철학과 문화 13집

ㆍ철학과 문화 13집

MERLEAU-PONTY'S SOLUTION TO THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS IN TOEGYE'S CONCEPT OF SELF CULTIVATIONㆍ

MERLEAU-PONTY'S SOLUTION TO THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS

IN TOEGYE'S CONCEPT OF SELF CULTIVATION

Muhammad Mukhtasar Syamsuddin*

* 한국외국어대학교 철학과 박사

I. Introduction

It seems difficult to deny that philosophy is currently in the midst of a tumultuous becoming into something other than what it has been. In an essay aptly titled "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking," Martin Heidegger argued that philosophy had reached its end, but he nevertheless concluded "thinking is not also at its end, but in transition to another beginning." From the recorded history of the development of philosophical thought, we know that it is in the French philosophy, the search for alternative ways of thinking has become somewhat accentuated, and one of the leading alternative approaches has been phenomenology which is, of course, vastly diffuses body of thought. In particular, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a French philosopher who has paid close attention to the mind-body problem and has formulated a phenomenological solution to the problem.

Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, Joan Stambaugh (trans.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972, p.55.

Our perceptions, thoughts, intentions, volitions, and anxieties those directly affect our bodies and our actions are mostly important to be considered in the effort to actualize the concept of self-cultivation. Philip Ivanhoe pointed out that moral self-cultivation is one of the most persistent and dominant issues explored by Chinese ethical thinker. Also, it is in the Great Learning Chu Hsi premises that self-cultivation is the root of social and political order. Accordingly, mind-body is a fundamental problem that must be solved before concerning the possibility and the difficulty of attaining sage-hood by means of self-cultivation. Merleau-Ponty's solution to the mind-body problem in the present study is treated as an alternative way of thinking that is attended to be used in approaching the text of Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning, Toegye's concept of self-cultivation.

Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation, New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1993, p.1.

See, Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsueh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon, Cambridge: Harvard University Council on East Asian Studies, 1986, and Conrad Schirokauer, "Chu Hsi's Political Career: A Study in Ambivalence," in Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett (eds.), Confucian Personalities, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962, pp.162-188.

Ⅱ. Ontological Implications

1. A single 'reality'

If there is no ultimate ontological, that is, real separation between consciousness and object, ego and the world, which are absolutely distinctive only from the epistemological point of view, then, accordingly, reality in Merleau-Ponty's ontology is ultimately one which Merleau-Ponty called as Being. Indeed, the difference among the things we observe is only the difference of their respective dimensions of the same indivisible Being.

The view on reality as Being brings Merleau-Ponty's ontology into an inevitable comparison with Toegye's understanding of the Supreme Ultimate as we had found in his comment on the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate. Ontologically and by considering Chou Tun-i's influence on Toegye's philosophy, we can argue that Toegye's thought is bearing a monistic view on reality. In the comment on the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate, Toegye emphasized that Chou Tun-i's focal point is showing the emergent of the Supreme Ultimate. In Toegye's own opinion, Supreme Ultimate is the basic metaphysical principles of yin and yang that transpires myriad things. We can find the ontological implication of this opinion when Toegye expresses his argument that the total sum of all principles and the fundamental origin of all transformations refer to the Supreme Ultimate. Accordingly, Toegye identifies directly and clearly yin-yang with movement and rest.

According to Fung Yu-lan; "The Principle (li) of a thing is the all-perfect form or supreme archetype of that thing. This is the meaning of the word 'ultimate'.

Toegye's identification of Supreme Ultimate as principle is similar to Merleau-Ponty's notion that identifies Being as everything and everything as Being with its turmoil and chaos and the infinite complexity of others; with its "system of equivalence" and relations among themselves. In this case, Toegye's explanation on the Supreme Ultimate must be understood as not a substance as Merleau-Ponty understood Being as not a substance in the way in which consciousness and things are not a permanent stuff which would subsist beneath the turmoil of phenomena. For Merleau-Ponty, Being is metaphorically speaking, alive. The seer and the seen, the invisible and the visible, consciousness and object, the physical order and the vital order, the touching and the touched, are together in constant chiasm. Every relation with Being is simultaneously a taking and a being taken. Chiasm is nothing other than this relation with the Being.

