On the Rhetoric of Defining Confucianism as "a Religion": A Hermeneutic Reading of the Controversy on Confucian Religiosity and its Significance to the Understanding of Chinese Tradition and Modernity

Abstract

This project examines how the controversy on Confucian religiosity has shaped the conceptualization of Confucianism and of religion, and how it has contributed to the understanding of Chinese tradition and modernity in post-Confucian paradigms. In this dissertation I explore the problems and ambiguity of defining Confucianism in the category of religion by surveying the three historical episodes of the controversy on Confucian religiosity as well as the New Confucian approach to the problem of modernization and to the problem of modernity. Two interrelated arguments are presented in the project: first, the controversy has provided both a source and a test case for new ideas about Confucianism and about religion; second, it has less to do with the academic discipline of religious studies than with the cultural and socio-political concerns of modern Chinese intellectuals.