2025/09/20

Romantic Love and the Self in Early Modern Kor Liter Kim Uchang

Extravagance and Authenticity:

Romantic Love and the Self in Early Modern Kor ean Literat u r e

Kim Uchang

I

Identity, as it is often used these days, can best be understood as a strategic word in the world of antagonisms in which multiple constituents of collectivities, divided by race, gender, class, language, culture or other markers of difference, are seen to be in irreconcilable conflict. Its current prominence is most noticeable in the politics of recognition, which takes up the correction of unequal empowerment among different groups as part of an urgent political agenda. Such unequal empowerment often involves the degradation of the sense of identity of the disadvantaged, making it imperative to rescue a distinctive identity for such a group to restore its full dignity. Identity, from this perspective, is a value forged in the agonal struggle of various groups. The basic schema is Hegelian: two consciousnesses bound together in a life-and-death struggle as each consciousness, tries to gain the upper hand, threatening the other with the annihilation of its subjectivity by turning it into an object. The struggle in the contemporary context is, however, more between collectivities than between individuals, though Hegel’s metaphor of the lord and the bondsman already suggested the social or collective dimension of this

Kim Uchang (Kim, U-ch’ang) is a literary critic and Professor of English at Korea University. He has written books on literary criticism and his works include Kungp’ip’an shidae-£i shiin (The Poet in Times of Need) (1977) and Shimmij¡k is¡ng-£i y¡n’gu (Studies in Aesthetic Reason) (1992).

process of consciousness.

The situation of antagonistic collectivities is most acutely represented in the struggle of the colonized against the colonizer. The colonizer depersonalizes the colonized with demeaning representations, depriving him or her of power as an agent of consciousness and praxis—the subjectivity which the colonized must struggle to recover. The routes of subjective recovery for the colonized can only be complicated and tortuous. The initial strategic move includes, according to many writers on colonialism, an active assumption on the part of the colonized of the collective identity, which has been in many cases imposed by the colonizer as a demeaning designation, or at least as one of the external determinations of existence. This assumption serves as the ground for a militant reversal of colonial values and the foundation of a new identity in a new scheme of things, as in the concept of négritude or in the idea, “Black is beautiful.” A dialectical reversal results as the identity, generated by the intersecting vectorial lines of two collectivities in agonistic confrontation, is consciously assumed, transvalued and militantly affirmed. The identity and its processes can be analogically extended, mutatis mutandis, to other situations of oppression and exploitation.

However, we can oppose this identity formed in an inter-group dynamic to another kind of identity, understood more traditionally as a process occurring in a more or less cohesive group. Partly inspired by the work of the developmental psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson, identity came to be widely used, for example, in the 1960s in the United States, to refer to the sense of self an individual acquires in the process of growing up in society—a society which, while not entirely free of social strife or generational conflict, is cohesive enough in its universal commitment to a shared social destiny. Even here the process of growing up involves conflict, for growing up means becoming a particular person, sharply distinguished from others, under great pressure exerted by the values and roles deployed by society. But this conflict is seen not as a fundamentally irreconcilable one, as individuation, in spite of conflict, also means a successful internalization of value and role expectations of a given society. Identity is, for Erikson, a product of human maturation in a conflictual, but ultimately integrative, communal setting; it is to become “a vital personality [that] weathers [crises of inner and outer conflicts], reemerging from each crisis with an increased sense of inner unity, which an increase of good judgment, and an increase in the capacity ‘to do well’ according to his [sic.] own standards and to the standards of those who are significant to him.” What Erikson understood by the definition of identity as a process both of individuation and socialization is not a novel idea but appears in many traditional societies as the ideal of a more mature personality, often expressed in what is perhaps an over idealized form: Bildung or xiushen (selfcultivation).

This concept of identity, as in Eriksonian psychoanalysis or as embedded in a more traditional understanding of human selfhood, contrasts with the concept of identity as conceived in the politics of recogsnition or decolonization. There is even a profound incompatibility between the two ways of conceiving the processes of identity. One focuses on the individual existing in an intra-group matrix of socialization, and the other on the collectivity involved in inter-group conflict. Both contexts of identity formation presuppose the mutual implication of individual ego formation and its collective setting. Yet in the case of the oppressed, the collective determinant presents itself as a negative delimitation, and as void of substantive content with regard to the individual’s developmental needs, while a creative identity can truly result only from a different conception in which positive developmental opportunities are offered and anchored in the collective horizon of the community.

The two ways of conceiving identity or, in the final analysis, the two modalities of identity, have various subterranean connections. In both cases, identity as the product of the internal processes of growth occurs only with the existence of a putative community as a nurturing environment for individual growth. In the absence of this community or in a society that refuses and maims the individual development of a particular group, a radical refusal can be the only answer to identity formation understood as a process occurring within the inner space of an individual adapting to that society. It is in fact this refusal of the internalizing process of assimilation that furnishes the starting point for the acquisition of identity by the disadvantaged. Erikson himself, though he thought mostly of identity as a result of internalization and integration, recognized the limits in the formative integration of personality and community in the situation of AfricanAmericans, who must go through a particularly tortuous route of selfrecovery, namely, through the assumption of a collective identity conceived more negatively than positively,—at the point of the degree zero of self-inscription, as it were. Such is the case of black writers, “who must accept the negative identity as the very base line of recovery.” Negative identity is characterized, in Ralph Ellison’s words, by “inaudibility,” “invisibility,” “namelessness,” “facelessness”—a “void of faceless faces, of soundless voices lying outside history.” Of course, a more direct response to the negative identities imposed by society is militancy and violence, for such deep-seated negative identities can be reabsorbed only by a turn to militancy, if not transient violence. In any case, absorption of the negative identity is unavoidable even for a more coherent recovery of a sense of identity. However, it appears that the negative identity remains void in its content; it is meaningful only to the extent that it is posited as a task to be realized concretely.

