Consecuencias de la modernización sobre la calidad del agua

3.3.1.1 Chong Yag-yong as a practical scholar

Chong Yag-yong (1762-1831) can be described as the first Confucian scholar to find a way of re-evaluating Confucianism through the mutual illustration of Catholicism with Confucianism. He used worldviews and religious ideas to interpret Confucianism. His first encounter with Catholic was at the age of twenty-six, and he practised it for between four and five years. However, he apostatised after the Jinsan accident, which resulted in the prohibition of Catholicism through a national law. For him, the issue of ancestor worship was a crucial one. He confessed that he never saw the Catholic doctrine when he studied Western literatures.54 He therefore, stressed the importance of ancestral rituals, which he practised even while he was in exile. He also wrote articles to reform the practice in modernised way. According to Choi S.W (1997:43), “Dallet recorded that even if it was true that he apostatised, he still remained in the Catholic faith in his mind”. This implies that he did not follow the direction of Catholic missionaries who insisted on the discontinuation of ancestral rituals rather, he understood it as extended expression of filial duty, which has to develop (cf. Choi K.B 1989:308-19).

Insistence on the abolition of ancestral rituals by the Catholic Church caused a secession of the

yangban (nobility) group, and their entrance into the ‘Church of the common people’. We should

note that the common people were comparably free to practice ancestral ritual in Chosên society. Invariably, the character of Catholicism was becoming anti-feudalistic and anti-Confucianism and its uncompromising stance concerning ancestor matters was becoming stronger. Of course, these tendencies became an obstacle for indigenisation. Lim (1995:400-1) shows that their belief developed in two extreme ways. The one is to pursue personal salvation and ignores the world while the other follows a more radical way aimed at changing the society.

As a result, Catholics who abolished ancestral rituals were branded immoral people who did not acknowledge the king or their parents, by the members of Confucian society in Chosên.

Contrarily, Catholics who lapsed in faith because of ancestor practice were branded apostates over filial duty and natural law. However, some people such as, Chong Yag-yong chose a third way, they tried to communicate with Catholics with pride in the traditional culture of Chosên and with intellectual subjectivity.

3.3.1.2 Chong Yag-yong’s view of the Great Ultimate and filial duty

Chong Yag-yong’s view of the Great Ultimate is reflected in ‘Young Myong–Ju Jai chun (Sangie)’, which means the sublime, spiritual ruler of all things or the whole universe including human beings. His conception of chun is a personal supreme being. ‘Young Myong–Ju Jai Chun (Sangje)’ is the core of his philosophy and the fused worldviews of both Catholicism and classical Confucianism (cf. Lee S.H 2001:iii). The worldview of Confucianism is monistic metaphysics. All beings are one including human beings; nature and human beings are also not divided. In a relational way, even the ultimate being, chun (heaven) is not lopsided transcendence. All of nature, human beings and chun are considered relational beings. It should be noted that the weakness of the monistic view of God, specifically Confucianism, is that there is insufficient explanation of the ultimate being itself, an advantage which the Western view of God, specifically Christianity, has.

The God of Christianity reveals himself through a personal revelation and through prophets. On the other hand, chun is recognised in Confucianism as revealing itself through sung, (intrinsic attribute) 55 and nature. Young Myong–Ju Jai chun (Sangie) not only grants sung, but also participates in its growth. This method is not direct but through mediation of ghosts or gods. There is harmony between human beings and nature in this regard; and if the sung of human being is complete, the sung of nature also becomes complete.

Further, the assumption is that even if there is a distinction between the heavenly god and the earthly god, all nature is one fundamentally. The gods of the sun and the moon, wind and rain,

55 _{See Kim K.I. (1998). The idea that sung of human beings is revealed through themselves has similarity}

with Whitehead’s process philosophy, which sees nature as process, formation and organic relation. Confucianism stresses a mutation and formation, integral and organic character. It understands nature as combination of Yin and Yang in the endless mutation and formation, and has a structure which is symbolized as good and evil. The basic purpose of human beings, who live within these organic structures, is to reach sung which they believe is the stage of unity of sangjie. As a human being practises sung to the utmost degree, he becomes a saint (sungin).The contents of youngmyung, which is a tool to attain unto sung, are reason and morality. And human being and nature are in the accompanying relation to acquire sung, because the target of sung is always other humans and nature.

and the gods or the deities of the State and the forest are all gods of chun but they divide to take charge of the earth and heaven. Hence, they are called heavenly god and earthly god, and they all protect all of nature by the command of sangjie. Ritual performance, therefore, is the reward of heaven’s king.56

The role of gods is to rule human affairs and nature by the command of Sangie. For Lee S.H (2001:29), “the entire world exists by the merit of gods and all the wonders of nature are traces of gods”. Even if with the granted youngmyung they protect the world, their origin comes form

chun. Therefore, when human beings offer rituals to various gods, they also worship Sangie.

Chong Yag-yong distinguishes chun from various gods, while he argues that all worship rituals to gods are actually to chun. He affirms that Sangie is not only a foundation of formless spirits including the human soul, but also of gods, and of the only ruler of both material and formless worlds. Thus, ancestral worship for him is nothing else but worship to Sangie.

In this sense, Chong Yag-yong stresses a service to Sangje comparable with filial duty to parents:

Filial duty is nothing bigger than to love the intimates. People who practice filial duty to parents might love their parents’ brethren; those who show filial duty to grand parents could love their grand parents’ brethren. So to serve the founder with pleasure is the filial duty of the gentry, to serve great lords is the filial duty of feudal lords, to serve great kings of a nation and Sangie is the filial duty of kings.57

The biggest filial duty is the one that kings offer to Sangie. But this duty to serve Sangie is not just the duty of kings, it is the filial duty of all people to serve Sangie, and the filial duty to

Sangie is paramount. Chong Yag-yong understood Sangie worship in terms of filial duty. For

him, filial duty and ancestor worship are to be handled carefully and importantly in the process of acquiring sung. To practice human duty, that is, filial duty, is to serve chun.

Shin (1998:189) claims that filial duty has value in the aspect of contents, and rituals and sinju are useful in the formal aspect. Therefore, ancestor rituals and sinju are forms, which closely combine with the value of filial duty. For Chong Yag-yong then, contents and forms of ancestral rituals are not uncomfortable in his monistic and organic view of God. On the contrary, since

56 _{Ryeyoudang-jênsê(여유당전서), II – 4. 32b.} 57 _{Ibid., II-4,32a-32b.}

Catholics confess Christianity’s God as the only God and deny ancestor worship, he decided to serve chun through intimate relationship between the dead and the living descendants in his organic and integral ideology.

Thus, Chong dealt with ancestor worship from a monistic Confucian view of God in. That means all beings including humans relate with the ultimate. Even if he grasped the character of God after recognition of the Western idea of the importance of human rationality, human beings, nature, and God are organic and share a compensational relationship. Chong’s ideology of ancestor worship considered through his view of God is integral to an understanding of the oriental monistic view. The reason for regarding Catholicism as heresy is that the refusal of ancestor worship meant a dismantling of Chosên’s Confucian society, and secession from the order that was founded upon filial duty. However, in the case of Chong, ancestor worship is recognised in relation with the Confucian view of salvation, that is, the utmost goal of sung is salvation and the view of God.