The implication of Merleau-Ponty's Being in this ontological manner direct us to understand that the Supreme Ultimate in Toegye's comment on the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate is not something stable as opposed to something changing; something essential as opposed to existential. We will discuss these in the section of 'distinct but inseparable' later. The most important thing in this section is to find emphatically whether Toegye's ontology is monistic or not. Insofar as it is indivisible and undifferentiated, the Supreme Ultimate in Toegye's comment on the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate is a principle, which is not concrete, not a thing but nonetheless real as the sense of material force. Also, in the Diagram of the Elementary Learning, Toegye emphasized that 'principle' is however originally one principle is the Supreme Ultimate.

It is in the context of Merleau-Ponty's Being as one ultimate reality, that Toegye's thought of the Supreme Ultimate finds its phenomenological expression. And respectively, we could say that Merleau-Ponty's Being is more closer to Toegye's Supreme Ultimate than any other conception of reality, for example with Heideggerian Being that was contaminated with teleological anthropomorphism.

2. Reality is neither ideal nor material

It seems to be useful in locating and relating Merleau-Ponty's fleshy ontology to Toegye's philosophy when he explains the Supreme Ultimate as principle that begins and continues and accomplishes, accomplishes and fulfills. In short, this means that 'principle' is the same in every human being, but one's physical endowment of material force, as well as what one actually does, differs. In explaining 'principle', Toegye did not assume that human being is a logically separate domain of mental and physical as mostly introduced by empirical identity; brain states. According to Toegye, this explanation is not about the substance but function of 'principle'.

In Confucian theory, 'substance' was latent while 'function' was manifest. This became important for a discussion of the mind and feelings, which was spoken of in terms of unaroused (substance) and aroused (function) states. The substance of the mind-and-heart, which is its unaroused state, involves both principle and material force; likewise, the function or aroused states (the feelings) of the mind-and-heart also required both principle and material force. Principle and material force were in reality never separated, though in terms of substance-function, must be spoken of as two. Toegye's words were: "For principle and material force are fundamentally mutually necessary as substance and are interdependent as function; there definitely can never be principle without material force nor material force without principle."

Yi Hwang, Toegye Jeonseo (The complete works of Yi Hwang), vol. 1, p.405,  translated in Kalton, et. al., The Four-Seven Debate, An Annotated Translation of the Most Famous Controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian Thought, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994, p.8.

The concept of flesh is intended to show precisely the in-split reality of our bodily experience. Accordingly, Toegye's explanation on the 'principle' in the frame of substance-function differentiation will leave the subject's observations of his or her mental events in an ontological dualism. The physical form in Toegye's philosophy as he has shown through his comment on the Diagram of the Study of the Mind refers respectively to the emotional and the rational aspects of the mind-and-heart. These are just other terms for ri and ki. Thus, the distinction between the substance and function is a differentiation from the point of view of ri and ki.

Similarly to Toegye's expression of substance-function distinction as just other terms of ri and ki, Merleau-Ponty says "the unity of man has not yet been broken." In this case, Merleau-Ponty means pre-reflectively the human being has not been divided into mental and physical properties nor mental and physical substances. It is the reflective act of judgment, especially philosophical judgment that produces the appearance of mind-body dualism. The phenomenological account that Merleau-Ponty offers is that we experience ourselves, not as distinct 'minds' and 'bodies', but as unified persons who form intentions and act in the world, but can do so only because our bodies function mechanically in certain ways because it is not a version of the traditional materialism and idealism.

Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, Fisher (trans.), London: Matheun, 1965, p.188.

In the context of Merleau-Ponty's flesh, an appropriate analogy of Toegye's notion of substance and function is found in our modern understanding of light. Light is indeed a similar kind of duality. When looked at is as a wave, it can be understood partially as having wave-like properties; however, when looked at it as a particle, we can see its properties as a particle. This is the wave-particle duality of light. Light is one thing, but displays two different and opposite kind of properties. Likewise, the nature is one thing, but has the properties of principle and material force. Indeed, like light, we can speak of one property or the other, but the implication remains that we are speaking of the monistic whole, be that light or nature.

Toegye used the binary terms of substance-function and the original-physical nature as analogy. If it is permissible to speak of the nature in terms of binary concepts while retaining Toegye's philosophy of reality as the only one nature, then surely it is permissible to speak of the feelings in terms of principle and material force, while recognizing that there is only flesh in Merleau-Ponty's thought.