It is also clear that this negative identity cannot emerge in a gradually maturing psychological process as “a configuration which is gradually established by successive ego syntheses and resyntheses throughout childhood,” or “a configuration gradually integrating constitutional givens, idiosyncratic libidinal needs, favored capacities, significant identifications, effective defenses, successful sublimations, and consistent r o l e s . ” It must be a process of moral and political awakening involving definite decisions which leads to the assumption of responsibility for one’s own situation. The negative identity is assumed as a consciously made moral decision, or as a product of a series of such moral decisions, and only as such can it become the basis for a reconstruction of identity, in which this element of moral choice must remain consistent.

However, the heightened moral awareness present in negative identity cannot be said to be absent even in more harmonious identity development, for a truly significant identity cannot be simply a gift of a happy conjunction of various psycho-social processes, which one undergoes unconsciously. A fully mature personality certainly includes, among its achievements, a high moral awareness, or a capacity to make its life choices on the basis of moral decisions. More broadly, a meaningful sense of self must be said to evolve through agonal moments of contest between a developing and achieved sense of self and its situation or the requirements of society. An existence unreflectively submerged in social demands would, in the familiar existential formulation, be an inauthentic mode of being, not yet in full possession of its own possibilities. Even if we do not subscribe to the form of life lived in great tension of this existentialist vision, it is possible that the process of ego synthesis and resynthesis would proceed through tests of authentication between the ego and the other, or society, before a new synthesis of social and constitutional givens is achieved. Such a test would be hardly noticeable in the case of an affirmative identity in a cohesive community, while it would be of critical importance in the negative identity of the oppressed, resulting in the total rejection of the externally-imposed scheme of values and the acceptance of the zero degree of self-inscription.

In reality we cannot say that in the identity processes of the colonized or oppressed the potentiality of positive individual development is completely foreclosed. It is true that a radical rift in the social totality makes a coherent selfhood an extremely arduous adventure— through more complex processes of inner development, which remain uncertain and uncharted except for the possibility of a resolute assumption of the negative identity. Nevertheless, the resources offered by the dominant majority can still be utilized, though with a highly sensitized critical sense of their potential, for a reconfigured totality of existence. In recent post-colonial studies there has been a great deal of recognition of the ambiguity of the colonial situation, signally expressed in the concept of hybridity—the strategic reversal of the process of domination, not necessarily by complete rejection but through the creative adaptation of the oppressed in the midst of the oppressed condition. The cultural contamination of colonial contact is more intimate and complex than suggested in the anguished dialectic of the opposed pair of the colonizer and the colonized, the oppressor and the oppressed, or the majority and the minority. This occurs even in the case of the liberation struggle of the colonized, as Albert Memmi recognized a long time ago in his depiction of the exacerbating mutual implication of the colonizer and the colonized: “the colonized fights in the name of the very values of the colonizer, uses his techniques of thought and his methods of combat.” This is much more so in the domain of the non-political habits of everyday life, where the cultural dialectic of imperialism operates at a much more intimate level, and where simple, unguarded contagion and hybridization occurs in the inevitable cultural Babel of the modern world. The ultimate test here would be that of the individual sense of authenticity of those who come into contact with alien cultural forms, which challenge the ongoing processes of ego synthesis. In many ambiguous attempts to reconfigure a new identity from these challenges, the sense of inauthenticity, bad faith, or guilt would never be far away. But there may nevertheless result a genuine broadening of identity. In the milder case of cultural contact, all that is required may be an appealing aesthetic elaboration, but in extreme cases, such as the colonial situation, the accusation of complicity and betrayal remains until such time as the internalized new values come to coincide with the demands of a liberated collectivity. It will take a long time for such a collectivity to become an integrated whole with harmony between its internal process of culture and the urgent collective imperative that has been overriding.

Japanese imperialism in Korea offers a complicated case of identity confusion in a difficult political situation. It forced a negative identity on the Korean self to be assumed in an agonized dialectic of self-recovery. It also brought, along with the colonial rule imposed by all the instruments of colonial power, new cultural values which polluted and transformed the Korean psyche in its innermost processes. These values, possibly part of the colonial strategem, were perceived as a part of modernity, as necessary equipment for collective renewal and eventual triumph over colonialism. The situation was further compounded by the fact that modernity had already been on the national agenda before Japanese colonial rule. As an example of early success in modernization, Japanese colonialism brought the need to modernize to the Korean mind all the more forcefully. The problem facing Koreans in the early years of the twentieth century was seen both as that of colonialism and modernization. The strange superposition of the two occluded clear perception, and generated irreconcilable conflict in the modernizing society. Modernization, at first seen mostly as adoption of Western models, was a positive goal to be pursued if only for survival in the modern world. It had of course to be accompanied by pain and conflict, requiring rejection of the past and constitution of a new modus vivendi for social and individual existence. Pain and conflict increased as modernization came to be attached to the humiliation of alien domination. Modernization brought a cultural crisis—of a dimension incomparably greater than any other in Korean history; it involved a fundamental expansion or change of the horizon of existing cultural values and models, possibly by imitating the Japanese, meanwhile Japanese colonialism required total rejection, including that of any project for modernization. Yet either under the aegis of the colonizer or on the initiative of Koreans who were not quite aware of their own colonized situation, modernization proceeded, with its complications and then with resolution in some kind of cultural equilibrium. But this new equilibrium was bound to remain unstable and fundamentally inauthentic as it was predicated upon the acceptance of colonialism.

