“经文辨读”视角下西方神话与儒家传统中的英雄主义普遍性分析

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 부산대학교 중국전략연구소
· 수록지 정보 : Journal of China Studies / 21권 / 4호 / 201 ~ 216페이지
· 저자명 : Feng, Hua

초록

The word “Hermeneutics” is derived from the Greek mythology about Hermes. As the herald and messenger of Zeus, Hermes travels as fast as human thoughts. His top priority is to understand the words of gods, thus, the early Hermeneutics is a discipline of interpreting the divine inspirations in the holy books. Contemporary Hermeneutics is a research system combining science and philosophy. It has turned from the interpretation of God’s word in Bible to the understanding of Man’s word in literature works. “Scripture Reasoning” is an important method of communication between religions. It brings the focus of Hermeneutics back to God’s word with an eastern perspective. In the process of “Scripture Reasoning”, the heroic figures in Bible, Homer’s Epics and Confucian classics reveal to the world a universal possibility for human-beings, just like all the characters in the other classic works. This universality leaves the classics open to people of all ages. The text of classics is relevant to everyone and everyone can find the possibility of surpassing one’s limited surroundings while reading the classics. Through our own understanding of the classical text, we can all sense the canonization which can also embody the spirit of our times.
Thomas Carlyle once wrote a sentence about heroes, “He will read the world and its laws; the world with its laws will be there to be read.” With different religious and philosophical traditions as background, what laws are the heroes in different classic works revealing to us? Are there similarities among these laws? While reading the classics, Can we assume the heroes and superior men are also facing the same challenges as we do? Are we, as people from different times and different countries, all making our choices based on our first principles and trying to transcend the vanity of personal existence in the world full of absurdity? In the torrent of modernization and globalization, we are on the verge of traditional renaissance and classical revitalization. The way of achieving this is not by religious restoration or totem worship, but by understanding the poetic words in the classics. As James Legge pointed out from the perspective of the sinological development, the study on China was valuable. Chinese culture could not be studied in the way other cultures be studied because its independence and the permanent state of alienation. The peculiarity of Chinese language determined the independence of Chinese culture. Language can express thoughts while at the same time limit and define thoughts. Amidst philosophy, hermeneutics and theology, there is an overlapped area. To enter this area, if language is the appliance we use, “Scripture Reasoning” is the method leading the way, then James Legge’s version of the Analects is a beneficial supplement of “Scripture Reasoning”. Legge was trying to enter the overlapped area with his poetic language in his works ahead of his time. With Hermeneutics as the theoretical basis, we can read between the lines of the Classics from the perspective of “Scripture Reasoning”. While comparing Homer’s epics and Bible, together with the English version of the Analects translated by James Legge, we may be able to reveal the universality offered by the classics and find the similarities between the heroic figures of the Western mythologies and the superior men in the Confucian tradition.

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