본 논문은 유교적 전통유산이 현재 우리사회와 한국행정에 제도나 가치의 형태로 내려오기 보다는 무의식적 정신구조, 즉 공자의 신경증의 형태로 전래되어 오고 있다는 점을 주장하는 세 번째 글이다. 앞서 발표한 두 논문이 공자의 벼슬욕망과 상하질서강박을 다루었다면, 여기서는 “퍼즐맞추기”식 《논어》독서를 통하여 공자의 정확강박과 호학강박을 살펴보고, 이 강박들이 지금의 한국사회와 한국행정속에서 작동하는 모습들을 논의하였다. 정신분석학적 입장은 Jacques Lacan의 이론에 입각했다.

This is the third paper searching for Confucian inheritance in contemporary Korean public administration. Two Confucius’ obsessions, “precision” and “learning,” are analyzed by “jigsaw puzzle reading” of The Analects of Confucius. As I have already argued in previous papers, Confucian traditions have been inherited to modern Koreans in forms of unconscious structure rather than conscious ones like thoughts and institutions. Confucius’ doctrines of “the mean” and “learning” will be especially examined to discuss his obsessions. With this inherited precision obsession, Korean public administrators like to dictate every word from superiors and blindly obeyed their orders. An imitation to American public administration by practitioners and scholars is another modern manifestation of Koreans’ precision obsession. Having Confucius’ learning obsession, Koreans unusually show strong preference to pursuit higher academic degrees and tolerate existing government examination systems which request inhumanly hard preparation. Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory is used as the main theoretical frame for discussion in this study.