The Dynamic Characteristics of “Jeong 情”: A New Perspective on the Korean Neo-Confucian Four–Seven Debate ^†

Abstract

This article aims to elucidate the semantic gap between Jeong 情, discussed in the traditional Confucian intellectual society, and Jeong 정, understood as a conceptual cluster in contemporary Korean language and life. During the period when Joseon Korea was converted into Confucianism, part of the centrality of a native word, tteut, shifted to jeong, a naturalized word. In other words, “jeong” has grown into a new concept cluster with centrality in relation to the emotional aspect of the mind, while “tteut” still remains as a concept cluster associated with the mind. This phenomenon could be related to the spread and sharing of discourse on various emotions represented by “sadan 四端” and “chiljeong 七情” in the Confucian literature. As the discussion on the Four–Seven continued, emotional vocabulary extracted from Chinese Confucian literature was reconstructed by reflecting the Korean people’s pursuit and understanding of emotions. From this, we can evaluate that the Four–Seven debate not only contributed to the elaboration of Neo-Confucian emotion theory, but it also developed in the direction of moral emotion with social values implied by Korean “jeong”.

1. Introduction

“Jeong” is a central concept in understanding the Korean mind. This concept is deeply rooted in both Korean language and life. It is said that Koreans cry for jeong, laugh for jeong, live for jeong, and die for jeong. “Jeong” is not only recognized as a unique characteristic of Koreans in everyday life, but it has also been an object of academic curiosity. Jeong is usually translated as “emotion,” but the former is considered as “a vital ethical force in invigorating Korean civil society and empowering Korean citizenship” (see Kim 2006, p. 215), so the translation always seems lacking.

Academic interest in this intriguing concept has now gone beyond domestic academia to the extent that an independent edited volume on this concept has been published in English (see Chung et al. 2022). As seen in this recent publication, however, scholars juxtapose the Jeong 情defined in the centuries-long debate about emotions, called the Four–Seven debate of the Joseon Dynasty, with the modern Jeong 정describing Koreans today. Introduced in English as “Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings” (Kalton 1994),1 this debate over sadan (ch. Sìduān 四端) and chiljeong (ch. qīqíng 七情), is known to have discussed how to lead to moral action by controlling or avoiding fickle and error-prone emotions.2 Whereas, the jeong in modern Korean society is understood to be warm and affectionate, connecting people and providing a space for mutual transition on which morality is based (See Kim 2006, p. 226). Therefore, can it be said that the jeong in contemporary Korea and the jeong in Joseon Confucianism refer to the same thing?3

For ease of discussion, let us call the current concept of jeong, which has grown into a concept cluster with centrality4, “Korean jeong”, and call the concept of jeong in the past, which was discussed by intellectuals with the literacy of classical Chinese, “Confucian jeong”. These two are related to each other, but, as mentioned above, their implications are not the same according to timing of use, medium of communication, and the context in which they appear in the literature. To understand this, we need to look back to the series of processes leading from Confucian jeong to Korean jeong, that is, the conceptual history of Jeong as a whole. Among these, I will underline two major transformations. One is when the Confucian jeong was naturalized and replaced the corresponding native word tteut, and the other is when the meaning of jeong gradually changed from that of China through the Four–Seven debate. In terms of timeline, the two processes overlap.

In the following section, I will briefly deal with the replacement of concept clusters.5 Afterwards, I will examine the transformative process of Confucian jeong into Korean jeong. The incipient interest in Confucian jeong in the late Goryeo to the early Joseon Dynasty is re-evaluated, as well as how this interest develops in relation to the well-known debate on the Four–Seven in the 16th century. Lastly, I will focus on the inflective point towards Korean jeong through a new interpretation on the Four–Seven in the 18th century. This composition reconstructs the conceptual history of “Jeong” by broadening our view before and after the well-known 16th century debates, to include the periods of historical change, that is, the late Goryeo Dynasty and the late Joseon Dynasty. This bigger range that I am going to look at in this article has received less attention in existing studies on the Four–Seven debate, but they are worth examining as game changers in terms of the conceptual history of Jeong. By tracing this series of transformations, I try to resolve the discrepancy between Korean jeong and Confucian jeong and make their relationship comprehensible. If my argument succeeds, we will not only be able to understand the conceptual history underlying “jeong”, which we have thought of only vaguely so far, but also gain a new perspective on the Four–Seven debate.

