The " Four-Seven Debate " and the Root of Evil: A Comparative Study of the Moral Psychology of

The “Four-Seven Debate” and the Root of Evil: A Comparative Study of the Moral Psychology of Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung Jeeloo Liu Department of Philosophy California State University Fullerton Key words: Yi Hwang, Ki Dae-Seung, Zhu Xi, the four moral sprouts (siduan), the seven emotions (qiqing), the Four-Seven debate, evil Introduction This paper focuses on the debate on the distinct ontological roots and moral attributes of “the four moral sprouts (siduan)” and “the seven emotions (qiqing)” between Yi Hwang (T’oegye, 1501-1570) and Ki Dae-Seung (Kobong, 1527-1572).1 The four sprouts—the feeling of commiseration, the feeling of shame and disgust, the feeling of reverence and deference, and the sense of right and wrong—originated in the Mengzi, and Mencius viewed them as universally present in all humans, validating the goodness of human nature. The enumeration of seven emotions—joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, resentment, and desire—came from the Book of Rites, while the Doctrine of the Mean also lists joy, anger, sadness, and joy as the four paradigmatic natural emotions. The four sprouts characterize human nature, as exemplifications of humans’ moral essence. Chinese neo-Confucians mostly focused on the elaboration of the four moral sprouts, paying little attention to the seven emotions. At most, the discussion was on the 1 There is an English translation of this debate, entitled The Four-Seven Debate: An Annotated Translation of the Most Famous Controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian Thought, by Michael C. Kalton. See Kalton 1994. The reference of the debate in this paper, however, is from the Chinese/Korean text The Orthodox Collected Work of T’oegye. See Yi 2017. 2 differences, or connections, between the sentiment of commiseration, which is the sprout of humaneness (ren), and familial love (ai). ZHU Xi himself, for example, embraced CHENG Hao’s view that nature is nature, emotion is emotion, and humaneness cannot be conflated with love (cf. LIN Yuehui 2003). However, in Song-Ming neo-Confucianism there was never any systematic comparison between the four sprouts and the seven emotions. In contrast, the debate on the relations between the four moral sprouts and the seven emotions spanned over five hundred years in the Korean intellectual history of Confucianism (LI Minghui 2005, 213). The two leading interlocutors were Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung, who engaged in frequent written exchange of their different views for over three years and prolonged the discussion for another four years (LI Minghui 2005, 234).2 This debate can be seen as the most important philosophical dispute in the history of Korean neo-Confucianism. According to Michael C. Kalton, the English translator of The Four-Seven Debate, this debate “addressed issues at the core of the great [Cheng-Zhu] synthesis in a way that set an important and distinctive agenda for subsequent generations of Korean thinkers” (Kalton 1994, xv). Contemporary expert on Chinese neoConfucianism CHEN Lai also argues that the “Four-Seven Debate” manifested Korean neoConfucians’ effort to further develop ZHU Xi’s philosophy, to deal with some controversial issues raised by ZHU Xi’s remarks. On this topic, “they have paid attention to and spent a great deal of time discussing some problems that were neglected in the history of Chinese neoConfucianism” (CHEN Lai 1985, 112). This paper cannot possibly do justice to the extent of the dispute, the complexity of the surrounding issues, or the various argumentations proposed by different Korean neo-Confucians. 2 According to Michael C. Kalton, in 1559 Yi Hwang wrote an eight-page letter espousing his view on the distinction between the four sprouts and the seven emotions to Ki Dae-Seung, who then responded with a fortytwo-page, paragraph by paragraph critique of Yi’s letter. In reply, Yi wrote a forty-six page of point by point response to Ki’s critique. Ki again wrote a lengthy reply with some concession to Yi’s points, but significant differences remained. The final concession on Ki’s part came around 1566, when he wrote a general summary statement of the issue accepting most of Yi’s points (Kalton 1994, xxix). 3 The aim of this paper is to sort out the key issues on which Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung held opposing views, and to assess the philosophical significance of this debate in the context of contemporary moral discourse. Since both Yi and Ki regarded their own views as the correct rendition of ZHU Xi’s view on human nature and human emotion, we shall begin with the elucidation of ZHU Xi’s view in this respect. The Root of Good and Evil according to ZHU Xi3 Even though ZHU Xi embraced Mencius’ view on human nature, he also criticized it as missing an important aspect: the constitutions of qi. ZHU Xi says, Mencius’ discourse is all about the goodness of human nature. When it comes to the not-so-good part, Mencius attributes the cause to one’s being led astray. So it is like at the beginning everyone is purely good and it is only later that one becomes not so good. But this view is neglecting the qi aspect in the exposition of human nature, and it is thus inadequate. It is only after the Chengs put forth the aspect of qi and disposition (qizhi) to supplement Mencius’ theory, that we now have a complete discourse on human nature. (Zhu 2002, 14:193, emphasis added) ZHU Xi argues that when one talks about human nature, one cannot dispense with the material and psychological dispositions that make up each individual. The latter is what ZHANG Zai had called “qi and material constituted nature (qi zhi zhi xing).” ZHU Xi says, “The nature that is endowed by heaven must be embedded in the physical constitution of the thing. It is analogous to a ladle of water: without the container, the water would have no place to settle” (Zhu 2002, 14:195). In this analogy, ZHU Xi is speaking of how principle needs qi to be realized in human 3 Part of this section comes from Liu, JeeLoo (2016). 4 beings. In ZHU Xi’s explanation, the various constitutions of qi are responsible for our being good and bad. According to Kwon-loi Shun, “ZHU Xi endorsed the Cheng brothers’ distinctions between two ways of viewing the nature—original nature and material nature—regarding the former as perfectly good and the latter as having the potential to be not good” (Shun 2010, 178). On CHENG Hao’s definition “What is inborn is called nature,” ZHU Xi comments, “What is imparted by Heaven to all things is called ‘mandate.’ What is received by them from Heaven is called nature. … Man’s nature and mandate exist before physical form, while qi exists after physical form. What exists before physical form is the one principle harmonious and undifferentiated, and it is invariably good. What exists after physical form, however, is confused and mixed, and good and evil are thereby differentiated” (modification of Chan 1963, 597). In this remark, we see that ZHU Xi separates the a priori and the a posteriori aspects of our mental and moral makeup. The a priori aspect is what he calls “nature (xing),” and it is purely good. On the a posteriori level, however, we are not morally equal. ZHU Xi says, “All humans have good nature, and yet some people are born good while some are born bad. This difference is due to their various constitutions of qi” (Zhu 2002, 14:198). Our qi-constitution makes up our mind’s emotions (qing). ZHU Xi explains the constitutions of qi as our temperament and dispositions. For instance, some people are prone to anger and violence, while some people tend to be too weak and indecisive. These are our personality flaws, and we are also born with them. This is why even though all humans have the same endowment of principle, each person’s potential of becoming a full-fledge moral agent has varying degrees of success. Zhang Zai suggested the separation between heavenly endowed nature and qi and material constituted nature as his attempt to offer an explanation for the presence of human evil. According to Allen Wittenborn, neo-Confucians including ZHANG Zai, the Cheng brothers and 5 ZHU Xi “did not wholeheartedly agree with Mencius that evil originated with man. To them, evil originated with physical nature.” However, this is not to say that they took evil “to be a natural phenomenon and not a moral one” (Wittenborn 1982, 28). Chinese neo-Confucians were preoccupied with locating the origin of human evil within human mind. ZHU Xi embraces ZHANG Zai’s doctrine that mind is the master of both nature and emotion. ZHU Xi says, “Nature is simply the principle of the mind, while emotion is simply the manifestation of nature….. ZHANG Zai’s doctrine that ‘the mind encompasses both nature and emotion’ is excellent” (Zhu 2002, 14:227). In ZHU Xi’s moral psychology, human mind is fully responsible for our morality as well as our moral failure. In other words, the root of good and evil lies in human mind. He says that the mind itself can sometimes be “not good (bushan)” (Zhu 2002, 14:228). However, if the mind encompasses both nature and emotion while nature is purely good, then the part that could lead the mind to be deviating from good must be the mind’s emotion. To ZHU Xi, “evil” results from the imbalance of emotion. As biological and moral beings, we have our natural emotions and innate moral sentiments. “If our emotions are all expressed with due measure and degree (zhongjie), then they are good; if they miss the appropriate measure and degree (bu zhongjie), then they become evil” (Zhu 2002, 14:363). The Chinese phrase ‘zhongjie’ here literally means “in agreement with ritual propriety,” “following the right pitch (in music),” “seasonal harmony,” or “having the right measurement,” etc. In other words, there is an external, objective standard for whether something is zhongjie. How to define the objective standard for the appropriate measure and degree of our natural emotions and desires is of course not an easy task. ZHU Xi’s answer is to appeal to the mindset of the sages. Their emotions and conduct would always have “appropriate measure and degree.” Hence, how the sage would feel and react in the given situation becomes the external standard for all of us. We therefore need to learn from the sages. 