198 SOCIAL REFORMdid not give the commoner-clerk fathers the right to demand equal status with
their betters. Even though the treatment of fathers and sons might appear anom-
alous, Yu argued, the basis for his determination of this procedure derived from
a single principle -that status in society should be based on Op.95
Yu believed that the functional or occupational criterion for status should not
conflict with the fundamental Confucian position that true manhood was deter-
mined by one's righteousness and virtue, and he argued that function or occu-
pation had been the means for ranking people in social situations in classical
antiquity, but because in the later age of moral imperfection the moral basis of
status was neglected, "doubt arose over whether people who shared the same
occupation should again be ranked together or not." Although he did not attempt
to demonstrate why men engaged in the same occupation should also possess
the same moral caliber, he contrasted it with respect based on birth: "Family
lineage [munjok] is tied in with whether [one's forebears] prospered or suffered
in life; it is not the basis for discussing the establishment of learning and the
esteem for [properj order." In other words, in Korean society hereditary yang-
ban lineages prohibited the establishment of a proper system of status based on
educational attainment and moral worth, which would have been equivalent to
a functional or occupational definition of status categories.^96
Yu adhered to his position about the legitimate, functional basis of status in
the face of problematic contradictions inside immediate families. If a younger
brother's function happened to be that of a scholar while his elder brother was
only a commoner, then the younger brother would deserve to be afforded supe-
rior status. The contradiction between brotherly respect and functional status
could be reconciled by distinguishing between the loci of action and conform-
ing to etiquctte appropriate to the particular situation. In other words, within the
family setting the younger brother owed respect to his elder brother, but in a
public situation their positions would be reversed. If, however, the brothers found
it too difficult to reverse their roles in public, they would be permitted to avoid
contact with one another to save face.^97
Yu used the same reasoning with regard to the treatment of nothoi of yang-
ban and princes of royal blood. Both categories would be treated as equal with
other students inside the schools and ranked by age, but this did not mean that
the principle of equality should be extended outside the school walls to society
at large. In the family setting strict distinctions would be maintained between
the legitimate and nothoi sons (omj6ks6jibun),9^8 and in all general extracurric-
ular seating arrangements nothoi would always be seated below the legitimate
sons irrespective of age. Yu also argued that under his functional principle of
status it was quite possible that a single individual might be a scholar early in
his life and ranked by age among the superior scholar class, and a commoner
later in life with loss of his earlier higher status. 99
Even though Yu opposed the negative effects on Korean society by the
overemphasis on inherited status, especially among the upper levels of the yang-
ban, he did not counterpoise an egalitarian society as an alternative. Slaves, mer-