한국인의 죽음에 대한 인식과 태도에 관한 철학적 고찰 = Philosophical Studies on Cognition and Attitude of Koreans towards Death

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Death and dying of modern people is dreary. Dying in hospital, dead people cannot share the precious experiences with the people whom they lived together. This is from the industrialization, growth of city, and trend toward nuclear families. Outcome of modern civilization that put values on immediate comfort. However, death is final process of life. The one who dies should die with some dignity, and those who send off the dying one should accept with significance of life. Aging inevitably leads to death and in declining age people often think about death. Yet many people taboos talking about death, and do not face the meaning of death. Though weather an individual has a perception and attitude towards death is core part of the value system. Moreover it is essential factor that determines quality of mental life. Korean society is moving towards the aging society. Thus there should be argument about death and aging to raise the quality of life in declining aged people. For the beginning of the argument I tried to study the cognition and attitude toward death on average people with qualitative research. I tried to show the perspective of average people not the experts of scholars. How they perceive death and what kinds of attitude they show. This thesis states about the idea about death and philosophical significance to relate with ‘good death’ by surveying and analyzing the University students and sample of adult peoples in the middle age. Koreans has a tendency to picture death as other people`s tragedy ending on a suffering of life. Not as ontological self-examination. However on the other hand, death to Korean is not just a biological end of a people. Psychological, philosophical, and religious aspect is complicatedly involved in the Perception of Korean. For the reason of death many people think about aging and end of a life span or many people think about God`s will and accident. There was similar amount of people between the ones who believe that there is nothing after death, and there is life after death. Lastly Korean had these kinds of ideas about ‘good death’. First, there should be no physical pain. Secondly, there should be no regrets. Third, the place of death should be ones house or somewhere one liked. Fourth, one`s family should be there to send them off. Death is an inevitable existence. There should be preparation of ‘death’ or ‘process of dying’ for the individuals and the society. Prepared death will enable the good death. For this reason there should be philosophical discussion with an average people`s perspective.