2. Dynamic Transformation of Concept Clusters: From Tteut^情 to Jeong^情

Today, “(Korean) jeong” is so familiar to Korean speakers that some might think it is a native word, but, as we note, it is a naturalized word derived from the Chinese character 情 (ch. qíng).6 Among the concept clusters of modern Korean language, “jeong” occupies a unique position in that it is a case of replacing a native word with a naturalized word. What I call a concept cluster is not simply a word frequently used in everyday life but a philosophized concept that clusters with other words to form the centrality of thought.7 This clustering is achieved through reflective thinking over a long period of time. The Korean concept clusters, which have maintained their centrality over a thousand years of evolution until today, include not only native words such as maum, uri, and haneul, 8 but also naturalized words such as jeong and gi. The former has no corresponding Chinese character (or characters), while the latter has those such as 情 and 氣 (ch. qì). Unlike gi, which started out as Chinese character qì and acquired centrality in both written and spoken Korean,9 jeong was matched with the corresponding native word before acquiring centrality. That is “tteut 뜻 ( or in old Korean10)”.

The earliest example of this can be found in the preface written by King Sejong (世宗, 1397–1450) when Hangeul was first created. Let us look at the following:

A. [Translation] As the language of Korea is different from that of China, the Chinese characters do not match with the Korean language. Therefore, even when people have something they want to say, finally, there are many people who cannot convey their tteut^* in words.

B. [In Old Korean] 나랏 말ᄊᆞ미 中國에 달아 文字와로 서르 ᄉᆞᄆᆞᆺ디 아니ᄒᆞᆯᄊᆡ 이런 젼ᄎᆞ로 어린 百姓이 니르고져 호ᇙ배 이셔도 ᄆᆞᄎᆞᆷ내 제 ᄠᅳ들^* 시러 펴디 몯ᄒᆞᇙ 노미 하니라

C. [In a Chinese/Korean Mixed System] 國之語音이 異乎中國ᄒᆞ야 與文字로 不相流通ᄒᆞᆯᄊᆡ 故로 愚民이 有所欲言ᄒᆞ야도 而終不得伸其情者ㅣ 多矣라11

^* In old Korean, the syllable final sound was written in the following particle, so “+을” is written as “ᄠᅳ들”.

Sentence B written in old Hangeul has only three words written in Chinese characters: “China (jungguk 中國)”, “Chinese characters (munja 文字)”, and “people (baekseong 百姓)”, and the rest are all in Korean. On the other hand, in Sentence C, written in the adaptive writing system, the main phrases are written in Chinese, and only the postpositional words are written in Korean. Comparing these two, we can see the Chinese character “jeong” corresponds to “tteut” in Korean.

Here, “tteut (=뜻)” is not a word simply corresponding to “meaning” in the modern Korean dictionary but a concept cluster of native words. In this context (A), it can be interpreted as “their concerns”, “what they want to say” or “what they have in mind,” but, in other contexts, it can be linked to various meanings such as “emotion”, “intention”, or “will”. The fact that “tteut” corresponded to various Chinese characters and encompassed them can also be confirmed through the text called Cheonjamun (千字文, “Thousand Character Text”), which Koreans have been using to learn Chinese characters for a long time.12

In Figure 1, we can see that the Korean word “tteut” was assigned to three different Chinese characters in common, “情”, “意” and “志”, which are usually translated into English as ‘emotion,’ ‘intention,’ and ‘will’ respectively. In modern Korean, “tteut” is still a concept cluster that has a centrality as a native word, variously connected not only to ‘intention’ and ‘will’ but also to ‘meaning,’ ‘wish,’ ‘opinion,’ and ‘commitment’ etc. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the shift from tteut^情 to jeong^情 occurred, but “tteut” is no longer connected to ‘emotion,’ and its share has been replaced by “jeong”. More accurately speaking, the native word “tteut”, which was matched with the Chinese character “情” at the time, was once related to the concept of qíng 情 in the classical period of China13 that had a much wider semantic range than today’s ‘emotion’, but it has now devoted the part of concept clustering related to emotion to “jeong”.

The centrality of jeong in the language and life of today’s Koreans cannot be irrelevant to the Four–Seven debate which has been persistent for hundreds of years on the Korean Peninsula. Although the concept of Korean jeong, sharing a concept cluster of tteut, must have been latent even before the Four–Seven debate emerged, we see that it has become more dynamic and richer in details through the debate focusing on “jeong”. I think that the reason why Korean Neo-Confucian scholars took the Four–Seven as their major theme stems from their long-standing interest and desire to clarify the structure and mechanism of our mind. In fact, the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings were not a main concern in Chinese Neo-Confucianism, and the framework elaborated by Joseon Confucian scholars to explain their complex relationship did not develop in China. I will discuss Joseon Confucian scholars’ concentration and interpretation of Confucian jeong in the following.

3. Four Beginnings and Seven Feelings within Our Mind/Heart: The Early Combination of the Four–Seven

The terms the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings never appear together in Chinese Confucian classics. “Four Beginnings (kr. sadan, ch. Sìduān 四端)” are mentioned15 in the Mencius, as a basis for the claim that people have innate moral emotions, whereas, the Book of Ritual introduces “Seven Feelings (kr. chiljeong ch. qīqíng 七情)” as a human capability that can be conducted without learning.16 The two terms were once mentioned together when Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130–1200) read and discussed the Confucian classics line by line with his disciples, answering some students’ questions, but even that is only used three times in the entire record of their conversations.17 The point of their question was what the relationship between the two was. Zhu Xi’s answer was simple but confusing: Sometimes he says that the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings have different origins, and other times they are similar; sometimes he says the two are interconnected, other times they should not be matched to each other.18 After the brief answers, he did not proceed further with any argument. He seemed to have no serious concern for the Seven Feelings.19

It was Korean Neo-Confucian scholars who took the Four and the Seven from different Chinese Confucian Classics and combined them into one frame, and gradually developed it into a key topic for understanding our minds and human morality. When the debate began in earnest, they tried so hard to explain Zhu Xi’s confusing fragments without contradictions. However, it is not that they put the Four and Seven together after finding the fragments, rather the contrary. Fascinated by Neo-Confucian innovative commentary on the Confucian classics, they paid most attention to the possibility of reconciling with Heaven through human inner cultivation. Before taking the Four–Seven as a topic of discussion in earnest, they had already included the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings in an initial schema that was reconstructed according to their own understanding. Later, they had to work hard to coherently explain their theories in relation to the fragments of Zhu Xi.

It is known that the official beginning of the Four–Seven Debate was in 1559, when Gobong20 sent the first letter to Toegye disputing the contents of the diagram called “Cheonmyeongdo (天命圖, the Diagram of Heavenly Mandate)”21, which Toegye22 confirmed along with Chuman.23 Since then, Toegye and Gobong’s correspondence continued for seven years. After the two scholars passed away, the second big debate resumed between Yulgok24 and Ugye,25 and Joseon Confucian scholars took the two giants’ arguments, Toegye and Yulgok, as two pillars and continued discussions on emotions using them as a reference. These series of discussions are collectively referred to as the Four–Seven debate. With this in mind, I would like to go back 150 years before the debate and look at Yangchon’s26 diagram first. This is because the idea of putting the Four and Seven together did not come from Toegye or Chuman but from Yangchon.

