The Reception and Development of German Idealism in Korea

Paek Chong-Hyon The Academy of Korean Studies 1999 Korea Journal Vol.39 No.1

Chapter 4 : Reality and Knowledge

Chong-Hyon Paek 한국철학회 2008 Philosophy and Culture Vol.3 No.-

The Reception of Western Philosophy & Philosophy in Korea

Paek Chong-Hyon The Academy of Korean Studies 1999 Korea Journal Vol.39 No.1

독일철학 수용과 한국의 철학(1980/90년대)

백종현(Paek, Chong-Hyon) 서울대학교 철학사상연구소 1997 철학사상 Vol.7 No.-

정의와 그 실현 원리

백종현 ( Chong Hyon Paek ),1 한국칸트학회 2012 칸트연구 Vol.29 No.-

The original meaning of justice is ``to be righteous/rightful``, which initially means ``not to covet what is not mine``. In this regard, justice (iustitia) is realized by a law(ius) that restricts freedom in the state of nature, which, by leaving people to do whatever they want, is supposed to cause a state of war. The law(Recht) here fundamentally signifies the right(Recht), and the prime human right is ``the right to live humanly``. And the cornerstone of living humanly is welfare(salus). However, if ``welfare`` refers to the welfare of all individuals, then the realization of welfare in civil society requires a revision of ``what is mine``. This kind of revision presupposes someone to give the other ``what is his or hers``. Even though ``what is mine`` is obtained by the work of my reason and ``the labor of my body``, there arises a dispute whether or not the transfer of ``what is mine`` is an infringement of my freedom, especially when there is not enough common property in nature, or when, either due to social or accidental conditions, something more than my own efforts is acquired. In this case, it is more desirable to resolve the dispute by the principle of fraternity, rather than by the principle of utilitarianism. But the principle of fraternity can work well only when it is grounded in conscience. Therefore, conscience is said to be the foundation of the realization of a just society.

인간 개념의 혼란과 포스트휴머니즘 문제

백종현(Paek, Chong-Hyon) 서울대학교 철학사상연구소 2015 철학사상 Vol.58 No.-

인간은 영양능력과 생식능력이 있으며, 감각능력과 아울러 욕구능력, 자기운동능력을 가진다는 점에서 생명체이고, 게다가 사고능력을 갖추고 있을 뿐만 아니라 미적 쾌감을 느끼고 선악의 법칙을 세우는 능력을 가진다는 점에서 ‘이성적 동물’이며, 악을 배척하고 선을 실현하는 의지를 가진다는 점에서는 신성하기조차 한 존엄한 존재자, 곧 ‘인격’이라는 것이 인간에 대한 전통적인 개념이다. 여기서 인간 존엄성의 가장 강력한 근거는 인간의 자기 행위에 대한 책임능력이고, 이 책임능력은 인간 이성의 자율성에 기초한 것이다. 그리고 이 자율성의 본부로 ‘정신’이 상정되었다. 그런데 서양 근대 문명의 핵심적 요소는 시민사회와 과학기술이라 할 것이고, 시민사회의 토대인 민주주의와 과학기술의 기초인 자연과학은 근대인의 최고 성취라 할 것인데, 이 둘은 ‘정신’의 희생을 대가로 요구하는 것이다. 근대 정치사회에서 인간은 신체적 존재자로 행세하며, 현대의 ‘과학’과 자연과학주의는 인격의 모태인 인간의 자율성, 그리고 자유의지에 대해 부정적이다. 이러한 상황에서 현대 과학기술의 결과로 출현하는 유사인종(‘posthomo sapiens’)은 인간 위격(位格, humanism)의 근본을 뒤흔들고 있다. 인간이 자연물이라면, 자연물의 산출 또한 자연물인 만큼, 인간의 지능과 손을 거쳐 나온 인공지능도 온갖 인공적 조작도 실은 일종의 자연물이라 해야 할 것이다. 이쯤 되면 ‘인공적(人工的, artficial)’이라는 말이 적용될 대상은 없다. 자연 안에 있는 모든 것은 다 ‘자연적(自然的, natural)’인 것이니 말이다. 이로써 자연인과 인공인간의 본질적 구별도 사라진다. 바야흐로 근대 문명의 총아인 과학기술의 진보의 결과로 도래하는 포스트휴먼 사회가 촉발하는 ‘인간’과 ‘인간적 삶’의 본질에 관한 새삼스러운 질문에 대해 답하는 것이 철학의 당면 과제이다. The traditional concept of the human being is such that he is (1) an animal in that he has capacities of nourishment and reproduction as well as those of perception, volition, and self-movement; and also (2) a rational animal, in that he has faculties of thinking, feeling aesthetic pleasures, and setting up laws of good and evil; and finally (3) a person conceived as a dignified and even sacred being, in that he has the will to exclude what is evil and realize what is good. The strongest ground on which the dignity of human being lies is that he has the capacity of being responsible for his acts, and this capacity of responsibility in turn is based on the autonomy of human reason. Here the ‘spirit’ is supposed as the headquarter of this autonomy. It is generally agreed that civil society and scientific technology are the two essential elements which make up modern Western civilization. The foundations of these elements, that is, democracy and natural science respectively, however, though they are the supreme achievements of the modern world, have actually claimed the sacrifice of the ‘spirit’. For the human being in the modern political society behaves as if he were a bodily being and the contemporary ‘science’ and the scientism doubt the existence of free will and autonomy of human beings, which are the matrix of personhood. In this situation, the ‘post homo sapiens’ that result from contemporary scientific technology is shaking humanism to its very foundation. Given that the human being is a natural object, and that the product of a natural object is also a natural object, it should be acknowledged that ‘artificial’ intelligence and similar ‘artificial’ products that emerge from human intellect and work are in fact natural objects of a certain sort. At this point, there is no object to which the word ‘artificial’ rightly applies: everything in nature is ‘natural’. Thus, the essential distinction between the natural and the artificial human disappears. Answering those questions about the essence of ‘humans’ and ‘human life’, provoked by the post human society that has progressed with the scientific technology of modern civilization, is the very problem the philosophy is facing today.

