Between Coherence and Principle: Li 理 and the Politics of Neo-Confucianism in Late Koryŏ Korea 

Though li 理 is the philosophical term that defines the distinctive nature of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, the mainstream Confucianism in China and Korea since the twelfth-century, the understanding of li as either “principle” or “coherence” is the subject of ongoing debate. Little attention, however, has been paid to li as the lived experience(s) of Neo-Confucians as “scholar-officials,” the key political agents of Neo-Confucian politics, as if it was (and is) a pure philosophical concept. This paper examines li’s complex nature against the backdrop of the political conflict between two of the most prominent Neo-Confucian scholar-officials of late Koryŏ Korea (918-1392), Yi Saek and Chŏng Tojŏn, and shows that it was mainly due to their different understandings of li either (primarily) as coherence or as public principle that led Yi and Chŏng to radically different ethical visions and political judgments. The paper concludes by revisiting the contemporary debate on li.