In 1390, at the end of the Goryeo Dynasty, Yangchon wrote an illustrated textbook called Iphak Doseol (入學圖說), literally meaning “Diagrams Explaining the Introduction to Confucian Learning,” to teach Neo-Confucian knowledge to young people in the countryside where he was exiled. The picture below is the first diagram at the front of the textbook, which has a long name, called “the Combined Diagram of Heaven and Humans, Heart/Mind and Nature (Cheonin-simseong-habil-ji-do, 天人心性合一之圖)” and hereafter, I will call it the Combined Diagram. In this diagram, he connects Heaven and human beings and connects the human mind’s function and human nature in various ways. What we want to pay attention to here is the various emotional vocabularies in the middle part.

I believe that this combined diagram provides a prototype for the way Koreans think about emotions and has had a profound impact on shaping the Four–Seven Debate that follows. Although the terms “Four Beginnings” or “Seven Feelings” is not shown, Yangchon certainly combines the Four and the Seven in one frame. Having a look at Figure 2, you can see the heart-shaped form drawn in the center. Depending on how you work your heart/mind, you can become a sage, a gentleman, or just an ordinary person who may give up on self-cultivation.

In the enlarged Figure 3, you will see all the components of the Seven Feelings at the bottom of the heart-shape [心]: Hui 喜 (pleasure), No 怒 (anger), Ae哀 (grief), Gu 懼 (fear), Ae 愛 (love), O 惡 (dislike), and Yok 欲 (desire) from right to left. And you will see that four kinds of moral senses are sprouting in turn, under the word “Jeong 情” in the upper right corner: The sense of compassion and commiseration (cheuk’eun 惻隱), the sense of yielding and deference (sayang 辭讓), the sense of shame and disdain (su’o 羞惡), and the sense of right and wrong (sibi 是非).27 The Four Beginnings as moral emotions are of “Jeong”.

Yangchon did not elaborate on why he incorporated the Four Beginnings and the Seven Feelings from different sources into the Combined Diagram. However, by integrating the two, he opened a forum to discuss the transformation of our mind and the development of morality through various emotions. What should be underlined here is that his diagram contains the possibility of dynamic change between morality and depravity. He divided good and bad and marked them in white and black but left a range of options that could reverse the situations at any time. It is possible to slide down to a state of desire from a state of goodness28, and no matter how cruel and greedy a person may be, if he consistently maintains a humble and respectful attitude, he can enter the path of a gentleman again.29 In this emotional dynamics, “Jeong” is perceived as a vivid thing that we experience, struggle, and overcome in real life, rather than simply being identified as two distinct categories found in the classics.

4. Reading Confucian Jeong as Korean Jeong: From Sadan and Chiljeong to Jeong^情

Yangchon’s influence was deep and long lasting30, but, unfortunately, he had no ardent followers. Perhaps because of this, his diagrams have often been cited as criticisms of one camp against the other, rather than as praise. For example, the scholars affiliated to the Yulgok school criticized Toegye’s thesis of “mutual issuance (hobal, 互發)” as having originated from Yangchon’s diagram.31 The thesis of “mutual issuance” is Toegye’s argument that “the Four Beginnings are the issuance of principle; the Seven Feelings are the issuance of material force (四端是理之發; 七情是氣之發) [P1]” (See Kalton 1994, p. 14), and is regarded as the most striking fundamental point of the Four–Seven debate.32 Ironically, this was a proposition modified by Toegye, who considered the expression “The Four Beginnings issue from principle; the Seven Feeling issue from material force (四端發於理; 七情發於氣) [P2]” in Chuman’s diagram to be too dichotomous.33 In response, Gobong criticizes Toegye’s proposition [P1] as being too dichotomous, and when Toegye finds the same passage as P1 in Zhu Xi’s words34 he rebuts Gobong, but Gobong thinks P1 is even worse, and thus the debate enters a complicated phase.

Yulgok, taking over Gobong’s position, objected to Toegye’s idea of “mutual issuance” because he thought that emotions cannot be divided into two kinds. This does not mean that he acknowledged only one kind of emotion, such as joy or anger, but recognized all the various emotions as one and saw that the emotion itself could not be classified into good and bad. In other words, Yulgok thought that moral emotion is not something separate but just a name for when our feelings are in due measure. He regards Chiljeong as the collective name of our colorful emotions, and Sadan as just the morally appropriate cases among them,35 so Chiljeong includes Sadan but not the other way around.36 He argues that what distinguishes good from bad depends on the intention (ui 意) after the mind has arisen, not on emotion, i.e., the movement of the mind. If emotions are revealed according to the correct nature of human beings, it is called the Dao mind (dosim 道心), and if they are interfused with selfish intentions, it is called the Human mind (insim 人心) (See Kalton 1994, pp. 113–14). However, his discussant, Ugye, doubts whether it would be better to divide the mind into the Dao mind and the Human mind rather than categorizing the emotion into the Four and the Seven (See Kalton 1994, p. 141).

Since it is not the purpose of this article to discern in detail the arguments between Toegye and Gobong or between Yulgok and Ugye, let us look at where their discussion is heading in terms of the concept of “Jeong”. It seems as if they were arguing over whether to divide emotions into the Four and the Seven or to see them as one, and whether the problem is the emotions or the mind. However, considering that what underlies these debates was the Seven Feelings, Chiljeong, that Yangchon boldly brought to the fore as a central issue of Confucian learning, we can see that their discussion is not just for acquiring the logical consistency of the Neo-Confucian theoretical system. And I believe that the reason that their debate lasted so long was not because of the defect in the Neo-Confucian emotional schema but because of the complexities of real emotion.

They continue to return to the word “Jeong” to comprehensively understand the “Four Beginnings” and the “Seven Feelings”, which were originally defined in different contexts, and through this, the conceptual clustering of “Jeong” develops.37 It was the same regardless of whether they viewed emotions as integrated or differentiated, and Toegye was no exception to this. Toegye says,

“The Four Beginnings are Jeong, and the Seven Feelings are also Jeong. Both are equally Jeong”.38

It may sound obvious or even tautological to say that “chiljeong” is “jeong” but when comparing it to the context of Chinese Neo-Confucianism this saying may not be so obvious. Zhu Xi also once said that “the Four Beginnings are qíng”.39 However, this is an interpretation of “sìduān 四端” appearing in the Mencius, with the Neo-Confucian framework of the nature (性 xìng) and feelings (情 qíng), not in relation to “qīqíng 七情”, the vivid emotions we feel in everyday life, which can be whimsical or a blessing. On the other hand, despite insisting on the need to distinguish between the Four and the Seven in the passage that follows,40 Toegye approves the fact that both are essentially one in the concept of “Jeong”.41 The reason why Toegye takes the theoretical position of “mutual issuance” distinguishing the Four Beginnings from the Seven Feelings is not to schematically categorize “情 qíng” in the Confucian classics but to prove the source of true satisfaction that springs from within us.

Nevertheless, Gobong saw Toegye’s attempt as a problem to prevent us from seeing our emotions as one whole, by splitting the source of ‘Jeong’ into two. Yulgok, who shares Gobong’s worries, says:

“Jeong encompasses only what we call pleasure, anger, grief, fear, love, dislike, and desire. There is no such thing as a separate Jeong other than the daily emotions represented by these seven things”.42

Yulgok more actively explains the concept of “Jeong” as emotions we always experience in our daily lives. Since then, the two camps were at odds over whether to distinguish the Four from the Seven or not, but they both showed a common interest in the real emotions in everyday life represented by joy and sorrow. They see both danger and hope in real emotions. While Toegye tries to correct the emotions that easily flow the wrong way by cultivating the unclouded moral emotions that can be experienced inside, Yulgok tries to steer the various emotions towards the right path with the Dao mind whenever they are issued.

