The philosophical foundations of Confucianism as the common ideational heritage of East Asia ; Filozofski temelji konfucijanstva kot skupne idejne dediščine Vzhodne Azije

Confucianism is among the elements that not only connect, but in a way, help define the East-Asian cultural sphere. Nevertheless, when approaching the study of Confucianism as such it soon shows itself to be an extremely rich and diverse, and, consequently, a hard to grasp notion that carries many tensions within itself. Confucianism can be seen in the following ways: as a tradition that for two and a half millennia has connected dif-ferent philosophical schools ; as the starting point of the civil religion and the political doctrine of Confucianism ; as a transmitter of a specific, cultural heritage-based system of values – a system that managed to establish itself within the narrower cultural con-text of China, but also in the wider environment. This article tries to present one of the approaches to the study of Confucianism through the use of comparative philosophy. It tries to present the philosophical foundations of Confucianism and to show an out-line of a unified Confucian ethical teaching, and then to contrast certain main elements of the Confucian tradition in China and Japan and thus the tense relationship between the universal and particular, which the tradition develops. Through such a presentation, both the strengths and weaknesses of seeing Confucianism as a unified philosophical tradition can be evaluated. ; Konfucijanstvo spada med elemente, ki ne le povezujejo, temveč tudi pomagajo definira-ti vzhodnoazijsko kulturno sfero. Vendar pa se ob pristopanju k študiju konfucijanstva kot takega kaj hitro pokaže, da gre za izredno bogat in raznolik, zato pa težko zajemljiv po-jem, ki v sebi nosi tudi številne napetosti: konfucijanstvo kot tradicija, ki že dve tisočletji in pol povezuje različne filozofske šole ; kot izhodišče civilne religije ter politične doktrine konfucianizma ; kot prenašalec specifičnega, na kulturni dediščini temelječega vrednost-nega sistema – ki se mu uspe v različnih oblikah uveljaviti tako v ožjem kulturnem okolju Kitajske kot tudi širše. Pričujoči članek skuša predstaviti enega ...