3.  Distinct but inseparable explained in representation and 'point of reference'

Pre-reflectively, people are not aware of living in two worlds, one inner and mental, and the other external and physical. Therefore, for Merleau-Ponty the ultimate starting point is that we have to know that there are things and a world related to our linguistic representation of them distinguishable from it. Reality does not coincide with what is represented or described. It exists ontologically prior to language even though it is epistemologically ulterior to its linguistic representation. "The words, vowels and phonemes are so many ways of 'singing' the world." Language does not construct the world, or makes things, but rather it is grounded in them.

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, Colin Smith (trans.), New York; Routledge and Keegan Paul, 2003, p.181.

If Merleau-Ponty's linguistic representation is applied in Toegye's thought of the distinction of principle (ri) and material forces (ki), it will explicate a misleading with the meaning of 'relationship'. We mean in this case that in fact principle and material forces are two distinct things but for Toegye both of them can never in reality be separated. In explaining the Diagram of the Saying 'the Mind Combines and Governs the Nature and the Feelings', Toegye made explicit the fact that both aspects of the nature, i.e. principle and material force, were involved in the arousal of what he calls as the feelings the Four or the Seven. Toegye agreed that the Four and the Seven were both feelings, and they both issued from the substance of the mind-and-heart.

Merleau-Ponty unequivocally argues for the restoration of the world as a meaning; Being, and absolutely it is different from 'represented', that is, as the vertical Being which none of the 'representations' exhaust and which all 'reach', the wild Being. Applying Merleau-Ponty's argument to Toegye's conception of arousal of feelings the Four or the Seven, will implicate to what we see as two distinguished substance in the world is not what we construct by language. The term 'arousal' in Toegye's concept must be understood as a process of representation within the feelings or what Toegye called it as a concept of 'point of reference'. In this conception, and regarding to Toegye's thought, the task of philosophy is not merely to describe the distinguishable substance but to ask 'of our experience of what the world' is before it is a thing one speaks of and which is taken for granted, before it has been reduced to a set of manageable, disposable significations.

Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, Alponso Lingis (trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968, p.253.

Understanding Toegye's explanation from the angel of phenomenological description brings us to find that in following Ch'eng Fu-hsin, Toegye's point of view on li-ki relationship implies two condition of mind. Consistent with this implication, it is only the material force that gives a physical form that man is produced. Human being is from the nature, which is the 'Mandate of Heaven' and this is what is referred to as the mind of the Tao.' According to Toegye, the 'mind of the Tao' and 'human mind' is not two fully distinct things; the 'human mind' is something that arises due to physical form, while the 'mind of the Tao' is rooted in our normative nature.

Both aspects of Toegye's thought, the monistic frame and the dualistic frame, were important to him. One was never emphasized at the expense of the other. Indeed, they were fine-tuned so well, his theories regarding principle and material force fit neatly within his monistic frame. Therefore, Professor Kalton was correct in describing Toegye's theory as 'dualistic monism.'

Ⅲ. Epistemological Implications

1. Conception of knowledge

It is in the phenomenological foundationalism, we find Merleau-Ponty's formulation of the meaning of knowledge, of what we can know, and of how we have knowledge. For Merleau-Ponty, before we know things as the pure objects of which science speaks, we have to understand that the things are dimensions of our existence in them. There is, he says "a 'pre-objective realm' that we have to explore in ourselves if we wish to understand sense experience." In lived-experience there are not yet any pure objects, but there is already a subject who perceives. The error of intellectualism lies not in postulating the existence of this subject but in mistaking its nature. The subject who perceives and who is immediately in contact with a world of perceptual meanings is a pre-subject, a natural subject. It is a subject, which only exists through what is worldly in it, its body.

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p.12. See also, The Primacy of Perception: and Other Essays on Phenomenology, Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, James Edie (ed.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964, pp.19.

Related to 'learning', which cannot be thought, of apart from personal cultivation and putting it into practice, Toegye uses the extreme expression "learning is like practicing it." Toegye, as a matter of fact, gives considerable emphasis to this expression and need for both personally cultivating and putting into practice. The expression of "learning is like practicing it"is certainly not just a matter of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It is rather the wisdom required for one's conduct. In the case of this kind of learning, truth is not just something pursued for its own sake, but rather something pursued for the sake of perfecting conduct; it must be personally discovers the principles by which to live.

