Abstract

This article examines ideas on the public (公) and the private (私) among Joseon scholars of the 18th century, with a particular focus on Seongho Yi Ik (1681–1763). Yi Ik understood the private as the state one personally feels and experiences and the public as the state one shares and sympathizes with others. The private acquires universality when one rejoices together in what pleases others and hates what others dislike. Although he did not believe all diverse desires and emotions experienced at the private level to be inherently universal and public in nature, he argued that the understanding of the moral foundations of the public could not be detached from the consideration for innate human desires and common emotions. Yi Ik recognized the public value not only of the special emotions known as the four sprouts (四端), but also of general emotions known as the seven emotions (七情), if they were expressed with situational appropriateness through empathy with others. Seongho saw human nature as having empathy for others and an aspiration for coexistence, and understood the social realization of these natural tendencies as the public (公). Thus, the public was understood primarily as stemming from spontaneous human nature and emotions, rather than being enforced through institutional or legal coercion.