Yeon-Am Park Ji-won is an important practical learning scholar and find writer of Joseon Dynasty in the 18th century. In the 18th century, enlightening changes and modern development were starting in both the West and the East. Park Ji-won was one of Korean progressive scholars who led the enlightening flow at the front. He closed the society of ChuHsiism, which belonged to conservative morality and system. Then he opened the new age of blooming modern, practical consideration and learning. And he was in the center of contemporary discussion by insisting practical science of Yi-Yong-Hoo-Saeng(Utilize things for social welfare) and writing easy, short compositions. As the 18th century was the very time of diversity and changes, his thoughts also showed the hybrid characteristic accepting a variety of ideas and studies. He tried to interpret his times and society by adopting contemporary discourses and thoughts into his speculation like a furnace and perform his own public mission as the subject of the times.
The characteristic of Park Ji-won’s ideas is that he tried to escape from the idealism of Neo Confucianism Metaphysics and had objective and practical thoughts with his strong sense of subject. Furthermore, he established his own logical system of epistemology and criticism by adopting ideas and logic from the philosophy of Taoism. His life is full of Taoist taste. It can be the Taoist way of living that he chose the life of an observer, freeing himself out of the conservative social system and kept his strong criticism on the reality, showing a tendency of varying from ideology In addition, his cognition of relativism, constitutive thinking and illustration of his philosophy using allegories are very similar to the contents and system of Taosim. He established his unique practical ideas accepting Taoist theory of knowledge and criticism with the awareness of anxiety of Confucian subject, on the basis of the view of the world rooted in the Qi-Philosophy. To conclude, his ideas were composed of Taoism Philosophy and Confucianism with a structure of complementary cooperation.
Although he was indifferent to studying the theories of Neo Confucianism, he had the outlook of the world based on Qi-Philosophy when it is categorized as the Theory of Li-Qi. His Qi-Philosophy stepped forward from the existing the Theory of Li-Qi to more physical science. He understood the world with the change of physical phenomena and possibilities by adopting natural science imported from the West, especially astronomy. In addition, he asserted ‘The Theory of Coessential Human nature and Matters’, which extended social equality not only among human beings to matters of the world. This is referred to ‘No discrimination of human nature and matters.(人物莫辨)’ This theory logically prepared for the practicality and equality of contractual human relationship in the industrial society through the objective and relative cognition of being.
‘The Theory of Jin-Sil(眞實論)’ belongs to the category of practical philosophy, which is closely related to establishing one’s subject. Its meaning can be divided into ‘Jin-gi(眞機)’ and ‘Mu-Sil(務實)’. ‘Jin-gi’ means the fact and truth of being and ‘Mu-Sil’ is the attitude to value realistic practice and benefit. The leaders of culture and public thoughts at that time showed a tendency of love for naturalism. Park Ji-won also showed his strong literary and philosophical attitude toward naturalism. Furthermore, he not only urged subjective awareness about one’s everyday life and national reality but also counted useful and practical learning attitude on the stability of one’s daily life and industry of one’s society.
The Structure of ‘the Sai(사이)’ is the most distinguishable characteristic. ‘the Sai’ means ‘the space’ between individuals. ‘The Sai’ is the differancial relation of the world and the structure of a subject’s existence. It is the structure that helps to cognize with relativism and deals with the problems of a subject’s existence. His theory of ‘the Sai’ stands between East Asian static thought of Discussion on Making All Things Equal and Western direct dialectic, and it is the structure of existence and cognition that is offered its frame of worldview from Taoist epistemology and adopted Confucian awareness of anxiety as sense of duty.
Park Ji-won’s theory of knowledge is the outcome of the cognition of Qi-philosophical empiricism and structural thinking that have been discussed. He used objective and realistic attitude of cognition and epistemological method of relativism to achieve the integral awareness of the world and himself. And he emphasized empty mind to supplement the cognitional errors.
On the basis of Confucianism, Park Ji-won ranged over an extensive thoughts and learning from so called heretical philosophies such as Taoism, the teachings of Yangming, Law Philosophy, Buddhism to Western scientific technology. Among all of them, it was Chuang-tzu, The Book of History and the style of Gong-An School(or the left faction of the Wang Yangming school) that gave the most influence on him. Since The Book of History and the style of Gong-An School have strong Taoism tendency, it seems that above all the logic and ideas of Taoism played the largest role to form his unique practical science.
Based on the worldview of Qi-Philosophical possibility, Taoism Philosophy resists the absolute moral sense and force restraint under the social conservative order and recover the natural and common right of existential human life. This kind of thought combined the practical science of Yi-Yong-Hoo-Saeng, emphasizing practice and benefit of daily life. Then this point of view, the equality on humanity was continued to modern equality in the industrial society.
Especially his theory of knowledge adopted Chuang-tzu’s realisticical attitude and relativistic method and emphasized non-subjective attitude of Heo-Sim(Empty Mind) and similar 'No Cheng-Xin'(No Constitutive Mind) in Chuang-tzu. In particular, the relative epistemological method enabled him to attain unifying and objective awareness and escape from the absolute medieval social order. At the same time, it played a role of the passage finding the subject himself and establishing his identity. Therefore, it helped him to realize the independent culture and identity of his times in Joseon Dynasty. And the structure of ‘the Sai’ was to structuralize the subject’s existential situation and the freedom of cognition. He adopted it to his own epistemology and subjective awareness.
He criticized the dogmatized doctrines of Chu-tzu Confucianism and the ineffective and deceptive politics. He particularly reproached the hypocritical and corrupted politicians and intellectuals. The criticism shown in ‘Bang-Kyeong-Gak-Oi-Jeon (Nine Stories at Bang-Kyeong-Gak)’, ‘The Story of Heo-Sang’ and ‘Ho-Jil (Tiger's Scolding)’ was to illustrate the interest in the social outsiders in Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, political reality and his ideas criticizing Confucianism literally through the form of novels. ‘Yeol-Ha-Il-Gi (The Travel Diary of Yeol-Ha)’ was the book based on Chuang-tzu. It was the enlightening ideological book that introduced Ching Dynasty’s culture and criticized Joseon society lagging behind other nations, asserting practical thinking of Yi-Yong-Hoo-Saeng.
However, the difference in cognizing the world and practicing himself between Park Ji-won’s philosophy and Chuang-tzu’s lies in the matter of realistic will of practice and transcendence. While the subject of Chuang-tzu kept it transcendental attitude on the problems, Park Ji-won tried to accept and compromise the opinions and conditions in ‘the Sai’ between confronted opinions and conflict situations with the will of development of reality. It was because his ego was recognizing its sense of duty as the subject of the time and searching for the harmony of ideals and reality.
Yeon-Am Park Ji-won was a man of a wide spectrum of philosophical ideas. No, he had no boundaries of any kind of thoughts at all. He threw away any certain fixed point of views or approaches very early. It was caused by observing that the absolute Chu-tzu Confucianism could not give any solutions to chronic and hopeless reality in his time when Chu-tzu Confucianism gave dogmatic declaration to every single thing. In conclusion, Park Ji-won’s practical science deconstructed Chu-tzu Confucianism and the doctrines of Chu-tzu with the relativistic speculation and then accepted every kind of useful learning for practical reasons openly.