О конфуцианстве и христианстве в понимании Бостонской школы

Данная работа посвящена анализу локального исследования группы ученых из Бостонского университета, в котором в конце XX столетия возникла собственная научно-исследовательская школа во главе с Ду Вэймином и Р.К. Невиллом. Оба исследователя создали своего рода «Конфуцианский проект», в основе которого лежит построение, с одной стороны, этики в рамках всего мирового сообщества, с другой, - интегрирование в этот социокультурный пласт Китай. И одной из точек опоры они видят в сравнительном анализе христианской и конфуцианской этик.

Christianity and Confucian Thought in the Boston School’s Understanding

The issue of religious or non-religious essence of Confucianism is still very controversial among modern scholars. This is not surprising, if we think about the role Confucianism played throughout China's history, and culture, place, which it took in all the East Asian direction, particularly, when we are talking about the religious component. However, the complexity of Confucian thought does not always include distinctive religious traits in contrast to the other systems, and even those which do, are still debatable in the question of being called a religion. In this article I study not the General line of development of Confucianism and Christianity in a global context, but the local research made by group of scientists from Boston University, especially, their comparative analysis both Western Christian tradition and Confucian ethics. They have founded their own school, better known as the Boston school of modern Confucianism, and the scientists themselves are often called Boston Confucians. Its main representatives, Tu Weiming and R.K. Neville, did not anticipate that this project would ‘transform’ into something more meaningful than a purely philosophical game. The main method used is comparative analysis. Confucian ethics seems too multifaceted and comprehensive phenomenon to be attributed only to the philosophical tradition, and, at the same time, Boston thinkers cannot give the status of full-fledged religion to it, if only because of the Tian and of the cult of ancestors as the phenomena of Confucius preferred not to spread. In conclusion I'd like to say that views of the Boston Confucians clearly demonstrate the trend towards the reinterpretation of the Confucianism's essence in the modern perceptions about them, not only as a moral or ethical doctrine (in the first case), but as a religion. This religion is perceived here not only as an aspect of man's faith in the transcendental reality, but as set of symbolic acts, manifested in ritual practices, which Boston researchers attribute such forms of symbolic acts, such as language learning and even self-expression through subcultural education.