In the following we will mainly examine the coming of modernity as a problem of a cultural revolution, that is, what it meant in the developing sense of “being Koreans” in the early twentieth century. Our example is the idea of romantic love, what role it played in the constitution of a self, which was perceived to be required by the exigences of modernity. This whole process has to be placed in the colonial context and reexamined in this light, but in this paper we will mainly deal with romantic love as a process of assimilation of an alien cultural form until it becomes a naturalized part of the modern self in Korea.

II

Romantic love, like any other cultural expression of forces innate in human life, is a cultural artifact and an idea, not a universal modality of human sexuality. And, an idea, inserted into affective life and made into an idée fixe or ideology, can be a cause of self-alienation, for we would like to think affective life is natural and spontaneous only when left in its natural receptive state instead of being actively interfered with and organized. An emotion induced by an ideological imposition is, we feel, artificial and false, and damages the sense of authenticity we have about our selfhood. However, it is also true that what is natural is often a consequence of naturalization. The real question is not what is natural or authentic, but what fulfills the requirements of authenticity. What is natural is a corollary of a happy conjunction of social and psychological processes by which a particular cultural expression becomes a metonymic part of the whole of social relations. The naturalization of a new element would sometimes require transformation of overall patterns of social interaction pertaining to a society or a culture as a whole, and a reconstruction of human personality as an agent moving through these patterns. Insofar as our emotional life is important in the maintenance of an authentic sense of the self and can be experienced as natural only when there is a match between an emotion and its social context, it will be difficult to achieve an authentic form of emotion and self during epochal cultural change until the change settles into an equilibrium of some sort. The course of the naturalization of romantic love in East Asia offers an illustration of this point.

Romantic love was imported from the West at various points during the process of modernization in East Asia. In the case of Korea, we know exactly, when it becomes a thematic motif in literary history, although dating the change as a fact of social history is more difficult. It is the custom of literary historians in Korea to assign, as historiographical shorthand, the honor of being the first truly modern novel to Muj¡ng (Heartless) by Yi Kwang-su (1892- ?), published in 1917. In its first part, the novel deals with the predicament of a modern hero, a teacher of English in Seoul, who has to choose between two women—one to whom he is romantically related and the other to whom he feels bound out of his sense of traditional family obligations.

The conflict is not necessarily that of natural and spontaneous desire struggling against the pressure of a traditional ethic. There is a programmatic nature to the hero’s choice of “free love”; it is an idea he chooses and pits against the demands of his society. A poignant moment in Heartless is the scene in which the hero asks his bride-tobe to confirm her love with a verbal declaration—to the utter embarrassment and incomprehension of the chosen one to whom the word of commitment to marriage is sufficient proof of good marital faith. What was asked of her by her suitor was a self-awareness, reflexively and theoretically assumed and verbally articulated, more than her real and still unarticulated feelings of love. The hero programmatically wants to redeem the promise of the conjugal relation as an idea of love.

It is not easy to define of what romantic love consists, but in its early conception it was closely tied with the idea of the freedom of choice in marriage and also in other forms of sexual relationships, as is apparent in the term, chayu y¡nae, or “free love.” This freedom meant the freedom of the individual to act outside the prescriptive obligations of a traditional society. For Yi Kwang-su, who conceived his literary mission in didactic terms, romantic love was part of his program of advocating the autonomy of the individual, in which reclaiming the sensuous and libidinous part of the individual was felt to be necessary.

A conscious assumption of the erotic is, therefore, not enough. Yi Kwang-su’s new man cannot simply retreat into an erotic life, as the program calls for broader social action. He must be prepared to engage in a serious struggle in the social arena in conflict with the prescriptive traditions of society. More importantly, he needs society to make his choice practical and meaningful, as it must find its place in the constellations of options and obligations sanctioned by society, which he must defy or help redefine and assume. The call for social change was more urgent for another reason, which overrode the need for romantic love or the social change that could accomodate it. The country had come under Japanese occupation, which forcibly impressed upon Koreans the need for an ambivalent modernization— ambivalent since the imperialist aggressor, Japan, was also the bringer of the gospel of modernity, which Koreans felt compelled to accept if they were to fight Japanese imperialism. The modernization required was not that which involves inner change but that which was needed for the recovery of the political independence of the nation. There occurs a thematic change in the second half of Heart less as, at the expense of the formal unity of the story, Yi Kwang-su turns to the advocacy of modern development for the country, in which the newly married couple, along with other modernized youths, are to participate. The change appears abrupt and unanticipated as the call for social action does not turn around the traditional social structure which hampers individual freedom in sexual choice, but around the broad patriotic duty to work for the modernization of the country.

