1. In this dissertation, I tried to look at Feng-Shui Belief(風水信仰) in religious and cutural status. So far, some critics point out Feng-Shui is involved in the good/bad luck & fortune/misfortune(吉凶禍福). This point of view, however, misses the whole pic ...
1. In this dissertation, I tried to look at Feng-Shui Belief(風水信仰) in religious and cutural status. So far, some critics point out Feng-Shui is involved in the good/bad luck & fortune/misfortune(吉凶禍福). This point of view, however, misses the whole picture of this theory leaving out its cultural side which was implemented and discussed during Chosun Dynasty. Basically, Feng-Shui is not only about specific way of the thinking of spaces we live in, but also about religious deliberation of the harmonious relation between the spaces and human beings. After all, this dissertation is a product of scientific yearning for understan ding sympathetically Feng-Shui Belief throughout analysis the cultural topology and the historical stream of Feng-Shui Belief in Chosun Dynasty.
2. In the religious cultural point of view, Feng-Shui has both classical ideal and desire to be fortunate in it. Feng-Shui contains the organic thinking with understa nding in several representation of general element, Gi(氣) and an influencial Impact of space-human about all creatures in the world. By this organic thinking, our future is transcendentally destined by the space we are living in, and at the same time, they also believed we can also change it with our own will. Therefore, Feng- Shui has both fatalistic idea and human-subjective transformational element.
3. In a Confucian society, scholars had two different ideas about Feng-Shui. They treated Feng-Shui as heterodoxy(左道) while at the same time they knew it can't be totally removed from our life. This irony means, "we can't believe in it nor remove it from our life." Since Chosun Dynasty only admitted theories that goes with Confucian, they only approved the restrictive justness of Feng-Shui with a topology of a way of adapting to exigent circumstances(權道). A way of adapting to exigent circumstances(權道) is the scope of flexibility(變通), the restrictively acceptable scope in the unacceptable context of an unchanging, eternal, normal way(常道) in confucianism. And So, Confucianists composed new discourses and Feng-Shui was translated in a new way. First of all, they criticized the idea that our life is destined by the space shape. Our fortune and misfortune is not destined by the space shape or its influence, but we can attain or given them through our well-behaviors and good deed through our life. On the other hand, to bury our parents or ancestor's body into a nice place, Feng-Shui was approved. This, however, is only about the beauty of the space shape, not about fortune or misfortune. As we can see here, Feng-Shui both contains humanism and classical ideal of Sung-Ri-Hak(性理學).
4. Feng-Shui also had practical use as well. For example, it's been the crucial method when the state had to locate the places for the palace, capital or loyal tomb. In Confucian Chosun Dynasty, Feng-Shui was limitedly used to statecraft. This tells that Feng-Shui which was as equal as Buddism state religion in Goryeo Dynasty(高麗) had been lost its status since the beginning of the new era, Chosun. Feng-Shui was a standard when the State located places for houses, and for the people, they mostly depended on it to find the best places for the graves of the family members. Furthermore, in the late Chosun Dynasty, because of their ambition to take the family's Tomb-mountain(Bun-san:墳山), there happened a lot of lawsuits, the Mountain Lawsuits (San-Song:山訟). As it wasn't only for the well-being of the family but necessary for the most important ideology for the honor of a family, filial piety, it had been justified legally. After all, Feng-Shui which has both classical ideal and human being's desire to be fortunate, became a part of Confucian culture, a topology of a way of adapting to exigent circumstances(權道) and at the same time influenced its development