삶의 의미와 가치에 대한 질문의 교육적 가치 탐색 : Blumenberg의 철학사적 고찰을 통하여

Abstract

본 논문은 현대 사회와 학교 교육에서 삶의 의미와 가치에 관한 질문이 점차 주변화 되어 온 현상을 문제 사태로 주목하면서 이 질문이 오늘날 교육적으로 의미가 있게 다시 다루어질 수 있는 방식에 대하여 탐색한다. 이를 위하여 삶의 의미와 가치에 대한 질문이 실존적 행복의 개념을 매개로 진리에 대한 이론적 추구와 밀접한 관련을 가진 것으로 여겼던 고대 희랍 철학 이래로 서구의 철학적 전통 속에서 이 둘의 관계가 어떻게 다루어졌는지, 특히 근대의 과학적 세계관에 의해 이 관계가 어떻게 변화되어 왔는지를 잘 보여주는 Blumenberg의 서구 철학사에 대한 관점을 소개한다. 이 관점은 삶의 의미와 가치에 대한 질문을 우리의 실존적 염려나 갈망과 관련시켜 이해할 수 있는 안목을 제공하고, 오늘날 지식의 홍수 속에서 방황하는 우리의 아이들에게 지식 교육이나 도덕 교육을 통한 가치 교육과는 다른, 새로운 접근의 가치 교육을 제공할 수 있는 가능성을 탐색케 한다.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what the questions on the meaning and value of life can mean to us today and to explore the ways in which they can be meaningfully raised again for our youngsters. While the questions used to be taken as fundamental to the pursuit of the good life in the old days, they tend to look irrelevant and remote to us in pursuing the good life as we conceive it today. Thus, it seems pivotal to examine what the nature of those questions used to be and why and how these questions have been trivialized in both the modern life and modern schooling. The main part of the paper focuses on Blumenberg's account of how each tradition in the history of the western philosophy since the ancient Greek has responded to their existential anxiety with the theoretical pursuit of truth. Thus, Blumenberg helps us formulate the questions on the meaning and value of life in terms of its relation to our theoretical pursuit of truth for our existential happiness. Throughout the western tradition until it met the modern world, it was taken for granted that the theoretical pursuit of truth is supposed to bring about our existential happiness. And the questions on the meaning and value of life as a matter of existential fulfillment played the central role in shaping the way people understood the world and oriented their lives in this world. But, Blumenberg also explicates how the modern world of science broke off with this long tradition and changed the nature of the relation between theory and our existential happiness when it began to celebrate human control over nature and the world for human purposes. In the modern world, the theoretical pursuit is supposed to make us successful in controlling the nature, rather than making us existentially happy by being in harmony with nature. Thus, the modern condition of life based on scientific world view makes the questions on the meaning and value of life unavailable to us in the way the premodern world used to allow But the problem of our existential anxiety still remains as long as we are destined to face death and human finitude. Thus, the questions on the meaning and value of life needs to be raised in education in such a way for our students as to be able to deal with their existential anxiety in an educationally more productive and meaningful ways. Here it would be critical to lead them to face their existential contingency as well as epistemological contingency with the acknowledgement of their self-limitation and finitude.