In this paper, the writer attempts to analyse the nature of academic autonomy in terms of epistemology. Recently academic autonomy has been much argued in Korean academic society. The trends in this academic field resulted in only argumentations by the concerned Korean scholars, but no paper has been presented in relation to its philosophical aspect. Because most of the papers are described with reference to situational autonomy, no paper persued the reality of it's nature. Intermingled ideas are spread in university society so that demonstrations were led by the idea in internal groups including professor associations. This paper concluds that academic autonomy is closely related to academic freedom that is derived from the inquiry that is one of the tool for the pursuit of truth. The connotation of academic freedom and academic autonomy are narrower than civil liberty. Thus, this paper purports to make distinction between academic freedom and civil liberty. Also, this paper asserts that university freedom and self-governance could establish bases for the realization of academic autonomy and academic freedom. Finally in this paper, the theory of inquiry of Dewey is claimed to have paved way in the pursuit of truth that will coordinated with academic autonomy and academic freedom that are to form the truth in relationships of the trinity.