6 ZHU Xi could be regarded as an ethical rationalist in that he had a guarded view towards all forms of human feelings and emotions. In his eyes, even the four moral sprouts, which Mencius praised as the proof of the goodness of human nature, are not totally unproblematic, since they could also lead to wrongful acts. ZHU Xi says, “In human mind, if one has too much commiseration, then one could become indulgent and weak. If one has too much sense of shame and disgust, then one could end up feeling morally incensed towards the wrong things” (ZHU Xi 2002, 14:193). In other words, our feelings and emotions, even when they are the so-called “moral sentiments” as the four moral sprouts, could deviate from the norm and bring us to commit moral ills. To ZHU Xi, the four sprouts also belong to the category of emotion (qing). However, unlike the natural emotions such as joy and anger that are the issuance (fa) of qi, the four sprouts are the issuance of principle (li) (Zhu 1986, 1297, cited in Yang 2005, 63). In ZHU Xi’s assessment of the possible moral deviance of the four sprouts, lay the seed for the Korean neo-Confucian “four-seven debate.” ZHU Xi's ambivalence in categorizing the four sprouts and the other natural emotions lend support to both Yi Hwang’s and Ki Dae-Seung’s interpretations.4 Following the tradition of classical Confucianism, ZHU Xi also separated our heart/mind into two dimensions: one is in accord with Dao and is called “the heart of dao (dao xin)”; the other is characterized as “the heart of men (ren xin).” In the classic Book of Documents (Shangshu), there is a famous remark that is often cited in later Confucian works: “The heart of men is perilous; the heart of dao is subtle.” On this remark, ZHU Xi repeatedly emphasized his one-mind theory: the division between the two hearts is merely based on the mind’s intentional object. ZHU Xi identified the heart of dao as the mind’s cognitive apprehension of principle, while he located the heart of men at the level of human emotion and desire. He says, “The mind 4 As we shall see in the next section, Yi Hwang focused on ZHU Xi’s separating the four sprouts as the manifestations of principle and the other emotions as the manifestations of qi. Ki Dae-Seung, on the other hand, focused on ZHU Xi’s aligning the four sprouts with the seven emotions. 7 has intelligent awareness. When what it apprehends is principle itself, it is called ‘the heart of dao.’ When what it apprehends is desire, then it is called the ‘heart of men’” (Zhu 1985, 4:1487). In response to a student’s question about this division, ZHU Xi explains, “There is only this one mind. When the mind’s perception follows the desire of the senses, it is the heart of men; when the mind’s perception follows the path or moral righteousness and principle, it is the heart of dao” (Zhu 2002, 16:2663). The sage has only the heart of dao, while ordinary people are often driven by their heart of men. Even though the heart of men is not purely evil, it is easily tempted to go astray; hence, it is described as “perilous” in the Book of Documents. The distinction he makes between the cognitive mind and the mind with emotion and desire, along with his endorsement of the former, again reveals Zhu Xi’s theoretical affinity with contemporary ethical rationalism. ZHU Xi links desire with emotion and gives the metaphor of water to explain their relations: “Desire is generated by emotion. Human mind is like water, and human nature is the water at rest, while emotion is the water in flow. Desire, on the other hand, is like the ripples and waves of water, which can be good and can be bad” (Ibid. 14:229). In other words, the mind encompasses nature and emotion, just as water can be at rest or in motion. Desire is the arousal of emotion, as ripples are caused by water in motion. As long as one’s emotions are aroused, one cannot avoid having desires. Even though ZHU Xi did acknowledge that some desires are good, such as a moral agent’s desire to achieve humaneness, in general he argued that human desire and heavenly principle are incompatible: “In one’s heart, if heavenly principle is preserved, then human desire will disappear; if human desire wins over, then heavenly principle is extinguished. There has never been a mixture of heavenly principle and human desire in the same heart” (Ibid. 14:388). The reason why human desire is always bad, in ZHU Xi’s assessment, is its intrinsically self-centered (si) nature. The precept of the Heavenly principle is 8 to be impartial (gong), which stands in opposition to the self-centered desire. ZHU Xi says, “Everything can have the polarity of right and wrong: what is right is the impartiality of the Heavenly principle; what is wrong is the self-regarding human desire. One must carefully discern these two in every affair” (Zhu 2002, 14:390). For example, he says, eating and drinking is part of the Heavenly principle, but if one pursues delicious food and drink, then it becomes human desire (Zhu 2002, 14:389). This example shows that he rejects human desire primarily because desire belongs to the private realm and falls on the material level. One’s desire should only be for the intellectual enrichment and spiritual gain. According to ZHU Xi, there is a constant battle in one’s heart between good and evil, between heavenly principle and human desire. “If one of them advances, then the other retreats; and vice versa. There is no way to stay neutral and not make any advancement or retreat” (Ibid. 14:389). This is why one cannot do it alone; one needs to study and learn. “Before one learns, one’s heart is filled with human desire. After one begins learning, heavenly principle naturally gets exposed and human desire gradually diminishes. This is of course good; however, there will be layer after layer of obstructions that need to be removed. Even after one has removed the major desires, one still needs to scrutinize one’s deeper, subtler desires.” Ultimately, the goal of learning is to “completely remove human desire so as to return to the precept of heavenly principle” (Ibid. 14:390). The more one learns about right and wrong, truth and morality, the fewer desires one will have. Eventually, one can return to the correct path. In other words, moral attainment must rely on moral education. It is based on thinking and reflection, not on feeling or emotion. If evil originates in the mind’s emotional manifestations and material desire, then human mind is not a sufficient grounding for human morality. Philip J. Ivanhoe argues that under ZHU 9 Xi’s theory of human nature, we not guaranteed moral success and we cannot fully trust human mind’s capacity in fulfilling our moral predispositions: Given that our original, pure natures remain mired in qi, no matter how hard or how long we work at self-cultivation, we never can fully escape the limitations of renxin [human mind]. As a result, our ethical status remains in a ‘precarious’ state, and we are ‘prone to error.’ These aspects of Zhu’s philosophy led him to view the human heart-mind with a significant level of distrust and to look to the heart-mind of the Way as his absolute standard and guide” (Ivanhoe 2009, 39). We can see that even though ZHU Xi affirms the goodness of human nature, he is not optimistic about an individual’s attainment of moral goodness. We have a purely good moral essence, but this a priori moral grounding is stuck in the a posteriori physical constitutions which are manifested in our personality, temperament, emotion and desire. The latter obstructs the former from being completely realized in the individual’s mind. In other words, our temperament, our emotions, and our desires could interfere with our effort in moral cultivation. To combat any moral impurity or moral failure resulting from our qi-constitutions (in particular, our emotion and desire), we need to resort to the mind to reflect on our nature as the foundation of our morality. The Four-Seven Debate between Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung5 Both Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung claimed to be the true follower of ZHU Xi’s teaching, and they often cited ZHU Xi’s remarks in support of their own views. However, their views actually 5 Unless otherwise noted, all quotes of Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung are from Yi Hwang 李滉, 定本退溪全書 (The Orthodox Collected Work of Yi Hwang). 退溪學硏究院. I will only use page numbers in most cases. 