李朝 禮學의 形成過程

Yi Dynasty Confucianism Its Development as Scholarship

Confucian propriety(禮) or etiquette was first thought of in terms of rituals and manners. It was natural for the Yangban class as its guardian and practitioner to develop a keen sense of propriety. The whole legal and government system of Yi Korea was modeled along Confucian lines, which in due course gravitated toward Chu Hsi. Lacking objectivity any debate of fine points of rituals and ceremonials tended to be emotional, and this gradually gave rise to political controversy along factional lines. Insistence on points of propriety brought stricter observance (primarily in the Yangban class) of household law(家禮) and community law(鄕約) in the villages. Then came efforts to remove the system of propriety from disputation and base it on accepted canons, primarily through Chu Hsi’s interpretations. There thus evolved a new scholarship, which paralleled similar efforts by Sung scholars but with this difference- whereas they were interested in explication, the Korean scholars were concerned with practice.