불교와 유교의 대화 -불교와의 ‘대화’에서 나타난 유학의 이론적 변이와 변혁을 중심으로-

Abstract

This paper studies the consequences of the dialogue between Confucianism and Buddhism. Specifically, it focuses on the changes of Confucianism. Confucianism has a history of overcoming the challenges by criticising others. In general, there are two ways of Confucianists treating the Buddhism. As a religion, it is ‘exclusion.’ As a theory, it is ‘fusion.’ Significant changes happened during the time and appeared as Neo-Confucianism. The most important way of the dialogue was studying Buddhist scriptures. It’s also same for the Buddhists. The integration of Confucianism and Buddhism is the result of it. In terms of religion types, however, they still keep their uniqueness. In other words, they still keep their own distinctiveness while adopt the ideas from each other. The consilence is the final result of this dialogue. With respect to the Buddhism, the consilence of Confucianism reflects the weakness and lack as Confucian theory has itself. There were briefly two problems Confucianism have; Cosmology and Mind and Nature Theory. In general, the metaphysical aspects of Confucianism fell behind than Buddhism. The Neo-Confunianists found the shortcomings and tried to make their theories as metaphysical. They tried to take one step further to develop better theories than Buddhism. There is a long history to reach this status. The dialogue between Buddhism and Confucianism has a meaning beyond just a meeting between two religions. There is a literature to identify this meaning. From this base, this paper will take an in-depth scope into the specific crisis the Confucianists had at that time. This methodology especially can analyze the symptom of excluding Buddhism by Confucianists in that time. The influence of Buddhism on Confucianism should be examined for the history of Chinese Philosophy. The methodology of this paper focuses on this aspect.