A Religious Approach to the Zhongyong: With a Focus on Western Translators and Korean Confucians

Abstract

One of most speculative and philosophical works of the Confucian classics, the Zhongyong (Kor. Chungyong) is also the one demonstrating religiousness. Reading the text in terms of religiousness can be one channel toward understanding its worldview and significance. The present study first analyzes the attempts of Western translators who approached the Zhongyong from a religious perspective before proceeding to review religious interpretations of the Zhongyong by certain Korean Confucians. While the former focuses on James Legge, Tu Wei-Ming, and David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, who approached the Zhongyong in terms of Western theories and ideas, the latter deals with Yun Hyu, Yi Pyok, and Chong Yagyong, Choson dynasty scholars, writing in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, who interpreted the text differently from other Korean scholars of their time. Despite their different approaches, interpretations of the Zhongyong by the Western scholars treated here share a commonality in that they all draw religiousness from the text, focusing the ontological structure with a transcendental being at its center and human emergence and transcendence within it. Their religious interpretations of the Zhongyong are supported in a limited way by a certain trend among Korean Confucians. Despite their emphasis on a personal Shangdi (Kor. Sangje) rather than impersonal li (Kor. ii), Yun Hyu, Yi Pyok, and Chong Yagyong focused not on a transcendental being or the ontological structure of the world, but on a personal connection with the original source of morality and ethical praxis, drawing from this the notion of self-transformation in everyday life.