The formal disjunction in the novel is not simply a hiatus between romantic love or a sensuous awakening as part of the program of individuation, on the one hand, and a call for patriotic duty, on the other. The former demands the harmonious development of personality and a social arrangement which would allow for that, in which sensuous spontaneity comes to take a legitimate place in the sense of selfhood. Meanwhile, the latter is usually put forward as an urgent moral duty, which not only precludes a leisurely development of personality but also demands a harsh concentration and mobilization of personal energies in the service of a patriotic cause. Even if the autonomy of the individual was part of Yi Kwang-su’s program, this autonomy could not afford to include full development of the new modality of affectivity, as the signature of the new organization of personality had to remain social morality, not liberated affectivity. On the sole level of external social conditions, there was no room for a new affective elaboration of personality, however, at the same time it came to find its place in the development of sensibility, though the process was devious.

III

Though it struck a sympathetic note in the hearts and the minds of the youth of the time seduced by its intimations of modernity, it is natural that the idea of romantic love preached by Yi Kwang-su. also drew ambivalent responses, because of the untimeliness of the gospel of love in the harsh political climate, and also because of what appeared to be the embarrassingly contrived nature of the idea. The artificiality of the ceremony of emotional enunciation exacted from his betrothed by the hero of Heartless must have been all too transparent. The whole question was, of course, also compounded by the heteronomous origin of romantic love, from, of all places, Japan, the colonial power occupying Korea (for this Western invention had come to Korea by way of Japan). Yi Kwang-su most likely absorbed this idea from Japan while he was a student at Waseda University.

The heterogeneous origin and the inauthenticity of romantic love was noted by the early modern Korean writers themselves, most notably by Kim Tong-in (1900-1951), who in several early stories took up this new form of love, more often as an object of satire than as a serious subject. The foreign origin of the idea of love plays a considerable role in his satirical treatment of romantic love.

Kim Tong-in’s attitude is at first ambiguous and yet leans towards conditional affirmation, for instance, in his first published story, “Yakhanja-£i s£lp’£m” (The Sorrow of the Weak) (1919), which has romantic love as its theme. Romantic love is affirmed primarily as a counterfoil to a more sordid history of sexual victimization. The adolescent heroine with the Western name of Elizabeth, quite unusual in Korea, feels an incipient romantic sentiment towards a youth she meets on her way to school and recognizes it as love, but she falls victim to a nobleman’s philandering, on account of which she has to undergo abortion, illness, and then a lawsuit. The story ends, however, with a strong declaration for love in spite of all the troubles she has had. She is said to realize that her suffering was caused by a weakness of will and that she must assert more strongly her faith in love, for a strongly-asserted love is ultimately the real source of strength—the strength to live one’s own life.

In a novella published a year later, Kim Tong-in turns a critical eye to the idea of romantic love. “Ma£m-i y¡t’£n chay¡” (Frailty, Thy Name Is...) (1920) is mainly interesting as a critique of the emancipated love then in fashion, although its overcharged emotional atmosphere reveals that he had a considerable struggle before he could work out a critical viewpoint. The novella, in the form of a confused mass of letters, diaries, and a third person narrative, is a long reflection by the hero about the end of an affair with a woman who has to marry another man to whom she was promised, when she was only three, as part of some unclear monetary transaction. The hero is in great pain and his self-reflection is a kind of cure, with its main function being to exorcise the ghosts that have set on him with this love and its painful consequences. He has gathered these ghosts as the seductive suggestions of romantic love from his reading of novels. Before he falls in love, “he has read all the famous novels of love in the world in Japanese translation,” “the world” here meaning Europe or the West according to the Eurocentrism of the time, though reference is also made to the pre-modern Korean romances, Ch’unhyang ch¡n (The Story of Ch’unhyang) and Yangsan baek ch¡n.

The bookish origin of love in “Frailty, Thy Name Is...” confirms

René Girard’s findings in his study of romantic love in Desire, Deceit and the Novel: that the romantic self is a deceiving construction of the self through the mediation of the other, either literary or real. Needless to say, the transfer of the idea of love to a soil much more foreign in regard to its origin than in the instances cited by Girard causes the course of Korean romantic love to follow a different dialectic; it does not necessarily end in the moment of truth which comes about when the other-mediated false self of romance, recognized as such, gives way to an authentic selfhood in the realistic confrontation of the novel. Kim Tong-in’s story does not yield up any easy denouement of a new recognition. The artificiality of the romantic situation as a clumsy imitation of a foreign form of emotional patterning was too clear from the beginning, and was not really questionned. What was more troubling was perhaps the sense of ambivalence, which Kim shared with Yi Kwang-su, in regard to the status of the sentiment in the schemes of authentic existence in a society in an epochal transition. The experience of the new kind of love in all its transitional awkwardness was nonetheless painful for the hero and, to that extent, authentic in a strange authenticity of a phantasmagorical reality.

The hero of “Frailty, Thy Name Is. . .,” a married man, is not satisfied with the devotion of his lawful wife, who remains untouched by the excitement of a consciously-assumed erotic love. He spots a likely candidate, manages to fall in love and ascertains that his love is returned, confirming it with the English word, “love.”7 But he

lacks detailed instructions in many things. The inarticulate emotions filling the story, no doubt due in a large degree to the immaturity of the writerly craft, may also be in part due to the unformed newness of the experience. We may also note with interest the clumsiness of the hero in all the minutiae of love relations and are reminded of the fact that love is realized without a falsifying self-consciousness only in the culturally-patterned courtship dance. In the scene, for instance, where the artificial lovers first meet in private, we may find it comic that they have great difficulty in knowing how to proceed. They find very little in the way of the small change of social talk, and therefore engage in a strange game of physical contact. “While we speak [as the hero describes it], there begins a battle of the knees below. I touch and push my knees against hers. A thrill, which I cannot exactly define, passes in trembling waves from her knees to mine.” After this, the author himself comments, “this would have been a subject for laughter except in the twentieth century.”