10 diverge greatly. From their extended exchange of correspondence, we can see that Yi and Ki disagreed on the following philosophical issues: 1. The categorization of the four sprouts and the seven emotions: Yi Hwang separates the four sprouts and the seven emotions as having different ontological origins, having divergent moral attributes and serving distinct moral functions. To Li, the four sprouts are what make human morality possible, whereas the seven emotions are simply natural emotions that humans share with other creatures. Even when it comes to the same manifestation of anger (nu), he thinks that we ought to separate the anger that comes from righteousness and reason (yili) from the anger that comes from our body’s reactions (xueqi) (Yi Hwang 2017, 1117). They belong to different categories. One of the arguments he gave was that if four sprouts and seven emotions are all emotions, then why would there be the different designations of four and seven? (Yi Hwang 2017, 883) His point was not terminological, but that since human psyche has a complicated structure of emotions with distinct moral and biological functions, we should not mix up all emotions indiscriminatorily. In separating the two sets of emotions, Yi embraces Mencius’ conviction of the unique moral essence that humans have. Ki Dae-Seung held the position that there is only one category of emotions and the seven emotions encompass the four sprouts, “not that outside of the seven emotions there are extra four sprouts” (cited in Yi Hwang, 888). To Ki, the four sprouts and the seven emotions are essentially the same; they are both humans’ natural emotions. According to Yang Cho-Hon’s interpretation, the relation between the four sprouts and the seven emotions for Ki Dae-Seung is that between part (pian) and whole (quan). The four sprouts single out the good aspect of the seven emotions, whereas the seven emotions themselves cover the totality of emotions (Yang 2005, 71). In other words, for Ki Dae-Seung, there is no other ontological category for the four 11 sprouts. Ki argues that according to the Doctrine of the Mean, the seven emotions have the unaroused state (weifa) and the aroused state (yifa), and in each of these states, the emotions could attain either equilibrium (zhong) or harmony (he). When they are in the state of equilibrium before arousal, they are simply part of our inborn nature and are thus identified with the four sprouts. When they are in the state of post-arousal harmony, they are rectified (zheng) emotions and do not deviate from principle (li). Ki says, “Indeed the four sprouts originate in the human nature of the four cardinal virtues; however, so are the seven emotions. Otherwise, why would ZHU Xi say that ‘before the emotions were aroused, they were simply part of nature,’ or why would he say that ‘emotions are simply the manifestations of nature’?” (cited in Yi Hwang, 914, emphasis added) In holding this view, Ki is expressly rejecting the Daoist and Buddhist denouncement of human emotions. However, in placing the four sprouts in the midst of the seven emotions, he is also denying the a priori moral attributes in Mencius’ moral psychology. This is the next point of disagreement between Yi and Ki. 2. The moral attributes of the four sprouts and the seven emotions: Yi Hwang argues that the four sprouts are purely good with no mixture of evil, and they are what Mencius had singled out as the good (shan) human nature (883-84). As for the seven emotions, he thinks that they do not have determinate moral attributes and could become either good or evil. By placing the four sprouts on a higher moral plane, Yi Hwang is reaffirming Mencius’ moral metaphysics of the mind. The sense of ‘good (shan)’ in the depiction of the four sprouts is not evaluative, but denotative. That is to say, Mencius was not praising the four sprouts as being good; rather, he was defining ‘good’ in terms of humans’ possessing the four kinds of sentiments.6 As Mencius argues, human psychology is equipped with four beginnings for moral 6 Mencius was the first Confucian to specifically use this word to describe the natural attributes of human beings with which they are born – the so-called “human nature” – as he stated: “human nature is good.” This statement is 12 development, which he calls the “four moral sprouts.” If the core referent of “good” is the set of moral attributes in human psychology, then we can apply the property “is good” to people who manifest these moral attributes, and to states of affairs that are conducive to the manifestations of these moral attributes or are the realization of these moral attributes. In other words, a person is good if and only if she has the virtues of humaneness, righteousness, respect and wisdom; an act is good if and only if it is done out of the agent’s senses of commiseration, shame and disgust, reverence and deference, and her sense of right and wrong. Yi Hwang explained that Mencius was only talking about the legitimate (zhengdang) manifestation of the four sprouts. He thinks that human nature is pure good (shan) and it would be an erroneous view to call evil also a part of human nature (Yi Hwang 2017, 1536). This unique sense of moral essence in the four sprouts is lost when Ki Dae-Seung argued that both the four sprouts and the seven emotions could be either good or bad. To begin with, Ki assigns moral attributes to the seven emotions. His textual support comes from the Doctrine of the Mean. According to the Doctrine of the Mean, before these emotions are aroused, they are in the state of equilibrium (zhong); when they are aroused and are expressed with due measure and degree (zhongjie), they are in the state of harmony (he). Both of these states are good (shan). Therefore, natural emotions can be good. According to Ki, this passage from the Doctrine of the Mean shows that the natural emotions are also in agreement with Principle and Dao. It is only when these emotions are not regulated to be in line with due measure (zhongjie) that they could be faulted with being the root of evil. If natural emotions are regulated to attain “due measure and degree (zhongjie),” they are all good. When the expression of emotion is out of sync with often seen as evaluative, so what Mencius states is taken to be a praise of human nature. However, this statement can also be interpreted as descriptive and what Mencius stated was a depiction of the natural attributes of human psychology. Under this second reading, the term ‘good’ in Mencius’ usage has a specific referent: humans’ psychological constitution. 13 due measure and degree, it is because of one’s qi-disposition and one’s material desire (cited in Yi Hwang, 906). To regulate the seven emotions so that their expressions are all in due measures, one needs to have the self-monitoring capacity, as well as the cognitive assessment of the situation and the appropriateness of one’s emotion in the given situation. That is to say, in Ki’s moral psychology, human good is a man-made achievement through the regulation of emotions. Ki further argues that when Mencius was so joyful that he could not sleep, that was a form of joy. When Shun killed the four villains, that was a form of anger. When Confucius mourned and wept so hard, that was a form of sadness. When Confucius was happy with the company of his students, it was a form of happiness. This shows that the sages’ emotions must exemplify the original state of principle (li). The same goes for ordinary people: they experience joy upon seeing their parents or family and they experience sadness when attending funerals. Aren’t these emotions also the manifestation of the original state of principle (li)? Therefore, emotions must not be separated from the principle of nature (cited in Yi Hwang, 917). If Ki merely elevated the moral status of the seven emotions to that of the four sprouts, then his view would not have been so at odds with Yi Hwang’s positive view of the four sprouts. However, at the same time, Ki claims that the four sprouts are not guaranteed to be fault-free. He uses the same standard for assessing the situational appropriateness of the sentiments that represent the moral sprouts: “If one has the heart of commiseration when one ought not to commiserate, or if has the feeling of shame and disgust when one ought not to feel this way, then one’s sentiments are not ‘correct (zheng)” (Ibid. 988). Here he is assessing the moral attributes of the four sprouts as they are aroused or manifested. He cites from ZHU Xi’s Yulei that the four sprouts must also be expected to be “in due measure (zhongjie)” as the situation calls for. If one commiserates when one shouldn’t or feels shame and disgust when one ought not to, then such 14 expressions of the sentiments are “not in due measures (buzhongjie)” (993). In his view, the four sprouts are equally vulnerable as the seven emotions: they could also be unbalanced and inappropriate in their manifestation. In the pre-arousal state, both the four sprouts and the seven emotions are originally good. In the post-arousal state, on the other hand, both could be bad. We cannot underestimate the importance of this claim. What Ki Dae-Seung expressed was a metaphysical disagreement with Yi Hwang—as well as with Mencius. He did not think that humans have any special moral essence. To him, the four sprouts are no different from animals’ natural emotions, and both sets of emotions need the mind’s conscious awareness of situational appropriateness and the correspondingly fitting responses for regulation. This view is actually closer to Xunzi’s assertion on the source of human morality: Human nature is bad; what is good (shan) comes from deliberate effort (wei) (Xunzi, Chapter 23). At this point we can see that at the bottom of the four-seven debate was a metaphysical dispute between Yi and Ki. This is our next point of comparison. 