On Rodney Taylor's Study Of The Religiousness Of Confucianism

Rodney Taylor, one of the famous experts of religious study in the UnitedStates, insists that religion is always the essential feature of the Confuciantradition and analyses the multi dimensions of the way of the sage and the wayof Heaven, for instance the use of scripture and quiet sitting. Thus, he believesin the relationship between Heaven as a religious absolute and the sage as atransformed person, we have the identification of a soteriological process,which is just the identification of the religious core of the tradition.First, this paper shows the background and goal of its study, which isthrough explaining the origin and progress of the question "whetherConfucian tradition is a religion or not" among the scholars of the mainland,the modern Neo-Confucianism scholars and the West scholars who care aboutthe Religious Dimensions of Confucian tradition, to quest for Taylor'sposition and effect in the whole situation.This paper recommending all Rodney Taylor's books and papers aboutthe religious dimensions of Confucianism, tries to analyses the views andpoints held by Taylor. It introduces all the books and papers according to theyears, including firstly Taylor's study of the selected writings of KaoPan-lung, who is the delegate of Confucian in Ming Dynasty, to find thecultivation of sagehood as a religious goal in Neo-Confucianism;then aboutthe Confucian way of contemplation, which was carried out by a JapaneseConfucian Okada Takehiko;also about the "holy book" and "human sufferingand human caring" in Confucianism;and other things which can show thereligious dimensions of the Confucian tradition.At the same time, this essay tries to arrange Taylor's thought from theimmanent side in a comparative perspective to look for his contribution andinnovation to the whole study of the Confucian tradition, also the short of hisstudy will be mentioned, with the hope of doing some help for the discussionof 'whether Confucian tradition is a religion' in China, even tries to dosomething for the whole Confucian study.Among scholars in the west who care about the religious dimensions ofConfucian tradition, Taylor's insistence that religion is always the essentialfeature of the Confucian tradition is of great significance, and the depth andextent of his study is also outstanding. To compare with the mainland scholars,Taylor emphasizes much more about how to understand the concept ofReligion, but not only discuss the question "whether Confucian tradition is areligion or not". The last but also the most important, in comparing withmodern Neo-Confucianism scholars, we can find they all attach muchimportance to the inner aspect of Confucianism. They choose different essaysand words in their statement, for example what Taylor calls "absolute" and"transform", Tu Wei-Ming would call "transcendent" and "immanent", as theyall show the new way of Confucianism in the new century.