중세성·근대성ㆍ탈현대성의 개념과 차이

Abstract

I researched meanings of medievality, modernity, and post-modernity through the thought of difference. The medieval age is a society that God governs all the realm of man. The modern age is a society that human beings make the world and change the world for their visions and purposes. In the post-modern society people think that the anthropo-centrism causes worldwide environmental crisis. The medieval age was governed by divinity. The God was the idea, and deviating from the divinity was the heresy. In the modern society, however, man thinks that he can investigate thoroughly the idea and decides his actions by his reason according to the principle of rationality. But the post-modern society realizes that the reason is instrumentalized and man can't reach to the idea by his reason. The post-modern world realizes that the truth can not be definite nor we can reach it, this society deconstructs these kinds of modern thoughts and chases after the relative truth. The medieval society was the garden of incantation governed by superstition and savageness, as we can see in the witch-hunting and alchemy. Then Modern society tried to escape from it and closely examine the truth with scientific method. The post-modern society is the era of self-reflection on the modernist actions; ideologizing and instrumentalizing of science. This society realizes the uncertainty of examining the scientific truth and looks the world through in the viewpoint of the chaos rather than in that of the cosmos. The medieval art did not have any autonomous purpose but belonged to God. The art was the way of embodiment of God or religion, ideological ideal in the ages. On the other hand, modern art is separated from the yoke of God. It is secularized to seek for the beauty of art itself, its autonomy. The post-modern art deconstructs the modern art and searches for the heterogenity and hybridity. In the middle age, the self belonged to God. The medieval man can only find his vitality and happy life under the love and concern of God. However, modern man has escaped from the restriction of God, formed his own subjects and constructed his own world. The modern world is following by subject's will. However, modern subjects formed their identity and opened the new age of wars, massacres and violence while producing the discourse of exclusion of the others. Regretting these results, the philosophers who pursue the post-modern age, criticize the thought of identity and try to look at human beings and society with the view of difference, inter-subjectivity and alterity. The medieval life was a space opposed to heaven. The real aim of life was to obtain eternal salvation in the next world, not in a real space of life. On the contrary, the modern age recognizes a present space and time as reality. The modern age sees reality as three things: “the work and the object that is happening now as the fact,” “existence that is existing objectively,” “something that is applicable to the original.” In the post-modern age this is overturned. Past, present, and future are overlapped to “now.” Present is a mere representation of past and future. What is thought as existence that is existing objectively, in fact, is virtual reality and what is thought as original is a copy. There was a clear transition in Chosŏn Dynasty in the era of 18-19 centuries. Those transition is a variety of modernity that is different from the western modernization.