3. The ontological constitutions of the four sprouts and the seven emotions:7 Yi Hwang argues that the four sprouts are derived from principle (li), while the seven emotions are derived from qi. He frequently cited ZHU Xi’s remark to back up his distinction: “Four sprouts are the manifestations of principle (lizhifa); seven emotions are the manifestations of qi (qizhifa)” (Yi Hwang 2017, 887). He embraces Zhang Zai’s distinction of the “heavenly endowed nature” and “qi and material constituted nature.”8 He argues that when we talk about 7 In YANG Cho-Hon’s detailed analysis of the Four-Seven debate, he took this ontological dispute to be the key issue of the debate. According to his analysis, Yi Hwang takes the four sprouts to be “issued from” principle, and this shows that Yi Hwang’s notion of principle is active and independent. Yang argues that Yi Hwang’s “issuance from principle (lifa)” is a crucial point that marks the divergence of two theoretical models in neo-Confucianism. See Yang 2005, 120-21. The focus of this paper, however, is on the moral psychology of Yi Hwang and Ki DaeSeung. Hence, the analysis is on the roles of the four sprouts and the seven emotions in moral motivation, not on their respective ontological constitution. 8 In a letter responding to questions (“Wenmu,” in Yi Hwang 1532-38), Yi Hwang acknowledged that he could not really understand the true meaning of “zhi.” The interlocutor wrote, “One’s ability to think and move is the function of qi, but the meaning of zhi is the most difficult to grasp. Previous Confucians have interpreted it as 15 nature (xing), we distinguish the original nature from principle and the nature from qi’s composition. So, when it comes to emotion (qing), why can’t we also distinguish the kind of emotions based on principle and the kind of emotions derived from qi’s composition (Yi Hwang 2017, 884)? Principle in his conception stands for a higher ontological dimension in the universe, while qi constitutes the concrete things in the world. By separating the two dimensions, Yi was endorsing ZHU Xi’s dualism of principle and qi. He also criticized Ki for committing to monism. As he put it, “When it comes to the end-state (mo), we could say that we see the original state of principle within the natural manifestations of qi, and it may appear that principle and qi are conjoined as one. However, if you [Ki] really thinks that principle and qi and one thing without distinction, then it is not what I could know” (937). It is clear that Yi rejected Ki’s metaphysical view. Ki Dae-Seung seems to implicitly reject this dualism, or at least he only wants to pay attention to the concrete world, in which principle and qi are always intermingled. He thinks that since principle and qi are inseparable, seven emotions must also be based on principle. We can say that seven emotions are derived from the mixture of principle and qi, but we cannot say that they are based on qi alone (905). Furthermore, he argues that both the four sprouts and the seven emotions originate in the mind, and the mind is the unification of both principle and qi; thus, all emotions must also contain both principle and qi (915). He thinks that we cannot separate the ontological constitutions of the four sprouts and the seven emotions, because principle is “the covering either behavior or one’s physique….” In reply, Yi wrote: “I too have a hard time figuring out the meaning of ‘zhi.’ If it is just about one’s physique, then [how do we explain the fact that] we have seen beautiful people with evil mentality, or ugly people with admirable conduct? Clearly the word cannot be understood merely as one’s shape and form” (Yi Hwang 2017, 1537). In the end, Yi used the analogy of the mold for tiles to illustrate the zhi of humans. He wrote: “A person’s having zhi is like a tile’s having a mold. Some molds are constructed to perfection, and the quality of the soil is just right…; whereas some molds are made well but the quality of the soil is either too loose or too dense, too hard or too soft. Sometimes the molds are poorly made, but the quality of the soil is good…. Hence, whether one has good or bad zhi cannot be decided by the [external] shape or mold” (Ibid. 1538). 16 master of qi,” while qi is the stuff for principle. Principle and qi, “though ontologically distinct, are always intermingled and inseparable in concrete things” (889). Therefore, it cannot be the case that the four sprouts are based on principle alone, while the seven emotions are based on qi (889). According to Yang Cho-Hon’s analysis, for Ki, principle is above form (xingershang) while qi is within form (xingerxia). Principle is the ontological grounding for qi, and the issuance of qi must be based on principle. All forms of emotion – be it the four sprouts or the seven emotions – are issued from qi, thus they must all have principle for grounding. Principle itself, on the other hand, is inactive and cannot itself generate emotion.9 Therefore, Ki naturally believes that there is no ontological distinction in the makeup of the four sprouts and the seven emotions (Yang 2005, 72). 4. The connection between heavenly endowed nature and qi-material constituted nature: As explained earlier, Yi Hwang separates qi-material constituted nature from what Mencius refers to as human nature since only the latter is based on principle, but Ki Dae-Seung thinks that qi-material constituted nature is also based on principle. The two philosophers used the metaphor of the moon in the water in their explication of the connection between heavenly endowed nature and qi-material constituted nature. Ki suggested that the heavenly endowed nature is like the moon in the sky, whereas the qi-material constituted nature is like the moon in the water. Even though the moon in the water is different from the moon in the sky, ultimately it is just one moon. One should not disregard the moon in the water and treat it merely as water. In other words, one should not treat qi-material constituted nature merely as having the element 9 Many contemporary scholars, following the analysis of Mou Zongsan (1909-1995), treat ZHU Xi’s principle as that which has only the sense of being, but not the sense of activity. Liu (2016) uses a different analysis: ZHU Xi’s principle lacks causal efficacy and becomes a “metaphysical dangler” in his worldview. The idea is the same: for ZHU Xi, principle must rely on qi to produce and to act on things. 17 of qi (980). To his argument, Yi had a sharp rebuttal: Even if it is just one moon in the sky and reflected in the water, what is in the sky is the real moon while what is in the water is merely the reflection of light. If one reaches for the moon in the water, there is nothing to be grasped other than the reflections. Furthermore, when water is still, the moon’s reflection is still; but when water is gushing down or is stirred up by big winds, the moon’s reflection is broken up or even to the point of vanishing. With this analogy, we see that we cannot say that nature is truly embedded in qi-material constituted nature, just as the moon is never really in the water (981). Ki’s reply to Yi’s challenge was to reiterate his view that both the four sprouts and the seven emotions originate in the same human nature. They don’t have two separate sources. To get a better sense of their views of human nature, let us examine this debate on the analogy of the moon more closely. Yi thinks that the heavenly endowed nature and our qimaterial constituted nature are qualitatively different. When the former is embedded in the latter in each individual, its purity is never altered just as the moon in the sky is not affected by whatever happens to its reflections in the water. Hence, in his view there is an absolute, inherent goodness in human beings. He argues that when Mencius spoke of the goodness of human nature or when Zisi (in the Doctrine of the Mean) referred to the heavenly endowed nature, they were both talking about the purely good human nature derived from principle alone. The qimaterial constituted nature is not “the original state of nature” (934). Therefore, he argues, the emotions that emerge from the qi-material constituted nature are likely to flow into evil (xie er) (3209, also Tianming Tushuo 143, cited in Liu Cheng-hui 2006, 75). Ki, on the other hand, treats the heavenly endowed nature as the moon’s reflections in the water. The states of the water could affect the states of the moon in the water; therefore, sometimes the heavenly endowed nature could be destroyed or diminished by the qi-material constituted nature. This explains why Ki would think that even the four sprouts could turn out to be not good (bushan). 18 While Yi’s emphasis is on the metaphysical foundation of human existence, Ki’s focus seems to be on the empirical being: the way human beings exist after birth is necessarily an entangled qiexistence. The above comparative study shows that Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung have both captured part of the essence of ZHU Xi’s moral psychology. Yi was correct in separating the ontological sources of the four spouts (nature xing) and the seven emotions (emotion qing), while Ki was more truthful to ZHU Xi’s guarded appraisal of the moral contribution of both the four sprouts and the seven emotions. Yi’s full embrace of the moral worth of the four sprouts reflects Mencius’ moral sentimentalism more, while Ki’s emphasis on the importance of norm and standard captures ZHU Xi’s ethical rationalism more. On account of his own intellectualist bent, ZHU Xi’s exposition of Mencius’ doctrine may not have reflected Mencius’ true spirit of moral sentimentalism, and in Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung’s Four-Seven debate, we see that one could be true to ZHU Xi’s moral psychology without being true to that of Mencius, and vice versa.10 In the final section, we shall turn to the assessment of the two views in the context of contemporary moral discourse on evil, to see which view, albeit similar in many respects, could proffer us a more accurate analysis of the root of evil and the means to combat it. A Contemporary Assessment of the Four-Seven Debate Even though the Four-Seven debate touches on the ontological issues of principle and qi as well as the constitution of human nature, ultimately the debate concerns the foundation of human 10 LIN Yuehui (2003) pointed out that ZHU Xi’s view on the four sprouts might not have been truly compatible with that of Mencius, because while Mencius advocated the supreme a priori goodness of human nature, ZHU Xi placed both the four sprouts and the seven emotions on the level of qi, which is “below the form xingerxia” (Lin 2003, 98). In her view, this incompatibility reveals the theoretical predicament of ZHU Xi’s theory of human nature and emotion. She thinks this also leads to the indeterminacy of the goodness of the four sprouts in Yi Hwang’s moral psychology (Ibid. 100). At the same time, YANG Cho-Hon (2005) also pointed out that Zhu Xi and Mencius advocated distinct philosophical systems, and Yi Hwang’s view had more affinity to that of Mencius than that of Zhu Xi (Yang 2005, 103; 164). He criticized Ki Dae-Seung’s view of the four sprouts as having betrayed Mencius’ original intent of the pure goodness of human nature (Ibid. 149). 