≪儒林外史≫에 나타난 타자성의 윤리와 상호주체적 관계의 지향

초록

The Scholars (儒林外史) is not merely a novel confined to the issues of intellectuals; rather, it is a work that embodies a universal perspective on humanity and ethics. Despite its significance, existing scholarship has not paid sufficient attention to this dimension. Accordingly, this study focuses on these characteristic features, re-evaluating the work as a whole by highlighting the author’s and the text’s critical awareness of and orientation toward interpersonal relationships. Through this analysis, it is possible to identify the ideological aspects and significance of the “ethics of alterity” and the pursuit of “intersubjective human relations” depicted in the novel. Furthermore, this study clarifies that such an orientation serves as a reflective response to the structural reification of human relations in the author’s era, possessing the character of resistant and practical writing. Viewed from this perspective, The Scholars can be read as a narrativization of a dream of subversive reconstruction against the bleak reality of the time. It can be interpreted as a work that captures an orientation toward a “world” where individuals recover the “I” as an existential subject—escaping a reality where the vast majority live as slaves subjugated to rigid structures of power and desire—horizontally embrace the alterity of others, and eventually form a higher level of “we” through genuine intersubjectivity. Indeed, the work reveals a yearning for a form of “inclusive transcendence” —an intentionality that dares to embrace the grim reality where even positive characters are rendered helpless and inevitably scattered, yet seeks to transcend that very desolation from within. In short, The Scholars manifests as a form of philosophical anthropology aiming for the fundamental recovery of humanity; moreover, it can be described as a work that grappled early on with the ethical issues of the modern subject. At the same time, by successfully embodying discursive resistance and practical aims through a marginal genre, the novel contributes to elevating its ideological significance and value. Additionally, it continues to provide meaningful implications and resonance for the problematic realities of contemporary society, including pervasive polarization, various forms of hate and discrimination, conflict, and human alienation.

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