The learned nature of the whole affair also comes out when they are separating. Here he is seen abundantly consulting Western or modern Japanese literature, D e c a m e r o n, the Psalms of Solomon, D’Annuncio’s “Francesca,” Dostoevsky’s Poor People, Arishima Takeo’s “Declaration,” and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. (In the last case, his reference is to the scene when Andrey Bolkonsky, wounded and lying on the battlefield, looks up at the sky and thinks of the smallness of the Napoleonic affair, which helps him see the same smallness of his suffering.) In the last phase of his affair, the hero, while consulting European writers again to understand the pain of parting, realizes the whole affair was artificial, along with his own suffering. “The suffering I undergo on account of Y was nothing but ‘suffering I want to have,’” he notes. It is not suffering that comes to him spontaneously: “‘She leaves me, and I have this suffering.’ I say this to myself and I suffer, it is not spontaneous.” One paradox of the hero’s experience is that while he knows the contrived nature of his suffering, he does not suffer the less for it.

There are other kinds of suffering in his experience of artificial love. He realizes that fleshly love is really the basis of the romantic relationship. As the bodily relation comes to an end, the love he has felt also begins to cool off, which brings him great sadness, for it seems to reveal the emotional and spiritual exultation he had formerly felt to have been a lie. There is another kind of suffering, not as artificial as the positive feeling of love, that is caused by the jealousy he feels as he imagines the woman departing with “an elegant, manly, noble-looking man who completely fascinates Y [his lover]” or as he “imagines Y with her hair undone on a pillow by her husband.” This again suggests the famous love triangle mentioned in Girard’s analysis of Dostoevsky’s “Ideal Husband,” which seems to confirm to Girard the Freudian insight that love is intensified with the presence of a possible rival.

The conclusion of the hero’s reflective analysis of the origins of his romantic experience is rather unexpected, however. It is not exactly the result of an awakening from deceit to truth. His realization is that one must live in the real world with all the ethical responsibility that entails. At the end of the affair, he makes a long trip to the mountains enduring some hardships under more primitive living conditions. He then returns to his hometown to see his mother, and then he determines to assume his responsibilities as a husband and father, but this determination ends up being reinforced in a paradoxical and poignant way, for he finds upon his return that his wife and son have died in an influenza epidemic. His final declaration is nonetheless that he will begin a new life of ethical responsibility. He realizes that he was the frail one, not his lover or his wife, for he failed to adhere to the strict regimen of life in the world of real obligations.

He makes a further point with the final renunciation of romantic love. He has already agreed, though not quite whole-heartedly, with his friend’s view that “all the novels now sprouting up like bamboo shoots are filled with stories of love, making the reader mistake the genre as the only kind of literary work.” Now with his determination to return, we hear him declare a feminist point of view, that “what have brought about all this [free love] is the pernicious idea which selfish men have invented in flagrant violation of the rights of woman.”12 This was also anticipated by the views of his friend, who called for the emancipation of daughters-in-law and declared, “before you talk of the liberation of love, liberate daughters-in law.” Daughters-in-law suffered the most in the extended Korean family, as they were obligated to carry out all the household duties under the absolute rule of their parents-in-law while putting up with arbitrary treatment at the hands of their husbands. By speaking of the liberation of daughters-in-law, Kim Tong-in is pointing to the central knot in the entangled family relationships of traditional Korea. He is also speaking of the need to see love, marriage and the question of the individual in terms of the social structure as a whole, which must be changed. In this, individual liberation does not lie in romantic love, especially in a form which would mainly serve men’s selfish interests.

A thoroughgoing critique of romantic love is given, however, by another novella-length story of his, Kim Y¡n-shil ch¡n (The Life of Kim Y¡n-shil), published in 1939; it is a more convincing critique of the vicious nature of a foreign idea detached from contextual social relations. The story tells in restrained objective language made acute by the overall satirical intention, the progress of an emancipated modern Korean woman through her experience of this new form of love, chayu y¡nae. (It takes its model from the life of an early modern woman poet contemporary of Kim Tong-in.) Kim Y¡n-shil, the heroine, goes in her late adolescence to Tokyo to obtain her secondary and college education. She soon gets caught up in the talk of women’s emancipation and the glories of love freed from the con-

straints of conventional morality. She finds no difficulty in putting into practice the love talked about in the rousing conferences on the subject, for promiscuity is already wide-spread among the Korean students in Tokyo, though Y¡n-shil brings a new aggressiveness and scope to it. After her return to Seoul her fall begins, as she tries to continue her emancipated life in a much more traditional social setting. She takes up several lovers only to be abandoned by them one after another, including one wealthy man with his promise of a life of cultured leisure, and a modern, but ultimately self-serving, journalist in penurious circumstances. In the last scene of her declining fortune, she is taken in, while looking for a room in a shabby district of Seoul, by a decrepit real estate agent who abused her when she was about fifteen.