19 morality and the root of human evil. However, neither Yi Hwang nor Ki Dae-Seung has actually provided us with a credible explanation for the emergence of evil. Both Yi and Ki seemed to have used “not good” and “evil” interchangeably. They both agreed that the seven emotions could be released in an unjustified manner (not in due measure), and their debate focused on whether the four sprouts could also be in the form of “not good” or “evil.” The conflation between not good and evil lies at the bottom of their entangled debate, and the fault may have derived from ZHU Xi’s interpretation of “evil.” Ki Dae-Seung cited ZHU Xi’s remark that “evil is simply not being able to be good” (928). The implicit conception of evil is that evil is not real; it is merely the absence of good. However, evil is a real phenomenon that demands our attention. Evil is a fact of the human world; and as such, it originates in humans’ minds and deeds but becomes a human fact in the social contexts. Allen Wittenborn explains evil as a social phenomenon, not just an individual’s mental state of having imbalanced emotions: The problem of good and evil becomes real only when one’s moral life has begun, when in a one-on-one relationship one has to deal with a physical nature which is unbalanced, and which therefore causes one to deviate from the mean and which puts one in the position of isolation, discrimination and opposition, thus setting oneself against another individual. (Wittenborn 1982, 28) Therefore, “While evil or evil desires or thoughts may be seated in the mind, it only becomes an issue to contend within a social situation” (Ibid.). However, in ZHU Xi’s moral psychology the acknowledgement of the social nature of evil seems to be missing. We have seen that ZHU Xi attributes the root of evil to the individual’s imbalanced and unregulated feelings and emotions. Nevertheless, human sentiments and emotions by birth do not lead to evil (er). At most, they can be seen as “not good (bushan),” but there is a huge leap from not good to evil. Even if one could defend them by claiming that the Chinese word ‘er’ should only be rendered as “bad,” which 20 bear a similar connotation to that of “not good,” it remains a human fact that there is evil. If Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung accepted and defended Mencius’ teaching that human nature is basically good, then how do they explain the presence of human evil throughout human history? Could human evil possibly be derived from either the four spouts or the seven emotions? Or, is there another source? Furthermore, since both Yi Hwang and Ki Dae-Seung embraced Mencius’ conviction that the foundation of human morality lies in the moral fact of our having the four sprouts, they must also answer this question: how could we employ the four sprouts to defeat human evil? Philip G. Zimbardo, the psychologist who designed the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment, defines ‘evil’ this way: “Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others—or using one’s authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf” (Zimbardo 2007, 5). In the past hundred years we witnessed evil not merely as the result of institutional practices, but more as the acts of free-willed individuals. These individuals were not born psychologically deviant or morally depraved. In other words, they were not demons at birth and they most likely possess the four moral sprouts. These evil-doers were quite normal human beings just like us. However, under certain circumstances such as war, social unrest and authoritarian regimes, these “normal people” turned into psychopathic mass murderers, executioners, torturers, assassins, rapists, sadistic voyeurs in a very short time. Neighbors turned against one another, sons and daughters snitched on their parents, and students abused or tortured their teachers. Worse of all, some people came up with the most debased forms of treatments for fellow human beings, and they performed the cruelest acts that are completely below human decency and beyond human comprehension. We have seen this kind of character transformation in the Holocaust, in the Rape of Nanking, in the ethnic cleansing and rapes of the Tutsi by the Hutu people in Rwanda, in 21 the Turks’ massacre of Armenians, in the Bosnian genocide, in China’s Cultural Revolution, and as recent as in the scandalous American Abu Ghraib prison. To claim that these evil deeds were simply the result of “imbalanced and unregulated emotion” is really trivializing the undeniable presence of human evil. To reinforce his doctrine of the universality of the feeling of commiseration, Mencius made the following sweeping claim: “All men have the mind which cannot bear to see the suffering of others” (Mengzi 2A:6, Chan 1963, 65, emphasis added). However, we must turn to psychologists for a more realistic account of humans’ behavior and character transformation in adverse situations. If individuals were born with this sense of commiseration, then why would they lose it completely in certain social contexts? We need to understand the situations in which these acts of atrocity took place and investigate the causal connections between the individual and the society that surrounds him or her.11 In his book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Zimbardo analyzes the key factors that turn ordinary good people into evil ones: conformity, obedience, deindividuation, dehumanization, moral disengagement, along with the evil of inaction (Zimbardo 2007, 21). Among these mental ills, dehumanization of the others is the root of the individual’s moral disengagement, lack of empathy, and barbaric conduct. As Zimbardo puts it, “Dehumanization occurs whenever some human beings consider other human beings to be excluded from the moral order of being a human person…. By identifying certain individuals or groups as being outside the sphere of humanity, dehumanizing agents suspend the morality that might typically govern reasoned actions toward their fellows” (Ibid. 307, emphasis added). The evildoers in those situations did not believe they were doing anything wrong; on the contrary, some of them felt that they were fulfilling their moral duties to wipe out those dehumanized 11 As Zimbardo says, “Abstract knowledge of the situation, even when detailed, does not capture the affective tone of the place, its nonverbal features, its emergent norms, or the ego involvement and arousal of being a participant” (Zimbardo 2007, 322). 22 others, just as we would not hesitate to kill a rat or a cockroach. Once the individuals stop viewing the others as fellow human beings, they are in the moral disengagement mode, and stop caring about how the others suffer from their acts. Even in contemporary psychological experiments, studies have found that when the “supervisees” group has been given a dehumanizing labeling, participants tend to give out more severe punishments such as higher intensity electric shocks (of course no one was really shocked). In contrast, those with nice labeling were harmed the least. Zimbardo says, “There is an important message about the power of words, labels, rhetoric, and stereotyped labeling, to be used for good or evil” (Ibid. 309). This observation shows how individuals’ mindset and conduct are influenced and even negatively transformed by their social surroundings. Furthermore, such social influences begin by affecting individuals’ judgments through words and images, and thereby altering their sentiments as well. On the level of the society, dehumanization is typically the result of national media propaganda. Zimbardo describes the powerful influences of massive bombardment of words and images: national media propaganda “induces a fear of vulnerability among citizens who can imagine what it would be like to be dominated by that enemy. That fear becomes morphed into hatred and a willingness to take hostile action to reduce its threat. It extends its reaches into a willingness to send our children to die or be maimed in battle against that threatening enemy” (Zimbardo 2007, 312). Such an intense emotion of fear and the accompanying hostility could be the basis for human evil; however, its origin seems to be from the outside environment; in particular, social conditioning resulting from the brainwashing effect of mass propaganda. We cannot fault either our four sprouts or our seven emotions for giving rise to such negative emotions as hatred, contempt, hostility, and aggression. What these emotions demonstrate is actually the absence of the four sprouts: a sense of apathy toward others’ suffering, the loss of societal propriety, the lack of the sense of righteousness, and a distorted sense of right and 23 wrong. In other words, it is not what we possess within us by birth—our four sprouts and our seven emotions, it is rather what we do not preserve, that lead to human evil. The emergence of evil cannot be blamed on human sentiment and emotion. If true evil results from social conditioning and situational pressures, then how do individuals resist the temptation of evil? Could one’s having emotions regulated to always be “in due measure” possibly help one resist the negative societal pressures? I argue that even if our natural emotion is not to be blamed for rise of evil, the grounding for our moral fiber cannot simply be the due measurement of the seven emotions. The Mencian school of the goodness of human nature advocate the a priori grounding of human morality, because the assurance of our mental guard has to come from something bigger than our own self-regulation, our resolve, and our reason. Ki Dae-Seung wanted to argue that even the four sprouts could lead to “not good”; hence, they need to be regulated and monitored by one’s own mind. However, for Mencius, the four sprouts are what make human morality possible. The possession of these innate sentiments distinguishes humans from other animals. Even if the four sprouts could be not good, they certainly could not be the pathway to evil. Otherwise, the Mencian thesis of the goodness of human nature would be rebuffed or invalidated. The whole point behind Mencius’ doctrine is to advocate that there is an internal, a priori and universal grounding for the possibility of human morality. This grounding has to be stable and enduring. Ki Dae-Seung’s putting the four sprouts within the same category of the seven emotions turned Mencius’s view into a purely empirical claim about human emotion and human effort (the mind’s regulation of all forms of emotions). In this respect, Yi Hwang better captures Mencius moral metaphysics in affirming the pure goodness of the four sprouts. As LIN Yuehui notes, Yi Hwang’s account of the four sprouts as the manifestation of principle is the affirmation of the a priori [moral] essence of human beings. There cannot be any mixture of evil in the four sprouts (Lin 2003, 94). Of course, neither 24 Mencius nor Yi Hwang would claim that the four sprouts are by themselves self-sufficient and virtue-warranting. The four sprouts still need to be cultivated, but they are nevertheless pure and good. They are our inborn sense of the awareness of others’ sufferings, others’ moral judgments, others’ moral conducts, others’ moral standards, others’ normative practice as well as existing social etiquette, and so on and so forth. In other words, these sentiments are moral sentiments with an intense social awareness. They belong only to social beings. Emotions, on the other hand, are natural and biological and they typically involve visceral manifestations. Emotions are simply humans’ natural responses to external things and objects, and on their own, they have no moral value. If unchecked, furthermore, they could lead to wrongful acts. One’s love could lead to crimes of passion; one’s anger could lead to revenge and murder. One’s sadness could lead to self-destruction, and one’s desire could bring about unlawful deeds. Generally speaking, the seven emotions belong to humans’ lower level bodily reactions which humans share with other animals. Emotions are the adaptive by-products of the evolutionary process and they helped us survive by producing fitting responses such as fight or flight, bonding or isolation, mourning or celebration, and so on and so forth, to various external stimuli. According to contemporary psychology, emotions are primarily physical reactions that can be objectively measured by the chemicals released in the blood stream, the rhythm of heart beats, facial expressions, breathing patterns, muscle tension, and other bodily signs. In contemporary terminology, the difference between the four sprouts and the seven emotions can be compared to the distinction between feeling and emotion. According to a distinguished neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who specialized in the study of human emotions, “Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind” (Damasio 2003, 28).12 Damasio explains, “emotions are actions or movement, many of them 12 Damasio’s demarcation of feelings and emotions is not without its critics. Some have argued against his claim that emotions are not cognitive in that there is at least some minimal cognition of the situation for one to have the 25 public, visible to others as they occur in the face, in the voice, in specific behavior…. Feelings, on the other hand, are always hidden, like all mental images necessarily are, unseen to anyone other than their rightful owner, the most private property of the organism in whose brain they occur” (Damasio 2003, 28). For emotions, Damasio also uses the states of equilibrium and harmony as the ideal aim for the organism.13 However, the equilibrium he has in mind is not moral; rather, it is “the equilibrium of life functions and consequently on life regulation” (Ibid., 174). Damasio’s understanding of equilibrium is derived from Spinoza and modern biology. He says, “Seen though the light of modern biology, the [Spinoza] system is conditioned by the presence of life; the presence of a natural tendency to preserve that life; the fact the preservation of life depends on the equilibrium of life functions and consequently on life regulation” (Ibid.). In other words, this state of equilibrium of emotions is a biological condition beneficial for the organism’s survival with wellbeing. Harmony, or the harmonious state, as Damasio depicts it, is to have emotions “in harmony with the individual circumstances” and it is an evaluative term (Ibid. 56). He says that harmony “is the same in biological and artificial operations: ease, efficiency, rapidity, power” (Ibid. 314, Note 2). In other words, when emotions reach the states of equilibrium and harmony, they are good in the natural sense, but not necessarily in the moral sense. We could possibly apply this understanding to the states of zhong (equilibrium) and he (harmony) in the Doctrine of the Mean. That is to say, the Doctrine of the Mean could be praising equilibrium and harmony as ideal biological states of emotions before and after arousal, and this appraisal is not necessarily a moral one. A support for this interpretation is that the state emotions. The subtle distinction between feelings and emotions in human psychology needs more study and reflection than can be afforded with the scope of this paper. The distinction between the four sprouts and the seven emotions, on the other hand, can be better made in the context of the Confucian moral metaphysics. 13 Damasio’s choice of equilibrium has nothing to do with the Doctrine of the Mean. It is derived from Spinoza’s conception. Spinoza associates joy with states of equilibrium for the organism. Damasio says, for Spinoza, “Joyous states signify optimal physiological coordination and smooth running of the operations of life. They not only are conducive to survival but to survival with well-being” (Damasio 2003, 137). 26 of zhong (equilibrium), as the Doctrine of the Mean defines it, is before emotions are aroused. It would be a stretch to praise any moral agent for maintaining this mental state, since this state of equilibrium is before any emotion is aroused in the agent. That is to say, it is not through the agent’s effort that one could maintain the state of equilibrium. Morality consists in deeds and practices that go much more beyond the natural equilibrium or the achieved harmony of one’s own emotions. Similar to feelings, the four sprouts are also properties of the mind, not necessarily visceral or visible to others. One’s sense of commiseration could be triggered with very slight change of facial expressions, and one’s sense of shame or disgust does not necessarily lead to any change in one’s conduct. One’s sense of reverence and deference is a solemn mental preparedness with respect to the external environment and the people around, and it may or may not manifest in one’s demeanor. Finally, one’s sense of right and wrong is a spontaneous judgment on the moral propriety of oneself and others’ action and thought. None of these moral feelings necessarily involve bodily reactions or manifest behaviors, and yet they are supposed to serve as the grounding for human morality. To see how the four sprouts and the seven emotions differ in their moral functions, we can carefully compare and contrast the following sets: the sense of commiseration versus the feeling of love; the sense of shame and disgust versus the feelings of sadness and anger; the sense of reverence and humility versus the feeling of fear, and the sense of right and wrong versus joy and anger. Our sense of commiseration is distinct from the feeling of love. Love is an intense emotion toward one’s family or loved ones. The sense of commiseration, on the other hand, is not restricted to one’s biological kinship. This sentiment and the emotion of love both involve the agitation of the mind and the urge to bestow care and concern for others; however, the two have different origins. Love originates in the biologically based parental feelings 27 towards the child or the tender emotions among siblings. The sense of commiseration, on the other hand, is based on a universal, a priori endowment from Heaven. Only the sentiment of commiseration can be the “sprout” of the virtue of humaneness. The altruistic act that manifests the virtue of humaneness must be motivated by our innate sentiment of commiseration for the sufferings of those who are not biologically related to us. The sentiment of shame and disgust includes both the sense of shame for one’s own wrongdoing (action) or one’s failure to do the right thing (inaction), and the sense of disgust for others’ wrongdoing. They essentially involve implicit moral judgments that are based on one’s moral standards. The sentiment of shame is closely associated with the agent’s sense of selfworth. One would not want to debase oneself by doing what one considers as a shameful act. Therefore, the sense of shame can serve as the “sprout” of moral integrity (which Mencius called ‘righteousness (yi).’ It is the motivational foundation for our righteous acts. The sense of disgust should be separated from an impulsive physical reaction that is associated with hygiene or aesthetics. It is in particular a form of moral disgust, which can be interpreted as an emotionally charged attitude of “disapproval” upon seeing another’s wrongdoing or inappropriate suggestion. In the Mengzi, the sense of shame and the sense of moral disgust are conjoined as one unified sentiment.14 This sentiment cannot be conflated with the emotion of sadness or anger, even if shame could arouse sadness, and disgust could be accompanied by anger. Sadness and anger on their own are not morally charged since they do not involve any moral judgment. The sentiment of reverence and deference includes a sense of observance of the social context in which one finds oneself, as well as a sense of respect for others and deference in one’s 14 According to ZHU Xi’s commentary, shame arises from the self-criticism of one’s own immorality, while moral disgust has others’ immorality as the target. What an individual feels a strong shame for in her own conduct and what she feels indignant about in others’ doing often go hand-in-hand. 28 attitude towards those with expertise or authority. Mencius thinks that this sentiment is the foundation for propriety (li). Because of our sentiment of reverence and deference, we would aim to act appropriately in different contexts and towards different objects. Therefore, this sentiment is the motivational foundation for our acts of propriety. The emotion of fear, on the other hand, originates in our survival instinct. As Damasio argues, emotions such as fear serve a “regulatory” function in the agent’s body in the face of environmental threats or opportunities, and they sometimes are accompanied by physiological reactions within the organism, such as the amount of certain chemical molecules, body temperatures, sources of energy and the repair of bodily tissues, etc. These emotions “aim directly at life regulation by starving off dangers or helping the organism take advantage of an opportunity, or indirectly by facilitating social relations” (Damasio 2003, 39). In other words, the emotion of fear is part of the biological package that came with survival and adaptation. Zhu Xi sometimes does identify reverence with awe (wei) (Zhu 2002, 14: 372), which is often used in connection with the feeling of fear (ju). Awe can inspire appropriate conduct, as for example, in the classic Book of Documents (shangshu), the ancient king Tang says, “I am in awe of god, and I do not dare to do anything incorrect.” (Cited in Zhu 2002, 16: 2632) However, awe is typically object-oriented, and the sentiment is aroused in the object’s presence. ZHU Xi’s notion of reverence, on the other hand, is not object-directed; it is an inward gaze on one’s body and mind with composure and concentration. ZHU Xi says, “[Reverence] is not a state of sitting alone, hearing nothing and seeing nothing, as if one were in a stupor. Rather, if one simply collects one’s body and mind, be ordered and neat, without whimsical indulgence, then one is in a state of reverence.” (Zhu 2002, 14: 369) Being reverent means being mindful: one is mindful of one’s own intent, one’s own desire, one’s focal point of attention, one’s extraneous thoughts or ideas, one’s conduct and speech, one’s demeanor and even one’s attire, etc. If one is 29 constantly in a reverent mental state, then one should be fully self-aware and self-monitored. We may even say that ZHU Xi’s notion of reverence is being reverent of how one should conduct oneself. Therefore, the feeling of reverence and deference is surely a property of the mind in contrast to the emotion of fear, which is a property of the body as a biological organism. Finally, the sense of right and wrong is one’s ability to perceive right from wrong. Similar to the sentiment of shame and disgust, this sense is also innate in us even if sometimes the judgment of right and wrong could shift from society to society. Having the ability to discern right and wrong is our natural endowment, not socially conditioned or culturally constructed. The sense of right and wrong must accompany the release of our natural emotions as well. One should be joyful when it is right to be joyful; one should be angry when it is right to be angry. If our seven emotions can be regulated by our sense of right and wrong, then they would not lead to the state of “bushan”—the release of emotions would all be in due measure and harmonious. At the same time, the spontaneous expression of emotion without any cognitive assessment of the context, the object, and the fittingness of the expressed emotion could not have been morally sanctioned, even if the spontaneity itself is a natural reaction. In other words, the sense of right and wrong should accompany the seven emotions, but it is not the same as the emotion of joy or anger itself. Seeing that we should separate the four sprouts as abilities from the content or object of our feelings, we can conclude that Ki Dae-Seung was wrong to suggest that the four spouts could become “not good” or even “evil.” They are merely our abilities to feel commiseration for others’ suffering, to have a sense of shame and disgust, reverence and deference, and to discern right from wrong. What Ki depicted were the wrong judgments (on the situation or on the object/event being so judged) that may have accompanied these moral senses. The four sprouts themselves in Mencius’ moral psychology have two dimensions: the pre-judgmental and content- 30 free ability and the post-judgment response in each given situation.15 The sense of commiseration is a spontaneous aversion upon witnessing others’ impending suffering. From empirical studies of human psychology (Hoffman 1981, Darley and Latané 1968, Latené and Rodin 1969, etc.), we learn that genuine altruistic behavior is most often a spontaneous reaction to either others’ present suffering or their impending harm. However, one could also turn off this reaction once one realizes that the victim is actually a detestable villain. The sense of shame and moral disgust is inborn, but the content of shame and the arousal of indignation is culturally grounded and developed in social contexts. For each individual in a given social context, there is a judgment-laden sense of shame and disgust aiming at particular conduct of oneself or of others. Those judgments are not evolutionary based and are not innate in us. For example, one could be inculcated to feel shame for remarrying long after the spouse has passed away, or be disgusted with homosexuality and bisexuality, as we have seen in certain cultures. If these sentiments have inappropriate arousal with the wrong targets, then it is the social atmosphere that is to be blamed, not our innate capacity to feel shame and disgust. The same goes for our sense of reverence and deference. Some social practices are not worthy of our reverence and deference, such as the ostracism and persecution of Jews during the Nazi regime. However, if we hadn’t had this sense, then there would have been no culture, no etiquette, no rituals or ceremonies, and no social norms. This is what happens in the animal kingdom in nature. Finally, all three sentiments must be coupled with our innate sense of right and wrong. It is with this sentiment that we see the merge of sentiment and judgment. Since the four sprouts have the distinct moral and social functions to play that the seven natural emotions could not muster, the mental preparedness to guard the emergence of evil must 15 Ni Liangkang (2007) analyzes that there are two dimensions in Mencius’ sense of shame and disgust: one is biological and inborn; the other is cultural and developed. The former refers to our ability to feel shame and indignation, while the latter refers to the content of our shame and indignation. 31 also be based on the four sprouts. The heart of commiseration may be the first step preventing individuals from imposing cruelty on others. However, when bombarded with the propaganda that is aimed to produce hostility against the others, most people are unable to generate their sense of commiseration through empathic imagination. In Zimbardo’s study of how ordinary people turn evil, he found that the most important tool that the power elite often employs to turn citizens of one society into staunch enemies of the citizens of another society is to arouse in them a “hostile imagination”—”a psychological construction embedded deeply in their minds by propaganda that transforms those others into ‘The Enemy’” (Zimbardo 2007, 11). Empathy begins with self-identification with the other. If one is already imagining the other as a low-life creature, then one is not going to be willing, or be able, to engage in empathetic imagination of the pain and suffering that one is about to inflict on the others. The sense of shame and disgust, on the other hand, may be our most important mental guard against the rise of evil. According to Mencius, for any person there is always something that he or she would not do even in the face of death. Although we may have different moral assessment of what is acceptable and what is not, everyone has an upper limit of what he or she could tolerate and the bottom threshold of what he or she would deem acceptable.16 The sense of shame sets the psychological boundary for what one would deem morally acceptable or morally outrageous in one’s own conduct. Furthermore, a person without the sense of shame would have nothing to stop him from becoming a sensible knave in Hume’s term or a Glauconian moral skeptic in Plato’s Republic, who would consider doing any immoral deed as long as he could get away with it without suffering any bad consequences for himself. It is with this sense of shame and disgust, properly cultivated, that one could build a moral defense against one’s being turned 16 According to Mencius, “There are cases when a man does not take the course even if by taking it he can preserve his life, and he does not do anything even if by doing it he can avoid danger. Therefore, there is something men love more than life and there is something men hate more than death” (the Mengzi 6A:10, Chan 1963, 57). 