Four-Seven Debate
This book is an annotated translation, with introduction and commentary, of the correspondence between Yi Hwang (T'oegye, 1500-1570) and Ki Taesung (Kobong, 1527-1572) and between Yi I (Yulgok, 1536-1584) and Song Hon (Ugye, 1535-1598), known as the Four-Seven Debate, the most famous philosophical controversy in Korean Neo-Confucian thought. The most complex issues and difficult tensions in the great Neo-Confucian synthesis are at the juncture between the metaphysics of the cosmos and the human psyche. The Four-Seven Debate is perhaps the most searching examination of this tension ever carried out.
Michael C. Kalton is Professor of Liberal Studies at the University of Washington at Tacoma. Oaksook C. Kim is Director of the Korea Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Sung Bae Park is Professor at the Center for Religious Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook.