Thoreau and Confucianism: Thoreau`s Identification with the Confucian Chun Tzu = Thoreau and Confucianism: Thoreau`s Identification with the Confucian Chun Tzu

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study attempts to elucidate the influence on Henry David Thoreau of the Orient, particularly Confucianism, which has not received a systemic, scholarly treatment so far. I believe that the mode of Thoreau`s philosophical life corresponds closely to that of the Chun Tzu, advocated by the Confucian in the Four Books. However, in the tradition of Thoreauvian scholarship, most scholars have long oversimplified or slighted the importance of the Confucian influence on Thoreau. Of the scholars who interpret Thoreau`s orientalism as a series of exegeses, few attempt to relate Thoreau`s to Confucian thought. In fact, in his lifetime, with his continuous reading of the Confucian classics, Thoreau valued the Confucian strands as props for his own fabric of thought. In my view, the Transcendental principles practiced by Thoreau throughout his life reverberated with the major point of the Confucian canon. Thoreau`s fundamental Confucian replication, implications played a great part in unifying Thoreau`s Transcendental themes. In order to rescue his fellows who were spiritually fallen into the dismal condition of widespread lethargy, Thoreau advocated, as did Confucius, the innate goodness of human nature and insisted on the pursuit of a renewed and spiritual life in the materialistic society, His advocacy of the simplified life became the perpetual theme of his philosophy. It is therefore appropriate for us to have his Confucian interests re-examined not as a passing phase or a peripheral element he lived with, but as Confucian influence on his overall philosophy.