The fall of this emancipated woman can be taken as a cautionary tale for those who are reckless in the pursuit of the idea of emancipation. But Kim Tong-in maintains the detachment of a naturalist writer and does not make it a moral tale, except for the suggestion that the serious determinating factor in sexual as well as marital relations is material interest. Kim Tong-in was, of course, aggravated more than anything else by the artificiality and unauthenticity of free love. Y¡nshil first learns about it at various student meetings in Tokyo. As far as Korean students in Tokyo are concerned, the main source of inspiration is said to be a well-known writer, Yi Ko-ju, “litterateur and teacher of free love,” and in Kim’s eye, a false prophet and corrupter of youth. (Kim Tong-in leaves no doubt about the identity of this person; it is clear from the description of his career in the story— a patriot who fled to Shanghai after stirring up some political trouble in Tokyo—, if it was not already clear from the name which is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of the name of Yi Kwang-su.) Yet a more important source for the theory and practice of emancipated love is Western novels, most notably, as mentioned in the story, Goethe’s Werther and Watt Dunton’s Aylwin. Kim Tong-in’s thesis is again that love is a thing learned from books, a result of bovarism.

Nevertheless, what aggravates him is not simply the falsity of the borrowed romantic self for it does have its truth in his mind. It would be unfair to impugn the romantic fantasies of an Emma Bovary without recognizing some truth in them, considering Emma’s repressed life in Yonville. The romantic idea of love must be said to have had its meaning as an emancipatory ideal in a traditional society which, in the eye of the early Korean writers, seemed to have only a degraded concept of sexuality, especially as far as women were concerned. In Kim Tong-in’s account of the life of Kim Y¡n-shil, we are shown how she moves to the idea of romantic love from an early brutal experience of sex. Her first sexual experience was at the age of fifteen and was forced upon her by an older man, her tutor in Japanese. She yielded to his demand mostly out of the habit of compliance which she might have learned as a lower class person meeting her social betters. As Kim Tong-in comments, “the act did not impact on her at all. She had a vague knowledge that such a thing is done between man and woman. He was a man, she a woman, and if that sort of thing happens between man and woman, then it happens. If she put up resistance, kicking her legs, she did so because the act caused her pain; she thought the fate of woman hard who has to undergo this pain ever so often.” When she gets older, however, she feels some stirrings in her mind which make sex an emotional experience for her. But it is, as we have observed, mainly through her literary friends and literature, especially European novels used as her manuals, that she tries to invent emotions. Nevertheless, an emotionally meaningful sexuality was for her a step forward from affectless sex as an act of compliance.

For Kim Tong-in, the crucial question was not the inauthenticity of a borrowed emotion, but its inadequacy in changing the social structure which he thought invalidated erotic relationships conceived in any other than simple physical terms. In the first novella he wrote on the subject we saw him, through the voice of an observer, interpreting free love as a mere ruse of male self-interest and demanding change in the social system that oppresses women. In his first published story, we also saw him uphold romantic love against a reductive sexual relationship of a traditional kind. In spite of all his satirical depiction of the new kind of love as a foreign import, he did not necessarily abandon the validity of the idea itself. (In Girard’s negative view of romantic love, he is contrasting it with a more serious kind of love, but in Kim Tong-in’s case, the contrast is with what he understood to be the reductive sex in traditional society.) In such stories as “Frailty, Thy Name Is...” and “The Life of Kim Y¡n-shil,” however, he seems to have found the idea of love too weak to become real, given the constraints of traditional Korean society. From this one would think that he would next turn to a realistic kind of writing examining these constraints, but he turned more and more to romantic stories—stories of strong emotions and personalities. What the heroine of his first story says about the need to stand strong on love must be said to have expressed the basic philosophy of life Kim Tong-in held. However, his interest in erotic or sexual emotions soon wanes. He was generally more interested in what he considered to be stronger emotions than romantic love—animal instincts and dark forces in man or passions of metaphysical extremity, and especially artistic passions carried through to madness. To him the strength of emotion seemed to indicate its irresistible source in reality; the strength, as it were, guaranteeing the authenticity of the emotion. If in his critical examination of romantic love he perceived its falsity, in the final analysis he pitted against it, not social reality but strong emotions—originary passions, spontaneously generated and transcending social reality.

IV

In Girard’s scheme, passion is an instrument of truth that helps a person to break out of the romantic illusion built by the invasion of the mediating other into desire. But the passion Girard praises is a moral passion, even in the cases when it works against conventional moral-

ity, for what motivates his passion is truth. A passionate person rejects, for example, such virtues as “nobility, altruism, spontaneity, and originality,” but if these virtues are rejected, it is because they are perceived to be sham and the passionate man cares deeply for their substance instead of their appearance. Kim Tong-in’s mad artists heroes in his early stories are driven mainly by such extraordinary passions as pyromania, necrophilia, murderous drive, or other kinds of metaphysical insanity—hardly conducive to a great awakening to truth. His strong emotions would remain in the world of delusions, and not be an instrument of truthful awakening.

