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66 Study on Phenomenological Approach to the Achievement of Confucian Learning —Looking for Proper Understanding of Fruits of Self-Organizing Learning of Confucianism—

Yoo Kwon Jong 1

1중앙대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study makes an attempt to argue necessity of phenomenological approach to Confucian studies. The phenomenological approach focused here is allied with the method of securing the inner world of experience by E. Husserl’s phenomenological ephoche and phenomenological description of perception experience by M. Merleau-ponty’s viewpoint. That is, to show possibility of phenomenological study on Confucianism is the point of this paper. For the point, many sentences mentioned by Confucius in the Analects are tested for new interpretation based on the phenomenological approach and the possibility is successfully argued with discovery that in the Analects such phenomenological approach is more persuasive and proper way to understand the essence of Confucian learning. That’s because Confucius originally stressed on the change of experiential structure on one’s mind through long term self cultivation. And especially in Joseon Korea Dynasty the Neo-Confucian scholars had emphasized on such Confucius’ idea and commonly made efforts to improve the experiential structure of every mind and as results of the efforts many of them left many descriptions of their own experiences in the mind. Therefore, being different from the established studies that have been focusing on analyses of theories and evaluation of their advancement, the phenomenological approach to Confucian scholars’s experiences will shed lights on a new area of understanding of history of Confucianism. This phenomenological approach is relevant to the first-person methodology and the application of the methodology to future studies of Confucianism is believed to open a way to put the Confucian heritage into the context of present time sciences.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.