Claim. A single central figure must simultaneously play all three subject roles — parents must also be teacher and leader to their children, a teacher must also act as parent and leader to students, and a leader must also act as parent and teacher to subordinates.
Elaboration. Lee extends Three Great Subjects Thought with the principle of “three subjectivities with one center” (Three Subjectivities with One Center). Although the three roles are distinct, they are not separated across three different people in any given relation — each subject must internalize all three roles simultaneously.
Parents primarily love their children with a warm heart, but while doing so they must also teach (the teacher role) and guide (the leader role). A teacher primarily teaches but must also stand in the position of parent, raising students “as if they were his or her own children,” and stand in the position of leader, guiding them. A manager primarily manages but must extend a parent’s warm heart — having constant concern for employees’ eating, sleeping, and welfare — and must teach subordinates social norms and knowledge.
The formal statement: Three Great Subjects Thought is the thought concerning the practice of a parent’s three subjectivities, a teacher’s three subjectivities, and a leader’s three subjectivities. Since parents’ love, teacher’s love, and leader’s love are all downward loves, the doctrine claims that one subject should practice three downward loves through three role-positions.
Lee then adds an important psychological-spiritual rider: true love must be invested and then forgotten. “With true love you want to invest totally and forget what you have done… no matter how much you have loved someone, you release it.” The reason is moral: if you remember the love you gave and resent its non-reciprocation (“I have loved him so much, but he did not respond”), arrogance arises and further true love becomes impossible. Forgetting empties the heart; God’s true love then refills it; love can be given again with fresh mind. This is Lee’s solution to a real psychological hazard of altruistic ethics — burnout and bitterness from unreciprocated giving.
The move integrates well with downward-love-primary-induces-upward-and-horizontal and grounds the practical ethics of the ideal family. Worth noting how the doctrine collapses Western role-differentiation (parent ≠ teacher ≠ boss) into a single integrated subject-position.
See also. three-great-subjects-parents-teacher-leader, god-as-origin-of-three-great-subjects-kunsabu, authority-with-love-as-true-dominion