What is interesting to me is that as the Four–Seven debate continues, “Jeong” itself is mentioned more and more than the Four or the Seven, which was the original subject matter, and gains centrality by being clustered with more other concepts. For example, refuting Yulgok’s thesis of the Human mind and the Dao mind, Ugye says the following:

“The Human mind and the Dao mind are also [a matter of] Jeong”.43

Here, I would like to note this quotation as an example in which the concept of “Jeong” gradually took centrality, rather than discussing Ugye’s position in detail. And Ugye was not the only one to comment on “jeong” as a more fundamental issue than the human mind. The expression “A is also Jeong”, which connects various mental processes with “Jeong”, has appeared extensively and continuously since Toegye’s words.44 It is thought that the “jeong” at this time is already in the process of moving toward a new concept beyond the scope of qíng defined under the framework of Chinese Confucianism. After that, numerous people participated in the Four–Seven debate,45 but a clear inflection point in the conceptual history of jeong can be found in Seongho’s46 writings about 150 years later.47

5. The Emotional Spectrum and Its Transformation into “Public (公 gong)”: Towards Korean Jeong

The theme of emotion, which Yangchon discovered and reconstructed from Neo-Confucian literature introduced at the late Goryeo, soon became common knowledge to all Joseon Confucian scholars through the persistent analysis and exploration of the Neo-Confucian terminology by 16th century scholars. At this point, when it became a theoretically vast system and fell far from explaining the reality of emotions, Seongho is the one who revived the vivid meaning of “Jeong” in everyday life by reviewing and comparing the discussions up to the point. With this, the conceptual history of “Jeong” has faced a new phase, and I think it served as an opportunity to get closer to the meaning of “Jeong” today.

While previous discussions have mainly focused on the metaphysical basis of the Four and the Seven, Seongho’s book entitled “New Compilation of the Four–Seven Debate” (四七新編, hereafter, New Compilation) was new and groundbreaking in that it shows interest in the specific aspects of these emotions being realized. It explores the relationship between the Four and the Seven within a broad spectrum from the complexity of colorful real-life emotions.

Going beyond dividing the Four beginnings and the Seven Feelings according to their metaphysical origin, either principle or material force (理 lǐ or 氣 qì),48 he explains that they are different depending on whether they are public or personal (公 gong or 私 sa).49

“Commiseration (eun 隱) [of the Four Beginnings] is different from grief (ae 哀) [of the Seven Feelings]. Commiseration is to commiserate with something [other than oneself]. This is gong 公. Grief is to grieve for [things related to] oneself. This is sa 私”.50

In the context of English, it may sound very odd to link “emotion” with “public”. This of course does not mean that you should not hide your personal feelings and always show them in public. This “public (gong 公)” is a term specially chosen to denote moral emotions that go beyond the emotions normally attributed to the individual. However, “public (gong 公)” and “personal (私 sa)” are not used to divide the Four and the Seven in a dichotomous way. Seongho creates a new contradictory term, “the gong within sa,” by juxtaposing “public” and “personal” to explain the deeper layers of emotions we experience and communicate in our daily lives.

“If one desires what all under Heaven share in desiring and one dislikes what all under Heaven shares in disliking, this is ‘the gong within sa (私中之公: personal but in public interest)’. This gong—what could it mean? Even though [people in the world are] not bound up with my particularity, I see them in the same way that I see myself”.51

As long as it is an emotion coming from an individual, it cannot be simply called “public (gong 公)” and should be called “personal (私 sa)”. However, Seongho insists that there is a possibility that emotions do not seem to belong to an individual. When your emotions resonate with everyone beyond any personal interest or relationship, we can only call them “public”.

“The Seven Feelings still arise as before but there are cases in which they become gong 公. This gong [of the Seven Feelings] is the achievement of governing the feelings and it is not how the Seven Feelings were originally so”.52

Seongho distinguishes between moral and everyday emotions but does not deny or ignore everyday emotions. He presents the following three categories to see a wide range of emotion: the inappropriate case within sa (私中之邪), the appropriate cases within sa (私中之正), and ‘the gong within sa (私中之公). You may find inappropriate cases of emotions within yourself or by observing others, but sometimes you can also find appropriate emotions. Given that we are all individuals with living bodies, what really matters is the publicness (gong 公) dwelling in the personal (私 sa). Seongho does not try to find a fantasy moral emotion aside from these everyday emotions on Earth. Instead, he refers to an opportunity to rise above these feelings and explains these spectrums through real-life cases. Seongho’s public emotion thesis was inherited and transformed by later thinkers.53 Some focused on the concept of “publicness”, some used the mind and emotions interchangeably, seeing emotions as all activities of the mind, regardless of the term itself.54

