Seongho Yi Ik on Commiseration and Disdain: Two Models of Moral Cultivation

Mencius is renowned for his doctrine of the goodness of human nature, emphasizing four innate moral inclinations that must be cultivated into full virtues to live a flourishing life. While scholars explore how to nurture these inclinations, they tend to focus on compassion-commiseration, often overlooking the others. To address this imbalance, this paper turns to Yi Ik李瀷 (1681-1763), a prominent Korean Confucian scholar, to explore his nuanced moral psychology. It identifies two distinct models of moral cultivation: the dongche (同體, forming-one-body) model and the mua (毋我, having-no-self) model. The dongche model promotes expanding the self to embrace others, thereby deepening compassion-commiseration. In contrast, the mua model emphasizes detaching from the self to impartially and objectively assess moral transgressions, sustaining shame and disdain. Together, these models offer a more comprehensive view of how different moral inclinations can be cultivated into corresponding virtues.