주희 철학에서의 개인과 집단 : 목적과 규범, 그리고 인간에 대한 이해

Abstract

The objective of my work is to re-examine the adequacy of the hitherto association between Confucianism and collectivism on the one hand and the validity of the dichotomy of individualism-collectivism in characterizing the intellectual foundation of East Asia on the other. Particularly, I undertake this task by addressing the question of how Zhu Xi, who was greatly responsible for the establishment of Neo-Confucianism in East Asia, explained the relationship between individuals and collective units. In the first section, I show that Zhu inferred the ultimate end of individuals from his metaphysical understanding of humanity ─ each and every individual is an autonomous being as well as the source of all universal norms. In the second section, I explore a circular reasoning involved in Zhu’s accounts of the link between the individual’s end of restoring one’s innate morality and the collective end of establishing social stability. And then I explain that these two ─ individual and collective ─ ends are merged into that of the individual’s goal of restoring one’s innate morality. The third section concerns collective norms, which is indispensable for the collective stability. Specifically, focusing on the relationship between the political actors who have the duty to establish collective norms for the public and the ordinary people who are required to heteronomously abide by such collective norms, I demonstrates that Zhu held that the appropriate attitude or means in sharing such common norms cannot involve forcible measures, but must be based on the autonomous self-motivation of each and every individual.