1900년대 전후 도덕 개념의 의미장 — 수신·윤리교과서를 중심으로 —

Abstract

Confucianism emphasizes the cultivation of virtue, but the discoursesfound in early 20th century textbooks, show both continuity andtransformation in the semantic field concerning self-cultivation, morality orethics. The changes presented in school textbooks around this time hadbeen accelerated since the Gabo Reform, reflecting the “twisted space ofexperience” and “identifying strategies of the horizon of expectation”. In ananalogous fashion to moving through space, assimilating new conceptsbrings about a shift in the space of experience, modulating and expandingexpectations about what might be possible. Textbooks on self-cultivationor ethics are one of the key mechanisms through which a state can standardize the horizon of expectation. Moral training, once it escaped from the influence of Confucianism, withits focus on the revelation of one’s innate human nature, came to beconnected with the public interest and identified with the needs of societyand state. The foundations of moral training were shaken as the emphasisof the educational system was shifted from moral character to knowledge. In particular, the accommodation of imported concepts about ethics intoEast Asia markedly affected the semantic field concerning moral ideas. Thus, ‘Yuli (倫理)’, a translated term for ethics, restricted traditional selfcultivationto the area of practice, and also began to exclude self-cultivationfrom the educational process to conform with the rationalist approach ofmodern learning. As it was pushed out from the modern system ofknowledge, the implications of the idea of self-cultivation dwindled until itsignified nothing more than a nostalgic cultural yearning for the classics,and it disappeared gradually from everyday life. The concept of selfcultivationfaded away into history, along with Confucianism for which itrepresented the essential virtue：both were swept away by the advent ofmodernity. In the school textbooks on self-cultivation or ethics publishedduring the Korean Empire period, premodern and modern ethics wereintermingled, but more weight was given to concepts which were relevantto society and the nation-state, and the moral conception implied by ‘Yuli(倫理)’ transformed the semantic field of ethics, and with it, nationalmorality.