공자 직(直) 개념의 자연주의적 함축에 관하여

Abstract

Confucius aimed to overcome the Spring and Autumn period and achieve the order by restoring the humanist tradition and putting it right. At the same time, Confucius distanced himself from discovering the order of natural things, which made him regarded as a representative humanist philosopher. This interpretation could be misleading in that it overlooks the natural aspect of Confucian philosophy. In that aspect, this article asserts that a moral practice in Confucius has a natural character. The point emphasizing the natural character of Confucian philosophy has to be argued in a way that it does not disregard the humanist character of Confucian thought. It is possible by noticing the dual aspect of Zhi(直), and I argue further that Confucius can be interpreted through a concept of moral naturalism. Definitions of Zhi in the Analects indicates that the morality bases on forms of human life developed in a natural way. Confucius’s references surrounding Zhi underlies that our moral beliefs and actions are not solely justified by reason but in a sense also depend on facts in the natural world, providing grounds to interpret his moral philosophy as a naturalism. On the other hand, that Confucius thinks Zhi alone cannot make one Ren differentiates his position from strong naturalism, which reduces the normative realm of morality to causal laws of nature. From his emphasis on the cultivation of the given dispositions to the personality one can infer that Confucius did not agree to reduce moral norms to natural facts. The duality of Zhi showing the aspect of morality being forced by nature whereas not negating the proper character of morality can be properly and coherently understood from the view of soft naturalism.