인문학과 정치: 한국 사회 공공성 향상을 위하여

초록

This article analyzes the political function of the humanities. What I mean by humanities here refers to all kinds of knowledge which deal with the reflection about human and society including social sciences. And the politics refers to the communication in the public realm, that is, the conversation and discussion process among citizens. From this perspective, the humanities have an impact on the politics in two ways. First, the humanities make the critical self-reflection possible. The possibility of the conversation and discussion is based on the existence of the transcendental value which can relativize self-interests and selfindulging value. From outside the political realm, the humanities can produce the objective knowledge with the impartial glance unbounded to a certain political position. And such knowledge can make actors look at the events in the political realm with the critical distance which is necessary for the self-reflection. Second, the humanities make the cultural ‘examples’which are the ground for political judgment. According to Hannah Arendt, the judgment is not drawn from the general laws, but rather is an intuitive activity. For instance, when the Greeks give a judgment on a certain man that he is brave, they will bring to their minds Achilleus. For they have Achilleus as an example of a brave man in their culture. The humanities do not pursue the knowledge drawn from the general laws of the events nor emphasize the contingency of a certain event. They just make the self-reflection possible by showing a modelexample of human activity. In this sense, the humanities are closely related to the creation of the cultural‘ examples.’Such a political function has many implications on the Korean society since the humanities have the possibility for creating the culture of publicness and the selfreflexivity, which has been the old task of the Korean politics.