헤겔의 ‘시민사회’론

백종현(Paek, Chong-Hyon) 서울대학교 철학사상연구소 2008 철학사상 Vol.30 No.-

‘제4차 산업혁명’ 시대, 인문학의 역할과 과제

백종현(Paek, Chong-Hyon) 서울대학교 철학사상연구소 2017 철학사상 Vol.65 No.-

‘제4차 산업혁명’의 주요 인자는 인공지능 시스템과 의생명과학기술이다. 그것은 신체적 인간의 오랜 염원인 부(富)와 불로장생에 ‘혁명적’ 기여를 할 것으로 기대되는 반면에 이제까지의 인간 사회와 ‘인간’ 개념을 근본적으로 뒤흔들 위협적 요소를 포함하고 있다. 이미 ‘제3차 산업혁명’ 과정에서 부와 사회적 발언권이 소수에게 집중되어 중산층이 얇아지고, 일단 밀려난 다수가 상대적 빈곤을 벗어나기가 더욱 어려운, 이른바 ‘양극화’ 현상이 나타났다. 이제 더욱 발전된 인공지능 시스템이 다양한 방식으로 인간 사회에 진입할 ‘제4차 산업혁명’이 진척을 보일수록, 종전의 노동 기반 사회의 구조는 점차 와해될 가능성이 높아질 것이다. 그렇기에 ‘제4차 산업혁명’의 결과 시민들 사이의 빈부 격차가 더욱 심화되는 비인도적 사회가 초래되는 것을 피하고, 생산능력과 소비능력의 선순환을 이룩하기 위해서는 보편적인 국민 복지제도가 수립되어야 한다. 전 국민의 주택, 교육, 의료비는 공동체가 담당하고, 기타 일용할 비용에 대해서는 국민 기본소득 제도를 수립해야 한다. 다른 한편 의생명과학기술의 진보가 인간의 생명과 인체에 관여함으로써 일어날 인간 변이를 방지해야 한다. 우선 인체나 인간 생명을 조작하는 데 활용될 가능성이 크면서도 그 파장을 예상하기 어려운, 신과학기술의 산물에 관련해서는 지적재산권을 제한하고 사유화를 최소화함으로써 개발속도를 조정하고, 그것이 인간의 생명 구조의 변경과 관련이 있는 것일 경우에는 반드시 ‘기술 시민권’을 확보해야 한다. 더 나아가 〈국제 의생명과학 기구〉를 만들어 생명공학 기술이 핵무기 못지않게 엄정한 국제적 규범 질서 안에서 연구 개발 사용되도록 통제해야 한다. ‘제4차 산업혁명의 시대’에 달리기는 자동차에, 날기는 비행기에, 계산하기는 인공지능에, 산업 노동은 로봇에 맡기면서, 인간이 하는 주요한 일은 이것들을 조정하고 이것들의 일들을 조율하는 것이다. 이를 위해서 인간에게는 균형 잡힌 통찰력, 곧 온화한 지성이 필요하거니와, 이러한 지성은 기민한 지능과는 달리 냉철한 머리와 따뜻한 가슴의 화합에서 배양된다. - ‘제4차 산업혁명’의 참주역은 ‘지능적’인 사람이 아니라 ‘지성적’인 사람, 인문적 지성을 갖춘 사람이어야 할 것이고, 그래서 인문학의 역할이 절실하다. The critical factors in the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ are artificial intelligence(AI) systems and biomedical technologies. The ‘revolution’ occurring in these technologies is expected to increase productivity and longevity, for which all mortal humans have been longing. However, at the same time, the ‘revolution’ has the potential to shake the foundation of present social structures and the ideas about what it means to be human. Already in the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’. there has been a ‘thinning’ of the middle class. As society became more ‘bipolarized’, society has more ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,’ with fewer in between, which in turn has led to an increase in social tensions. The ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ might yield greater inequality, particularly in its potential to disrupt labor markets. As automation substitutes labor across the economy, the displacement of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between returns on capital and returns on labor. This means a collapse to the internal structure of the labor-based society. Under these circumstances, to prepare for the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, it is necessary to introduce the general welfare system. Society must bear the expenses of housing, education, and medical services. Basic income systems must also be introduced to support the expenses of other areas. Specific advances in biomedical technologies, which are capable of changing the nature of the human species, require us to take risks and responsibilities for their application such as hacking medical devices, privacy and confidentiality of medical records, and biological inequalities depending on social class. The government must restrict intellectual property rights or industrial copyrights for the products of biomedical technologies, which are not only easily embedded in the human body but also bound to have widespread social ramifications, in order to decelerate the speed of technical development. In the case of these products, which have the potential to manipulation human genetic structure, ‘technological citizenship’ must be secured. Moreover, any studies in these technologies must be strictly progressed according to international standards established by the “International Biomedical Science Agency(IBSA)”. As robots increasingly take on manual labor and autonomous vehicles, depending on AI helps to increase mobilities. This seems to minimize the role of human involvement of things from product-production to decisionmaking. However, the role of human involvement has changed. All of us are responsible for guiding developments in these technologies and in the decisions we make on a daily basis. To do this, however, we must develop a balanced, comprehensive insight of how technology is affecting our lives and how technology lifts humanity into a new moral consciousness. For development, this view needs not only gentle intellect but also moral consciousness of human dignity, which we can build up by learning litterae humaniores.