Real emotions in everyday life are not only problems but also hopes. While sometimes inappropriate and sometimes appropriate, “Jeong” as a concept cluster that presents the potential to be shared by everyone beyond individual boundaries seems to be getting closer to the meaning of Korean “Jeong”. This is because Seongho does not stop at defining emotions at an abstract level but aims for social or public emotions that belong to individuals in nature while flowing from individual to individual at the same time. Rather than trying to prove the morality of human emotions through the metaphysical premise such that all humans are endowed with principles and temperaments, and so the nature and material force, he reinterprets Toegye’s argument based on the emotions we have or experience. In this sense, Seongho is thought to have deeply understood both Toegye and Yulgok’s arguments, even though he took Toegye’s thesis more seriously.

6. Concluding Remarks: Confucian Jeong to Korean Jeong

This study is an attempt to propose a new perspective on the Four–Seven debate of Korean Confucianism, while tracing the conceptual transformation of “Jeong”. It is not easy to confirm the exact relationship between Confucian Jeong and Korean Jeong because there is no Korean translation, Eonhae (諺解), corresponding to their writings in classical Chinese, Hanmun (漢文). However, I argue that the two are not separate on the following grounds. First, if you look at the Eonhae of the Joseon Dynasty in chronological order, you can observe the shift from “tteut” to “jeong”. The second is the tendency of clustering surrounding “情” in Hanmun literature.

In the Hangeul translation (eonhae 諺解) of the early Joseon Dynasty, the Chinese character “情” was almost always translated as “”[tteut] rather than transliterated as “졍[jeong]”.55 However, in the mid-to-late 16th century, we can see some cases where “情” is read just as [jeong] without translation:

“들 방肆히 며 情졍애 맛도록 여 (肆意의適뎍情졍야)”-56

“이 슬프고 셜워 情졍이라(哀戚쳑之지情졍)”57

The first case shows how tteut and jeong are distinguished and that the Korean word tteut corresponds to the Chinese character “意”and jeong to “情”, respectively. The second case shows that emotions such as grief and sorrow are just read as “jeong 졍”.

As the Four–Seven debate continued, “jeong” became central and clustered with various emotional vocabularies, and the new words created in this way were not found in Chinese Neo-Confucian literature. For instance, “jeong” was combined with each of the Seven feelings, such as “huijeong喜情”, “nojeong 怒情”, “aejeong 哀情”, “gujeong 懼情” to create new words, and none of these appear in the works of Zhu Xi. Many words coined at that time are still in use today, such as ujeong (友情, friendship), aejeong (愛情, affection), jeongseo (情緖, emotion).

I argue that the true driving force behind this long-standing discussion of emotion was the pursuit of practical “Jeong” to clarify and sanctify real-life emotions rather than the pursuit of theory for the sake of theory. As the Four–Seven debate becomes more complex and sophisticated, it seems that “tteut”, a native word that once comprehensively meant all the operations of our mind, has given way to “jeong” in the semantic realm of emotions. And “Jeong” develops in a unique way as it is processed in Korea’s linguistic and cultural soil. Through this process “jeong” gradually deviates from the connotations given within Chinese Confucian hermeneutics and came to mean the ever-changing spectrum of emotions, going beyond the feelings attributed to individuals, and pursuing intersubjective publicity.

A larger-scale study is necessary to trace the entire conceptual history of “Jeong”, which is widely accepted in Korea today. We see a glimmer of hope in that recent studies in modern psychology shows a trend that may echo the thesis of this article. Yoo and Choi (2003) report that the modern Korean mind model is inseparably related to the Neo-Confucian mind model. Choi (2000) attempts to explain the psychology of Koreans, focusing on the concept of “simjeong (心情),” which occupies a centrality in modern Korean life. Although these studies need to be supplemented with more empirical research, it is worth referring to in that it is an attempt to explain the conceptual gap between the present and the past.