussion, such as the Four–Seven Debate, without mentioning the system of li and qi. However, at the end of his paper, “The Historical Significance and Contemporary Relevance of the Four–Seven Debate,” Philip Ivanhoe presents a less metaphysical account of this debate, thus suggesting that the Four Beginnings concern other-directed emotions, and the Seven Feelings concern self-directed emotions (Ivanhoe 2015, p. 421). In this paper, I also tried to experiment with the possibility of whether we can understand Yi Ik’s account of the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings without appealing to li and qi. Instead, I rely on the framework of gong and sa, which Yi Ik himself introduced. I also believe these concepts are friendlier to contemporary readers. If the main points of Yi Ik’s thought have been conveyed to the reader, then this attempt has succeeded. Through this process, I hope to show the reader that the Korean Confucians who participated in this debate struggled with many of the same problems as we do today and that the Four–Seven Debate still has much to offer us.

If this is so, what can we learn from Yi Ik’s account of human psychology? First, we learn that not only rationality, but also certain emotions can provide us with an objective appraisal of the world. Human emotions do not provide us simply a limited, partial view of the world. Similar to rationality, through our emotions we can see the world in an impartial way. Second, we learn that certain emotions are partial, such that they can lead us to go astray. However, they can also induce a motivating force upon us with respect to moral actions. More importantly, we can expand the scope of our partial concern, and when we push this to the limit, we can be partial to the whole world and thereby achieve a higher level of impartiality. Yi Ik teaches us that we should make full use of our emotional resources and, thus, sublimate them into an optimal moral force. Then, we can act morally and virtuously regardless of the severity of situations.

In addition, Yi Ik’s account of human psychology makes an important contribution to the understanding and development of the Mencian cultivation program. Mencius has been the focal point of Confucian moral psychology, and his cultivation program has been held as one of the core themes for later Confucians and contemporary scholars. On the one hand, Philip Ivanhoe calls the Mencian program the developmental model, and many scholars have attempted to explain exactly in what way we can develop and strengthen our moral inclinations to become full virtues.49 On the other hand, Myeong-seok Kim points out the limitations of the inclinational model and elucidates the overlooked role played by the rational elements in the Mencian program.50 Recently, Winnie Sung added another dimension. She argues that the process of the Mencian cultivation is “not so much about making oneself sensitive to the plight of others as about preventing one from numbing oneself” (Sung 2019, p. 1114). She calls this the manifestation model, which assumes that we are already compassionate and what we should do is shift or awaken our attention (Sung 2021).

As we have seen, Yi Ik understands the nature of human feelings not only through the Four Beginnings in the Mencius but also in a broader context of the Seven Feelings. As a result, he offers us another way by which to cultivate ourselves. I call his program the privatization model of cultivation.51 In his system, we are not meant to simply develop and strengthen our compassion in relation to the suffering of others, which presumes a certain distance from others. Ultimately, we should close this gap and regard the suffering of others in the same way that we regard our own suffering. By expanding our partial concern to other people, we can enliven and invigorate our faint and frail feelings of compassion.