칸트 인간 존엄성의 원칙에 비춰 본 자살의 문제

백종현 ( Chong Hyon Paek ) 한국칸트학회 2013 칸트연구 Vol.32 No.-

With the fact that the suicide rate of South Korea has been ranked at the top among OECD countries since 2011, this paper`s goal is to find a proper answer in Kant regarding the question - is it permissible to commit suicide in some particular case or not allowed to do so in any circumstances? - by looking through the related issues of it in the western tradition of philosophy. It seems to have been arguably accepted in the western tradition of thought that we humans are not allowed to commit suicide in any events, and there are found four different reasons at large, I think. First, we humans are living things(i.e., animals) and, as long as our life-giver is considered at the higher level, we have no right to deprive us of our own life. [Plato, Augustine, and John Locke] Second, committing suicide is to violate the natural law, by means of which all natural things preserve themselves and resist what attempts to destroy them. [St. Thomas Aquinas] Third, committing suicide is regarded as a bad behavior not only to go back on one`s obligation for others (his parents, siblings, offspring, friends, and fellow citizens etc.) and the community to which he belongs, but also, a fortiori, to have a harmful effect on them. [Aristotle & Utilitarianism] Fourth, committing suicide is, in the end, to devalue the committer`s personality, that is, a misdeed to betray one`s duty to oneself. [Immanuel Kant] This paper shows in the first place that the first two reasons are logically self-contradictive in that they are not free from the ‘begging the question’ criticism, and therefore cannot go further. On top of that, I will argue that the third one is accepted only with qualifications, and a detailed analysis of it will naturally lead us to the next study, i.e., the study about Kant. Finally, with the fourth reason in mind, I will show how the proposition in question “we humans are not allowed to commit suicide in any events”, as a categorical imperative, is successfully elaborated within a Kantian personalist system of ethics. According to Kant, committing suicide appears to mean that a human being uses himself as a means of his happiness or his rather higher end to be realized, and for this very reason, any type of committing suicide in any circumstances cannot be allowed. For it would be, in the end, none other than one`s violation of duty to oneself. Such a Kantian thought is based on the so-called ‘principle of the dignity of human person as an end’, as the supreme principle of all ethical behaviors, and runs like this: “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” (Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, B66=IV429) Constructing a physically, psychologically, and societally desirable life environment where people rarely feel suicidal is regarded as a temporarily acceptable expedient, whereas realizing an ethical community - that is, making possible a cohesive group of people under the laws of mere virtue - where every person takes others as well as himself as an end (not merely as a means), is regarded as the ultimate way we have to take, in which we can be free from the charge of our violation of duty to keep our life safe, let alone the other types of duties from ethical practice.

이성 개념의 역사

백종현 ( Chong Hyon Paek ) 한국칸트학회 2009 칸트연구 Vol.23 No.-