Quan Jin’s Four Origins and Seven Emotions in Ru Xue Tu Shuo

In the late Joseon dynasty of the end of Goryeo, Confucian scholar Quan Jin expounded his unique understanding of the four origins and the seven emotions in Ru Xue Tu Shuo. Quan Jin takes four origins as emotions. He thinks that commiseration, shame and dislike, modesty and yielding, right and wrong four origins of feeling arise from the nature of benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom. Different from Zhu Zi’s categorization of seven emotions as emotions, Quan Jin takes seven emotions as the intention, and thinks that joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, evil and desire are expressed in the heart. Quan Jin also put forward that the mind has two applications, nature is the noumenon of the mind, and emotion and intention are the application of the mind. The four origins are nature’s feelings, and the seven emotions are the intention of the heart, so the four origins and seven emotions are the application of the heart. On the problem of good and evil of the four origins and seven emotions, Quan Jin classifies the four origins and seven emotions into different fields of Li and Qi respectively. He believes that the four origins from the source of Li are pure good without evil, and the seven emotions from the source of Qi are both good and evil. It is of great significance to elucidate the deep connotation of the four origins and seven emotions in Ru Xue Tu Shuo to understand the thoughts of Quan Jin’s theory of mind-nature.