Toegye's extreme expression on "learning is like practicing it" finds its phenomenological relation in what Merleau-Ponty calls as 'intentionality' that simply means 'toward-ness.' Merleau-Ponty affirmed this by saying: "All consciousness is consciousness of something."My knowledge is not simply knowledge qua knowledge, but it is knowledge of something. My perception is not simply perception qua perception, but it is perception of something. Merleau-Ponty seemed unimpressed with intentionality as a great discovery of phenomenology. We can now consider the notion of intentionality, too often cited as the main discovery of phenomenology?"

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p.xvii.

If Merleau-Ponty justified the exploration in ourselves as a required condition before understanding the sense experience, Toegye emphasized the 'mindfulness' in the Diagram of the Elementary Learning as the essence of the practice of the self-cultivation under a reason that 'mindfulness' is human original nature. The problem Toegye addresses in this concept is essentially epistemological; given the 'mindfulness' inherent in our mind-and-heart and those in things in general as he treated on the principles in things reach the mind-and-heart. In this case, Toegye subscribed to the investigation of principle. This investigation of principle has its aim at formulating the truth, indeed, absolute truth, but it would be a fundamental mistake to confuse the objectivity of this kind of truth with the modern scientific drive for an objective and detached kind of knowledge of things. The emphasis is on the subject rather than the object as such; that is, the essential thing is self-transformation through a personal grasp, appropriation of, and realization of moral truth as the truth of one's own existence.

Since mindfulness is a quality of the mind-and-heart, the more it is stressed, the more important the mind-and-heart becomes. This was evidenced in the relation of Toegye's 'learning' above where the correct approach to learning to be taken from Merleau-Ponty's foundationalism are personally experience in getting its meaning. Therefore, the maintaining of mindfulness and the investigation of things in Toegye's philosophical thought would be a combined into a single whole, but also asserts that personal experience is a necessary condition for knowledge. But, as we noted from Toegye's comment on the Diagram of the Admonition for the Mindfulness Studio, what attracts our attention in this philosophical comment more than the role of personal experience or practice is the role of mindfulness as the foundation.

Wing-tsit Chan, "The Ch'eng-Chu School of Early Ming" in de Bary (ed.), Self and Society in Ming Thought, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, p.38.

In employing Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological foundation in Toegye's thought of mindfulness as the foundation, we need to carefully consider Toegye's epistemology as appears in the Diagram of the Admonition for the Mindfulness Studio. Indeed, Toegye's thought might be understood in intellectualism's conception, which assumed that all reality comes from the mind. This carefully consideration is based on the fact that Toegye's thought was much influenced by Ch'eng-Chu School in defining the meaning of principle (li) and mind as Professor Chan describes that to the Ch'eng-Chu School, knowledge was extended to examining principle in all things. According to Merleau-Ponty, assuming reality comes from the mind does not solve the problems that are inherent with its antithetical partner, empiricism, since it deals with the world in the same objectivist manner. He employs an evaluation of the presuppositions of intellectualism in light of the findings of the Gestalt psychologists in order to show how far removed the intellectualist are from the world that we inhabit.

Wing-tsit Chan (trans. and comp.), A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963, p.572.

2.  Approaching the truth; method of investigation

Merleau-Ponty's vision in writing; "writes; "learning is not a real operation"and reaction is a type of behavior directed to a typical stimulus" is to expose a phenomenological solution to the paradox of any descriptions composed for solving the mind-body problem. If metaphysical ontological commitments are eschewed then, plausibly, the mind-body problem will not arise. Therefore, for Merleau-Ponty, it is not only our own body that we 'know' in this way, however. We have a pre-reflective sense or grasp on our environment, relative to our body, as is evidenced by our capacity to move around in and utilize that space without first having to think how to do so.

Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, pp.98-99.

Compared with Toegye's view on 'learning' as not a real operation, 'learning' in Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior seems like a method of practicing the concept of self-cultivation as Toegye expressed it in his remarks for Chu Hsi's comment on the Diagram of Rules of the White Deer Hollow Academy. As we noted from this remarks, the great value of these rules is that they express the essence of all learning in terms of its fundamental content and basic methodology. With this notion, our relation to the technological objects, such as word processors, provides an interesting illustration of this. We can type and to that extent 'we know' where the various letters are on the keyboard. We do not have to find the letters one by one, as when we first bought the thing. Our fingers just move in the direction of the correct keys. Indeed, when we are in full flow we seem actually to be thinking with our fingers in the respect that we do not know in advance of typing exactly what we will say. It is not just that we do not need to think about where the keys are, however.

Instead of 'learning is not a real operation', Merleau-Ponty also says that the world is not an object. Obviously the world is broadly an object of experience. He means that the totality of what we take there to be is not an item that one could encounter in the course of one's experience. It is not, so to speak, one thing amongst others. It is, rather, a context, or the context, for all the thoughts and actions of the subject. The implication of this context is that learning as a method of pursuit of the truth in Toegye's thought was keenly aware of the need to rid oneself of any sort of one-sided view or understanding in order to gain a correct view and an integral understanding. As we have discussed in part three, implicit within this is the attempt to grasp the principle of any given matter in a way that arrives at a fully rounded and perfect vision by comprehending both the interior and the exterior in their entire network of complex relationship. This is clear enough in Toegye's mention of "comprehensive penetrating understanding" as the ultimate goal of the investigation of principle.

Also, from our discussion on the Diagram of the Great Learning, we have known that in modifying the Diagram, Toegye focuses on two main areas. The first of these are dealing with "making the illustrious virtue manifest", which is listed three times across the top of the Diagram. Toegye moves this phrase between the two columns associated with 'action' and 'knowledge' and then directly links it to both columns. In this modification, it is clearly stated by Toegye that in the concept of self-cultivation, investigating principle was premised on maintaining mindfulness.

Similar to Merleau-Ponty's statement of the 'world is not an object,' Toegye's approach to the truth by maintaining mindfulness consist of treating the world as a natural manner. With this, we reach the high point of the type of insight characteristic of both Toegye and Merleau-Ponty in gaining the truth. Indeed, the truth in both Toegye and Merleau-Ponty's approaches is conceptualized as an integral knowledge that involves the comprehensive penetrating understanding by means a true knowledge.

3. Subject-object relations

In the context of Merleau-Ponty's notion of reversibility, the maintaining of mindfulness and the investigation of things that would be a combined into a single whole in Toegye's remarks on the Diagram of the Admonition for the Mindfulness Studio may form our understanding that Toegye's view of the intimate reciprocity of subject and object does not add up to a literal fusion, at least not in terms of what humans can experience in. To be sure, with little difficulty subject can become object and vice versa, and this reversibility attests to the fact that they participate fully in the same order of being. We can find this implication by returning back to Toegye's belief that in the mind there is the power to comprehend the principle of things as they objectively are. Based on the understanding of mind-and-heart (sim, hsin) as a combination of principle (ri, li) and material force (ki, ch'i), Toegye meant that the mind-and-heart or a composite of ri and ki has the characteristic of emptiness and spirituality and can understand all principle (ri); this understanding means that it can accumulate knowledge. The accumulated knowledge is due to its emptiness, while a condition of perceiving that is not immediately sensible will be brought by a spiritual power.

The term of "emptiness" here is not in the sense of lack of being but "emptiness" as in Taoist that is believed as the source, not as the absence, of all being. As such, Neo-Confucian Principle was often contrasted with Buddhist Emptiness that the orthodox Neo-Confucians understood in a negative sense as a denial of the reality of their Principle.

According to Kalton, this term of "spirituality" is in the sense of consisting of such pure and subtle ki that it is subject to same constraints of the more physical kind of stuff we call matter. There is, however, no spirit/matter dichotomy of western sort implied here. See, Kalton's note in Sasoon Yun, Critical Issues In Neo-Confucian Thought: The Philosophy of Yi T’oegye, Michael C. Kalton (trans.), Korea University Press, 1990, p.33.

If Toegye meant that the mind-and-heart has emptiness or spirituality characteristic, consequently, in order to think and handle the object correctly, the power of concentration must be rooted not in the attraction of the object, but in the mind's self-possession, which frees it from the hold of any object and hence from the power of any object to inappropriately distract it. While Merleau-Ponty, as we have seen above, in portraying the interchange of subject and object, he does go on to say that "this hiatus between my right hand touched and my right hand touching is not an ontological void, a non-being: it is spanned by the total being of my body, and by that of the world". Nevertheless, while there may not be an ontological void, the presumably 'irremediable' epistemological void Toegye posited would be quite enough to forever prevent the realization of full-fledged subject-object intertwinement. In this case, mindfulness as the ability to quietly focus the mind is different from simply becoming engrossed or absorbed in a situation, a case in which the object possesses the mind and becomes an obstacle to dealing appropriately with the flow of changing events.

Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behavior, p.148.

Although the intimate relatedness of subject and object that would give access to the subject is inferred from their reversibility in Merleau-Ponty's notion, any particular cognitive act is itself actually irreversible in Toegye's understanding of subject-object relationship. Toegye's understanding is also appealed to authority with its uni-directional movement from subject to object. Pontean reversibility changes what is being objectified; it does nothing to challenge the act of objectification itself, the act by which we pass from subject to object, thereby occluding lived-subjectivity. Implying this Pontean reversibility in Toegye's uni-directional movement, we can understand then, the subject-object relationship is in an abstract way, but, in concrete terms, it merely juxtaposes two instances of the disconnectedness of subject and object. However, it is precisely in this Toegye's dualistic monism that we can see a contradiction by means that since this dualistic handling of subject-object distinction, the object cannot be accepted as actual. This is the element of irrationality in Toegye's thesis.

Ⅳ. Ethical Implications

1. Self and the world; a realization of human relation

Merleau-Ponty was not an author of ethic, but departing from that point, his ethical contributions become even more palpable with his articulation of the flesh. His use of "flesh" unequivocally asserts the significance of bodies. Flesh is the tissue of the body that is sensed by others. When he refers to the commonality of beings with this term, he is referring specifically to their bodiliness. Even though he does not explicitly develop a moral system of value, Merleau-Ponty describes the primary role of the body in knowing the world. For Merleau-Ponty, the primacy of the body is based on its embeddedness in the world. The body, as that which is sensed, is enfolded or woven together with others in the sensible world. Each bodied being participates in the world. Woven together with others through the body, our body places us in contact and enables sense to encounter with others. The enfolded body is then our opening to the world only because it is 'of the world.' Merleau-Ponty observes that when we see things or touch things, we are ourselves part of the sensible. David Abram explains that, for Merleau-Ponty, it is impossible to even imagine a sensible experience that would not at the same time involve our own sentience and our situatedness in a field of sensed phenomena, for "we implicate our own senses, and indeed our own sentience" from within that field.

David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, New York: Vintage Books, 1996, p.66.

In the comment of the Diagram of the Western Inscription, Toegye explained that the opposite of 'selfishness' is ren (variously translated as 'humanity,' 'love,' or 'benevolence'); in effect it is a matter of treating others with the care and concern with which we treat ourselves. In the perspective of Merleau-Ponty's 'embedded self' for moral agency, we can understand Toegye's explanation of ren as the exposition of the ultimate metaphysical grounds of the human condition which make 'selfishness' as a basic misapprehension of the nature of one's existence. Consequently, Toegye's idea of ren should be understood as a tightly circumscribed realm of human responsibility, and even an exclusive concern for the human community is antithetical to our situation of embeddedness and our interdependence with all bodied beings.

Further, the implication of Merleau-ponty's 'embedded self' in Toegye's comment on the meaning of ren as the opposite of 'selfishness' is that we do not have absolute freedom to determine or restrict our connections with others. To choose to seek the flourishing of only a small circle of the world beings is necessarily a choice to neglect or exploit other beings, as Toegye said above that we treat others with the care and concern with which we treat ourselves. Toegye himself acknowledges the ethical significance of a primordial connection with others. This acknowledgment comes in his discussion of Chang's Western Inscription that reaffirmed the concept of the Five Relations (relation between parent-child, ruler-subjects, husband-wife, older-young siblings, and friend-friend) were part of the cosmic fabrics, and as such, were not only real but defined reality itself. As we had known from part three, Toegye illustrated the first part of the Diagram as started with basic concepts and showed that in terms of principle, everything is united and there is a fundamental affinity between all creatures even though mankind and creatures are fundamentally distinct.

For a helpful discussion of human freedom in Merleau-Ponty's writings, see, John J. Compton, "Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Human Freedom," in Journal of Philosophy, 22, 1982, pp.577-588.

In the light of Merleau-Ponty's 'embedded self', what Toegye's ethics offered by his comment of ren and human nature are that self and other are not yet distinct identities. This means that human life is a collective existence or in Merleau-Ponty's view that conscious life begins with a "communion with others". The earliest conscious life in Toegye's view must be understood as consciousness in making a collective life in the world. Of course, the rule on how to treat others in the context of Five Relations is an important part that has to be attended by one in his or her life in the world but it does not mean that the primordial communion as a fount from which ethical sensibilities flow may be neglected. Accordingly, in both collective existence and communion, we are ushered into self-recognition through perceiving others and their recognition of us. But even as we make the transition to self-consciousness, the initial communion is not dissolved. Merleau-Ponty elaborates upon the primordial communion evident in his earlier writings and begins to refer to the communion or commonality of beings as 'flesh.' The communion of the 'flesh' is the kinship of all beings in the sensible world.

2. Overcoming the problem of good and evil in cultivating the body

The replacement of the body from metaphysical dualism that Merleau-Ponty initiated is evident in his idea of the flesh and by this replacement, while the goal of self-cultivation in Toegye's Confucianism may be understood as an attainment of ri and ki reversibility which involves the overcoming of dualism, such as self and world, as we have discussed above. Carey said that it was for Merleau-Ponty; the guiding assumption in these ancient traditions is that the world and all of its constituents consist of matter and spirit, immanence and transcendence, mind and body. Accordingly, just as the flesh consists of the power to espouse for Merleau-Ponty, ki in Toegye's thought animates the physical world.

Seamus Carey, "Cultivating Ethos through the Body" in Journal of Human Studies, 23, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, p.34.

If ki is animated as the physical world, it is understood to be that which animates all life, propelling the development and growth of all beings, while developing along with them. Like the flesh, ki is the actual source of growth and development. Unlike a first cause that may initiate a process without itself participating in the process it initiates, ki is inseparable from the movement of which it is the source. It is both cause and effect. Those who are familiar with ki as the animating force of all life understand that its proper cultivation is crucial to human well-being. With his practical interest, Yasuo noted the Japanese term for self-cultivation as shugyo or gyo, which has the connotation of training the body, attended to show that ki is operative throughout the entire human organism, and its influence is crucial in the development of the mind and the body. Hence, the methods of self-cultivation that have evolved over centuries of practice actually focus on the body as much as they do on the mind. Given the overlap between ki and the Merleau-Ponty's flesh, an examination of the methods for cultivating ki will demonstrate that the flesh can be cultivated towards ontological fulfillment.

Yuasa Yasuo, The Body, Self Cultivation, and Ki-Energy, Shigenori Nagatomo and Monte S. Hull (trans.), Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993, p.3.

In that context and related to the physical matter, Merleau-Ponty's idea of the harmony between what we aim at and what is given or between intention and performance sheds some light upon his suggestion that consciousness is primarily a matter of not "I think that," but a matter of "I can." Indeed, as Merleau-Ponty argued, action in this paradigm is spontaneous and practical, it is clear that we move phenomenally in a manner somewhat antithetical to the mind-body distinction. Therefore, the essence of the 'elementary learning' in Toegye's philosophy as appeared in both Diagram of the Elementary Learning and Diagram of the Great Learning should be perceived in the comprehensive sense, especially for the need of moral training. Thus, in applying our efforts to gradual advancement, we attain to be fully human being.

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p.137.

Ibid, p.145.

What we need to perform in moral training is overcoming the 'desire' that was identified by Toegye himself as one of the main obstacles to moral development. The desire to be a good person was naturally not a cause for concern, but desires for everything that were concrete and were seen as interfering with one's original nature. With this training, we actually had realized the need of a harmony between what we aim at and what is given or between intention and performance emphasized by Merleau-Ponty.

Ⅴ. Conclusion

For Merleau-Ponty, human beings are not biological machines, collections of neurophysiological mechanisms operating in ways that can be explained by causal laws. Rather, they are embodied subjects, actively engaged with the environment in which they find themselves, trying to solve problems in their existence and adapting their behavior in the light of the solutions they find to those problems. In this case, ratio is fundamental for the differentiation between human and non-human beings. But this point is that if this is so, if thinking is what distinguishes human beings from all other natural entities, and then it is impossible that our thinking could ever become so completely aware of its natural basis that this basis would lay before us as an object like other objects. Otherwise, that would be exactly the position, which is characteristic for the Cartesian, reductionist view of nature and its spiritualistic implications. Also for Merleau-Ponty, our purpose was to get to the appearance in the nature of man and human body. If the development of life is a 'phenomenon,' that is to say, if we reconstruct it on the basis of our own life, then it cannot be derived as an effect from a cause. Furthermore (and this is the difference between phenomenology and idealism), life is not a simple object for a consciousness and so now, we must think of the human body (and not 'consciousness') as that which perceives nature, which it also inhabits.

