崔致遠의 儒學思想 : 詞章學과 脫詞章學의 二重奏

Abstract

Choe Chiwon(崔致遠) went to Tang(唐) to study at the age of twelve, and after six years, he passed Bingongke(賓貢科) when he was eighteen and started working as a government official there. He lived in Tang for sixteen years and then returned home at the age of twenty eight. And working in Silla, he gained fame with his excellent writing. In addition to that, as he called himself as a Confucianist, his study was readily understood as ‘Cizhangxue(詞章學)’, and it was accepted as an unquestionable fact. But this article raises a question at this very point. Basically, this paper accepts the fact that his study was grounded on Cizhangxue but questions if it was as purely Cizhangxue-based’ as we believe. It is a critical mind and starting point of this article. What is the ground for the point that his Confucian idea implies a new sort of pursuit, not Cizhangxue? The answer can be found in the fact that about 50 years before he went into Tang, pioneering scholars of Neo-Confucianism(性理學), such as Han Yu(韓愈) or Lee Ao(李翶) had already attempted to transform Confucianism qualitatively. Although we cannot say that the attempts were very successful then, the fact that they made the first step to a new direction implies some points. Regarding whether he directly or indirectly succeeded to the flow of the change that took place inside Cizhangxue after the mid-period of Tang, the core is to check specifically what Han Yu or Lee Ao pursued and whether he had any similar pursuit to it. This article examines the following two aspects of his: first, the limitations of Cizhangxue along with the characteristics of post-Cizhangxue that recognizes an academic system transcending it ; second, the pursuit that can be understood through direct connection with Neo-Confucianism. Seeing generally about him, we can find not only the characteristics of post-Cizhangxue overcoming the limitations of Cizhangxue, but also a journey to prepare for the tradition of Sishu(四書) rather than that of scriptures and begin to set Confucius and Mencius in the center of Daotong(道統). From this very point, we can confirm his step towards Neo-Confucianism. Although he was not completely freed from Cizhangxue, we can still see his effort to overcome its limitations.