The thesis of social reality was recognized in Kim Tong-in’s stories and novels as an important pole in the dialectic of authentic emotion, but it was never developed seriously. For Kim, a venture into emotional life could become authentic only if it was entered into with intense passion—with unfortunate and yet enlightening consequences for the individual involved and his close associates, but isolated from a larger social world. A more careful consideration of the question of social reality can be found in the work of Y¡m Sang-s¡p (1897-1963), a writer of a more realistic bent compared to his contemporaries. Y¡m Sang-s¡p did not begin to write in the mode of realism, however. His early stories are romantic, full of subjective feelings and emotions. These are not always clearly articulated, but he soon worked his way out to a more realistic depiction of society, and along the way he reflected a great deal about the modality of the authenticity of emotions. He came to the conclusion that a romantic emotion becomes authentic only when, instead of remaining a subjective state, it comes to be incorporated into an appropriately stable social and moral network of relations. This is exemplified in the process of communication between the parties concerned resulting in the creation of a space of interaction in which they are recognized as individuals of separate identities and then joined together in communication and communion.

Y¡m’s view on the subject of romantic love takes off from the same sense of the futility of idealism detached from reality. One of his early stories, “Amya” (The Dark Night) published in 1922 but written earlier, describes a young man’s night out, during which, in a dark world-weary mood, he discusses with his friends topics current among the budding intelligentsia, one of which is the new emancipated love. The narrator is a convinced defender of the freedom of the individual, including the freedom of love, but he is at the same time strongly critical of the new form of love as practiced by his contemporaries. He accuses the youth of the time asserting that what they do with their new ideas, in love as well as in other occupations of life, is mere play and self-indulgence. He wants a serious engagement with life, not frivolity, but he knows he is powerless to engage in any meaningfully practical activity, given the condition of society as it is. His next story, “Cheya” (New Year’s Eve) (1922) tells the sad fate of an emancipated woman, in the form of a last testament before suicide. The heroine is an ardent believer in free love, who is eventually forced to make a marital choice for economic convenience and social standing by marrying a barrister. She discovers she is pregnant with another man’s child, and is left with no choice but suicide. In this story of an emancipated woman, Y¡m does not satirize his heroine as Kim Tong-in does. He genuinely supports the principles of the heroine, but he also sees that they are impractical in the given social conditions.

Y¡m Sang-s¡p does not give up his espousal of free emotional relationships between the sexes, but he also knows this relationship must be realized in a stable social space, which must mean, in the last analysis, a more modernized form of society and its institutions. This must start as a workable frame of moral interaction between the concerned parties, achieved through sympathetic understanding and acceptance of certain norms of social ritual. This can be said to be the formulation Y¡m Sang-s¡p works out in the novella, “Shinhon’gi” (Records of the Newly-Wed) published in 1923. Unlike the preceding subjective stories, this story is written in a style accommodating carefully presented realistic details of situations and nuanced psychological verisimilitude. It records how a love chosen in full freedom and individual awarenes can evolve into a happy marriage through a compromise with the conditions of given reality. The plot is simple. A woman artist who dearly values her artistic life marries a respectable middle-aged man. Though it is clear that there is a considerable material gain to her marriage, including the possibility of support for her artistic career, she is not quite sure that she loves him, and she cannot pacify her troubled conscience, for her idea of the dignity of individual freedom cannot be reconciled with a marriage of convenience. Also on her mind is her past lover, who died some time before; she cannot quite overcome her love for him and this lingering love makes her feel guilty in her relations with her husband. Therefore, she devises a strategy to effect reconciliation among the various pulls of affection and duty that trouble her life. She proposes that she and her newly-wed husband go on a honeymoon trip to a small country village where her dead lover is buried. She visits his grave and has a tombstone erected. Her husband accompanies her on the visit to the grave for the ceremonies, which include burning the letters she received from the dead lover. He accompanies her with forbearance and generosity, though he has been really tricked into taking the trip. Though not without moments of occasional displeasure, he knows that this ceremony of exorcism is necessary, in which he must fully participate, for he must accept the true state of his new wife’s heart, if she is to become his true wife with no lingering regrets from the past affection. Thus, reconciliation is achieved as the two partners face each other as mature individuals joining together in mutual candor their separate affective responsibilities. The marriage is a moral compromise for the heroine, but the ceremony of emotional and moral catharsis also entails a compromise in regard to traditional male honor on the part of the husband. This is compensated for by the establishment of a fuller relationship. It is not simply an emotional compensation, for the husband is now given a very important practical concession: her acquiescence in the traditional ritual that will make her a member of his extended family. Until then she had refused to go through many details of the traditional wedding ceremony, including bowing to the father-in-law, but now she compromises on that point.

This formula of reconciliation through sympathetic understanding, which is developed in the minds of the parties concerned but also enacted in the details of social ceremony, is certainly one realistic way of solving the problematized situation of the relation between the sexes. The formula is not offered as a mere solution to a local problem, but is worked out in other works of Y¡m Sang-s¡p, as a more general philosophy in the author’s continuing reflections on the situation of Korean society in the early twentieth century facing the difficult challenges of modernization and colonialism. Its merit, and also its demerit, lies in the fact that it is not an ideological formula but a concrete dialectic of interpersonal relations, understood not so much in analytical terms as through an intuitive grasp of the full complexity of human emotions in a given situation.

To introduce a seminal idea, an affective gesture or a cultural form from an alien source can only upset the existing harmony, Y¡m Sang-s¡p suggests, until a new adjustment is made in the totality of social reality which is enmeshed with the existing cultural regimen to create a new equilibrium. This adjustment is a complex process requiring a new configuration of many cultural forms and social institutions, which can come into being only through conflict and struggle, especially in the difficult colonial situation.

