2019, Vol.55, No.

Philosophical Investigation 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.41

pISSN : 1598-7213 / eISSN : 2671-7565
https://journal.kci.go.kr/philinst

The article is an attempt to interpret the middle path(中) in Jungyong(『中庸』; the doctrine of the Mean) based on ontology more firmly. The ontology here takes phenomenology as a method. This refers to the following facts. We regard the middle path or the sincerity(誠) as Being of the all beings and understand it as a phenomenon which shows itself in itself. Accordingly the middle path in the Jungyong is represented as follows. The middle path as Being of the all beings is neither existence nor nothing. The ordinary(庸) is a being which is brought into existence by the Being. To come to be is not something like producing or making, but an event that lets everything be authentic. As long as the middle path in the Jungyong is brightness from darkness, it and man belong together, who constantly gathers in his heart and dedicates himself as time and space where brightness stays. And there the middle path as the way of Heaven, human being and everything else belong together and be in their own essence. This harmonious world is nothing new, but where the middle path's idea itself is realized. We recall salvation and homeland here where everything exists as it is and freely.

Park Se-dang (朴世堂, 1629-1703) devised a new way of punctuation (句讀) to argue the different meaning of the 12th passage of the Book 10 (鄕黨) of the Analects. The established interpretation on the 12th passage is ‘not asking about horses (不問馬)’ because Confucius ‘respected human beings and treated animals with contempt (重人賤畜)’. Most of the commentators lived during the Han Dynasty, following the tradition of Dong Zhongshu (董仲舒, 179-104 BC), tranformed the humanism of Confucius into the thorough anthropocentrism. Since then, the Neo-Confucianists of the Song dynasty also delved into not only strengthening the dignity of human beings, but also condescending the deficiency of other beings. The controversy concerning the punctuation of the Analects 10:12 arose constantly because some people thought that the fundamental spirit of Confucius was not narrow-minded humanism. During the Joseon Dynasty, Park Se-dang was severely criticized for his new way of reading the Analects 10:12. The main point he raised is to overcome the excessive conservativism of Neo-Confucianism by implementing the relativistic view of Taoism. Due to this approach, his contemporaries pointed him as a betrayer of the true Confucianism (斯文亂賊). Although he suffered from the national censorship on his academic writings, his thoughts are not entirely deviated from the original value of Confucius, which seeks the harmony and coexistence between human beings and nature.

Mendelssohn, who was a representative philosopher of Germany in the 18th century, is now neglected merely as a dogmatist philosopher who was criticized by Kant or as a popular philosopher who tried to propagate rationalist philosophy. However, in order to understand the 18th-century German philosophy, Mendelssohn’s philosophy needs to be studied and evaluated more thoroughly in itself. Above all, the study of Mendelssohn’s philosophy can make the 18th-century German philosophy map much more abundant, which has been somewhat simply grasped according to the dichotomous view with regard to the authority of reason. Mendelssohn elaborated his unique philosophy according to which, on the one hand, he as a rationalistic philosopher defended the authority of reason, and on the other hand, he as a jewish philosopher demanded that reason be tolerant for the traditional belief. In order to confirm this, we will first analyze Mendelssohn's position on the Enlightenment in comparison with Kant's. Furthermore, we will examine Mendelssohn's Jerusalem and show that his unique position on the Enlightenment does not originate from a popularist view, but from an existential view based on his Jewish faith. And finally, we will evaluate Mendelssohn's Jewish Enlightenment and present a future task for the study of Mendelssohn' s philosophy.