《世說新語》를 통해 본 魏晉시대 죽음의 문화적 의미 고찰

Abstract

Wei-jin was an unprecedented era that highly focused on issues about the death. The people who lived in Wei-jin had witnessed the abnormal death of their acquaintance, considered life and death from a philosophical point of view, expressed transcendent perspective, unique achievements and ultimate condolences, offered view of life and death as the accessto understand the culture of that era. Under the political conditions as dangerous as sitting on a barrel of gunpowder, Wei-Jin scholars experienced and thought of life and death profoundly and uniquely; as a result, traditional Confucian ideas had collapsed, the thought of Laotzu and Buddhist which suggested human individual, explored the issues of life and deathhad and the eternal spirit had come to the fore as the representative thought of the era. Although the scholars after Wei-Jin never stopped exploring and thinking of the meaning of life, there had never ever been such an era like Wei-Jin that paid great concern to life-and-death issues on such a big scale. Shishuo-Shinyu is the very text that reflected the abundantly rich and highly personal information on the view of life death of Wei-Jin scholars. The view of life and death of Wei-Jin scholars was mainly based on self realization, time and space awareness, and death awareness, which would be discussed in this paper. This study discuss the transcendent perspective, unique achievements and ultimate condolences that had been expressed in Shishuo-Shinyu in such six aspects: filial piety⋅love⋅friendship⋅art⋅ascendance⋅amusement. The philosophical quest ‘death’ of Wei-Jin would be discussed in this paper through above six keywords base on the anecdotes of Shishuo-Shinyu related to death, by analyzing the political environment, cultural backgrounds, cultural roots, philosophical exploration of Wei-Jin era.