Because of Merleau-Ponty's monistic view on reality, ontologically and by considering Chou Tun-i's influence, the whole Toegye's explanation on the 'principle' in the frame of substance-function differentiation will leave the ontological dualism. The emotional and the rational aspects of the mind-and-heart in Toegye's philosophy are just other terms for ri and ki. Thus, the distinction between the substance and function is only a differentiation from the point of view of ri and ki. From the angle of phenomenological interpretation, the theory of ri and ki means an existence, which appears in human consciousness. The consciousness referred here should not be interpreted as what idealist regards as their last stronghold but in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological notion that concludes the consciousness as the same as the corporeal function of perception. Toegye's interpretation on the Four Beginnings that is being conceived as a principle, particularly gave this phenomenological expression.

In the light of Merleau-Ponty's 'embedded self', what Toegye offered by his comment of ren and human nature is that the self and other are not yet distinct identities. Therefore for Toegye, what is important in terms of moral cultivation is that there is also the potential to transform one's physical nature and fulfill one's original nature. In this purpose, Toegye had a deep faith in the potential for human improvement. And about the good and evil, following Mencius who called the nature good because it is where humaneness, rightness, propriety, and wisdom are maintained, Toegye asserted that the Four Beginnings were inevitably good because they were direct expressions of the nature. So, in their expression there are no self-centered human desires to disorder them. By using Merleau-Ponty's approach to the problem of the good and the evil, we can explain Toegye's assertion by saying that the fact that good and evil as forms are only distinguished by virtue of a particular situation, a particular lived-experience, in other words, that values have an historical and concrete character, and at the same time that this distinction is, as transcendence, imbued with generality.

【Abstract】

심신의 문제에 대한 메를로 퐁티의 해결책과

퇴계의 자기수양이라는 개념을 통해 살펴본 이 해결책의 철학적 함의

무하마드 묵타사르 샴수딘

본 논문은 퇴계(退溪) 이황(李滉)의 자기수양(自己修養)이라는 개념을 메를로 퐁티(Merleau-Ponty)가 심신의 문제에 대해 제시한 해결책을 통하여 그것이 지닌 철학적 함의를 연구하는 데에 있다. 이러한 목적에서 연구는 성학십도(聖學十圖)에서 퇴계가 정형화시킨 자기수양 개념을 메를로 퐁티가 심신 문제에 대해 제시한 해결책의 존재론적, 인식론적, 윤리학적인 함의를 통해 새롭게 이해하는 방법을 탐구하고자 하였다.

퇴계의 자기수양의 개념을 심신의 문제에 대해 메를로 퐁티가 제시한 현상학적 해결책을 통해 고찰함은 실로 무한한 철학적 의미를 지니고 있다. 첫째 메를로 퐁티의 실재(實在 reality)에 대한 일원론적시각에 따르면, 퇴계의 실체(實體 substance)와 기능(機能 function)의 이분법적 체계에서의 원리에 대한 설명이라는 존재론적인 이원주의로 귀결된다고 볼 수 있다. 둘째 만약 메를로 퐁티가 감각적 경험 이전에 필요한 조건으로서 우리 자신에 대한 탐색을 정당화했다면, 퇴계는 천리(天理 mindfulness)를 인간의 본연(本然)의 특성으로 보기 때문에, 철리를 자기수양을 정진시킴에 있어 필수불가결한 정수(精髓)로서 강조하고 있다. 셋째 메를로 퐁티의 ‘내재화(內在化)된 자아(自我)’라는 개념을 통해 살펴볼 때, 퇴계가 ‘ren(人)’과 인간의 본성에 대한 비평을 통해 제안했던 것이 자아와 타자(他者)는 서로 분리된 것이 아님을 주장했다고 볼 수 있다. 그러므로 퇴계에 따르면 도덕적 수양에서 가장 중요한 것은 인간의 물질적 본성으로서의 인욕(人慾)을 변형시키고, 인간 자신의 본성으로서의 천리(天理)를 이행할 수 있는 잠재성이라는 것이다. 이러한 의미에서 퇴계는 인간성의 개선(改善)을 위한 인간 자신의 잠재성에 그 누구보다도 더 깊은 신뢰를 가졌다고 말할 수 있다.

【Key Words】퇴계(退溪), 이황(李滉), 자기수양(自己修養), 메를로 퐁티(Merleau-Ponty), 심신 문제