이병헌의 비공론에 대한 반박과 민족주의적 역사인식

Abstract

Byung-Hyun Lee(李炳憲, 1870-1940) is an outstanding leader of the reformed confucianism in the period of the domination of Korea by Japan. He had accepted Yu-Wei Kang(康有爲, 1858-1927)'s suggestions for confucianist modernization and applied it to Korean confucianism. In those days, conservative confucianists delivered a lot of violent attacks against anti-confucian(批孔) movement. Lee also agreed with them that anti-confucianism is wrong. However, his refutation of anti-confucianism is different from theirs. Because the former is self-reflective, but the latter is non-reflective. Lee emphasized that confucianism is a religion and developed a sort of religious confucianism movement(孔敎運動). The combination of religious confucianism movement and nationalist views of history composes his argument. In his work, confucianism is not a universal thought of the world but a national religion of Korea. It is expressed by the combination of nation and religion.