서구의 유교종교론 - 유교의 초월성에 대한 담론을 중심으로 - = Confucianism as a religious tradition in Western Academia -Focusing on the discourse of transcendence-

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

It is well-known that there have been long discussions on the religiosity of Confucianism over 120 years in East Asian countries, due to the problem introduced by the Sino-Japanese translation of the Anglo-European words for ‘religion’. Whereas outside the Chinese-Characters Cultural Spheres, scholars generally have treated Confucianism just as the cornerstone of traditional Chinese culture. Even though Confucianism has been considered as one of the world religions since around the end of the 19th century, throughout most of the 20th century, it was the predominant view that Confucianism was not eligible for membership of world religions. However there still have been the discussions of whether or not the Confucian tradition can be considered as a religious tradition, and moreover on the religiosity of Confucianism. This paper is an attempt to explore the study of Confucianism focusing the religiosity in Western Academy. Firstly, the ‘axial age’ thesis and its ‘breakthrough’ idea developed by Jaspers had widely accepted by the late 1970s, and the discussions on the transcendence of Confucianism also held lively from time to time. Next, Theodore de Bary has provided intellectual leadership in the development of Neo-Confucian studies in North America, which also made the discourse on the transcendence of Confucianism extensive and diversified. Lastly, Mou Zongsan(牟宗三), the representative of the contemporary New Confucianism described the Confucian idea of ultimate reality, Tian(天) or Tiandao(天道) as ‘immanent transcendence’, and the concept of ‘immanent transcendence’ has widely been acclaimed especially among Chinese scholars, however, there have been some pros and cons presented concerning this idea. We can say that the concept of ‘transcendence’ always has been at the center of discourses on the religiosity of Confucianism in the Western Academy.