晩淸시기의 道家연구와 문화계몽

Abstract

Due to the poetic feature and rich parables therein, Taoist thoughts have been interpreted from various aspects since ancient times. In this paper, the author divides the late Qing dynasty into the separation of traditional and modern times and conceptualizes the inherent enlightenment ideology and the cultural significance behind Taoism in the late Qing dynasty. All of the scholars and ideologists in late Qing have realized to explore the modernity from the traditional ideology, which became an important issue at the time. The exploration on the inherent modernity is defined as re-interpreting traditional concepts with feudalistic elements excluded and fulfilling the traditional cultural enlightenment function based on western concepts. From the prospective of cultural enlightenment, the Taoist tradition is associated with a connection to the inherent modernity. To clarify this, the author makes an analytical study on Wei Yuan’s Laozi Original Meaning(『老子本義』) and Yan Fu’s Lao'Comment(『老子評點』) and Zhuang'Comment(『莊子評點』), whose authors were influenced by western ideology. Wei Yuan expanded the confusion statecraft ideology to Laozi’s ideology and re-interpreted his thoughts from the perspectives of social reform and social welfare. In Wei’s theory, Taoism cannot be directly connected with modern universal concepts such as equality, democracy and liberty. However, he re-interpreted it from the social aspect and the theory was called a separation of Taoist study in the late Qing dynasty. His enlightenment theory is defined as an ideology featured by salvation and reformation. Yan Fu accepted the concepts of liberty and democracy through social Darwinism and theories by Montesquieu, Rousseau, etc. and re-discovered it in Lao and Zhuang’s ideology. The essence of his liberalism is the economic liberalism to develop economics and enhance national strength. However, in Lao'Comment(『老子評點』) and Zhuang'Comment(『莊子評點』), it has been expanded to political liberalism and concepts such as liberty and equality. Represented by Wei Yuan and Yan Fu, the study on Taoist enlightenment theory in late Qing has a basic label of cultural enlightenment, based on which the thoughts Learning from Foreigners to Competing Foreigners was proposed and taken as a slogan by the enlighten ideologists back then. The study on Taoism in late Qing was labeled with cultural enlightenment, which reflects a temporal emotion that the modernity has to be found from the traditional ideology although it was learnt from the west first. This explains why people tried to seek the inherent modernity of Taoism. In other words, it is a process of identifying the modernity of China or East Asia.