32 into an evil monster in hostile situations created by mass propaganda. The sense of reverence and deference, accompanied by the emotion of fear, could easily transform one into a blind follower of the society’s prevailing practices or the commands of the tyrannical regime. The sense of shame and disgust, in contrast, can be seen as one’s moral compass, without which one could not be an autonomous moral agent, being guided by one’s own moral sense. Even though the sense of shame and disgust is individualistic, it presumably would have no function for a lone subject. If a person were to be born in the wild with no moral guidance and peer sanction whatsoever, then it is questionable whether this person would have a fully developed sense of shame and disgust, even if he would be biologically equipped with this capacity. A prerequisite of a fully developed sense of shame and disgust is social culture. The content of the evaluative judgment cultivated alongside our innate sense of shame and disgust has to be socially developed—whether by intentional education or through nonintentional immersion. In CHEN Shaoming’s analysis of the phenomenology of shame, he points out the social dimension of the sense of shame: “Shame is not just an individual emotional feeling. Both the conditions that elicit it (presence of others) and the consequences it leads to (causing disgrace to friends and family) show that shame includes emotional relations that are difficult to separate from the self and others. Theoretically speaking, the more a particular culture stresses interpersonal relations, the stronger is this shame awareness” (Chen 2017, 58). This analysis supports the view that the four sprouts require proper social environment to foster and to mode in the right direction, and shame is a perfect example of the social dimension of moral sentiments. When social sanctions on individuals’ wrongdoings evaporate, the moral decline of ordinary good people to extraordinary evil ones could be quite rapid. One reason is that people lose their sense of shame. Zimbardo describes the powerful causal influences of anonymity on the act of grave crimes. He observed that anonymity can induce “antisocial effects” when 33 “people felt no one could identify them” in a setting that encouraged aggression (Zimbardo 2007, 24). Anonymity has such an effect exactly because it mitigates people’s fear of being shamed and disgusted. According to CHEN Shaoming, Anonymity is like a masquerade ball where faces are covered. Under the situation of mutual anonymity, many taboos may be broken, and language that people would be ashamed to use face-to-face can be freely let out without caring about face. This is because nobody knows who the speaker is and disrepute is linked to a false name and unrelated to any real identity, and hence the speaker will not be disrespected or punished because of this (Chen 2017, 56). The spread of evil in situations where social order has been disrupted is largely due to the lack of accountability of individuals’ actions. When people are hidden behind the mask of anonymity, their sense of shame is relaxed because they believe no one would know who they are, and they end up discarding any inhibition against evil acts that was present under normal social climate. This shows how important it is to maintain a sound society for the making of the individual person. Equipped with the innate ability to feel shame and disgust, we are prone to respond to external influences and evaluative judgments of our social environment. One of the goals of Mencius’ moral sentimentalism is to build a moral society in which individuals are cultivated to feel ashamed of and be indignant about what would be considered as morally blameworthy. In other words, our sense of shame and disgust is socially amenable, and it is up to society to define the appropriate set of situations or conduct that should arouse this sentiment in us. I propose that the moral guidance of individual righteousness should be modeled after Confucius’ teaching of the virtue of ‘shu’: “Do not impose on others what you would not have wanted done onto yourself (jisuobuyu wushiyuren)”—the so-called Confucian Golden Rule. This maxim can serve 34 as the foundation for individuals’ self-monitoring, which is required to establish social justice. If we truly consider every human being within the category of our fellow beings and treat everyone with the principle of shu, then the kind of atrocious acts described earlier would not have happened. Lynndie England, the notorious female US Army Reserve solder who was known for her proud smiling picture against tortured and humiliated prisoners at Abu Ghraib, would not have maintain her conviction that she did nothing wrong. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, a female Minister for Family Welfare and the Advancement of Women during the time of the conflicts between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, would not have incited troops to rape women before killing them. We need to establish a social culture in which Confucius’ principle of shu is engrained in everyone’s mind, such that any violation would incur the sense of shame and disgust in the individual. Even though the sense of shame is individual and private, the conditions that arouse shame are socially conditioned. Bernard Williams calls the locus of genuine social expectations “the internalized other,” who represents the social standards by which one evaluates one’s own conduct or attitude (Williams 2008, 84). As long as the social expectations are the right sort of moral expectations, one’s having the sense of shame could lead to “attempts to reconstruct or improve oneself” (Williams 2008, 90). The sense of shame and disgust must be coupled with the sense of right and wrong, however. In order for humankind to avoid repeating the atrocious ethnic cleansing seen in the last century, we need to advocate the social climate that begins with humanistic imagination of all human beings as one unity under the sky. One must recognize it as right that justice is fairness to all. Individual righteousness manifests itself in the acknowledgement of others’ humanistic attributes and the respect for their human dignity. National propaganda that underscore the distinction between us and them, that treat immigrants as unwelcomed outsiders, that distinguish physical attributes among races, that mark groups 35 apart on the basis of ethnicity or historical backgrounds, and so on and so forth, are all the pathway to the banality of evil. We as moral agents must recognize the moral assets we possess in our minds: the sense of right and wrong, which is the basis for individual moral judgment. If we cultivate the sprout of righteousness and the sprout of wisdom in our minds, then everyone will treat others as lawful citizens in the human society, being entitled to the fair treatment as a fellow human being and being able to be included under the Confucian principle of shu (reciprocity). This moral vision is how we could possibly curtail the banality of evil. Conclusion This paper begins with the comparative study of Yi Hwang’s and Ki Dae-Seung’s views on the roles of moral sentiments and natural emotions, and ends with applying the four sprouts; in particular, the sense of shame and disgust as well as the sense of right and wrong, to the problem of combating evil in the contemporary world. The main contention between Yi and Ki was on whether the four sprouts and the seven emotions are qualitatively different. This paper’s conclusion is that the four sprouts and the seven emotions should be viewed as qualitatively distinct, both as a correct rendition of Mencius’ theory of human nature and as an accurate moral psychology of human feelings and emotions. The four sprouts must work in conjunction with one another, so that our sense of commiseration is accompanied by our sense of shame and disgust, and our sense of reverence and deference is supervised by our sense of right and wrong, and so on. These innate capacities are the foundation of human morality in that they have both the social dimension and the individualistic dimension. The seven natural emotions typically arise with little conscious control, but they have greater causal efficacy for action than our innate capacity of the four sprouts. Therefore, moral sentiments need to rely on natural emotions to motivate actions, whereas natural emotions need to be coupled with our moral sentiments to be 36 regulated with self-awareness and sensibility to others’ emotions or needs. Recognizing the different moral functions of the four sprouts and the seven emotions can enable us to come up with an empirically feasible social moral program to cultivate good and to combat evil. 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