- Lived:
- 1501–1570 · Chosŏn Korea (Andong region, in the southeast)
- Tradition:
- Korean Neo-Confucianism — Zhu Xi's philosophy as the operating system of an entire state
- The Big Idea:
- Your moral emotions — the flash of compassion, the burn of shame — are not just refined appetites. They are reality's own moral pattern stirring in you, and they deserve to be studied, honored, and trained.
- In their words:
- "The four beginnings are the issuance of principle; the seven feelings are the issuance of material force."
- If you remember one thing:
- The gentlest scholar in Korean history spent eight years politely arguing with a critic half his age about where feelings come from — conceding points, revising his claims, thanking his opponent — and produced one of the most rigorous anatomies of emotion ever written.