V

New cultural contact will have a disturbing impact on the receiving culture, and more so if it is potentially a great transformative influence on the existing regimen of existence. Of course, this is not simply due to its intrinsic importance but also to the circumstances accompanying its introduction, especially the prestige and the power of the source from which it originates. It is important to note that the idea of romantic love came to Korea with all the prestige and power of modernity, embodied in a compromising way in Japanese imperialism. The idea of modernity brought the totality of the existing culture into question overnight, as something which needed to be transformed or rejected. The decompression of the whole culture gave rise to extravagant emotions and ideas. Yi Kwang-su exhibited all these symptoms, with a full load of programs for modernity. But whatever extravagant emotions arose, they soon had to face a reality test, for they produced many upheavals in practical life as well as in psychic health, pushing the imbalance caused in emotional and moral life to the verge of insanity.

To make the situation clear, it will be useful to consider an extreme case of existential imbalance. We have spoken of extravagant emotions and ideas. The word, “extravagant,” can be made to carry a pathological overtone. For the condition of madness depicted in “The Green Frog in the Specimen Room” is indeed similar to the condition diagnosed by the existential psychoanalyst Ludwig Binswanger as Extravagance (V e r s t i e g e n h e i t), a pathological condition caused by going out of the bounds of a healthy life (extra, beyond; v a g a r i, wander). In its spatial structure, according to Binswanger, human existence can be projected in breadth and height and there can occur disproportion between the two dimensions. Going too far in height, “the Dasein rising higher than is appropriate to the breadth of the experiential and intellectual horizon,” can lead to Extravagance; included therein is the situation of being fixated on an Extravagant idea, ideology, feeling, or plan. The case of “manic ideation” is also close to Extravagance, though it has not quite gone over to a pathological state. Here there is a flight of ideas and feelings, as in the case of being carried away by wishes and fantasies, but with no real achievement in wisdom or in the “penetration of the problematic structure of a particular situation.” As no real decision in life is taken, the authentic aspect of existence suffers, “the authentic” meaning in Binswanger’s conception the “heights (or depths) which can be attained only insofar as the Dasein undergoes the arduous process of choosing itself and growing into maturity.” Extravagance too involves these existential decisions, but on a very narrow base, stalled on “the excessive heights of decision that outweigh the breadth of ‘experience.’”2 0 Applying these ideas to the situation of Korea in modern times, we may say that many programs of modernity in their inception resembled indeed the condition of Extravagance or at least of manic ideation, the jerry-built three-story house in “The Green Frog” graphically presenting a spatial analogy.

This strange condition could not merely be explained in terms of the individual. The whole society was involved in the giddy and demoralizing experience of going too far. Another important thing to note in Binswanger’s analysis of going too far is the observation that all these aberrations occur with a change in the basis of the possibility for a genuine elevation of existence and in” the koinonia or community of other basic potentialities of human existence,” that is, a change resulting in the loss of “the communio of love and the com m u n i c a t i o of friendship.” Faced with the sudden challenge of modernity and colonialism, the Koreans experienced a sudden shattering of their basic frames of communion and communication. In terms of social and political externalities, rapid modernization had to be on the agenda, but, for better or worse, this also meant a transformation of the inner person and the establishment of a new social framework for transformed persons. What was needed was a program of social and cultural renewal, initiating a truthful communication among those who could reflect upon new modes of feelings and thoughts. “The Records of the Newly-Wed” can be read as a lesson in the establishment of a communicative community by the awakening of a new understanding of the human situation. It was a small lesson, confined to the two individuals going through the ceremony of truthful communication, and it would have to take on a different kind of program if it were to meet the need for cultural renewal commensurate with the requirements of the times.

In this case, the move in the direction of communicative openness ends with a happy result, but the great task of social reconstruction is much more difficult. Yet while Y¡m Sang-s¡p continued in his treatment of broader themes of social crisis, he felt that central to this crisis of his times was the same problem—destruction of the frame of interpersonal communication and the need for its reconstruction. In reflecting on this, he grasped a basic moment necessary for the constitution of such a social frame or space: the ability, intellectual and empathetic, to consider viewpoints besides one’s own. The heroine of the “The Records of the Newly-Wed” takes seriously the principle of the freedom of choice in regard to one’s sexual partner. She suffers because she has to accept compromise, but her suffering is not only on account of her extravagant ideology of “free love,” but also due to the pain and embarrassment her principle causes all around. In the last analysis her sense of realism in entering into a marriage of convenience comes from her ability to consider the full context of her choice, sexual and moral. Her husband also shares this ability, which is expressed as tolerance for an extraordinary demand from his bride; his overall generosity and understanding attitude come as much from his capacity for a fuller consideration as from his love.

Perhaps there is nothing especially perspicacious in Y¡m Sangs¡p’s depiction of the process of gentle accommodation and reconciliation two young lovers undergo with appropriate lessons in considerateness, understanding, and generosity, but in the context of the development of modernity in Korea this is more significant than it first appears. For the reflective attitude exemplified really constitutes a pivotal stage in the development of modernity. A typical Y¡m Sangs¡p character is more often than not an introspective character—not quite in the manner of an inward-looking romantic full of his own subjectivity, but as a reflective man who ruminates on himself and the world. Faced with external occasions, he habitually weighs the multiple possibilities of interpretation concerning the motives of others and possible lines of action in the hope of arriving at the most peaceful choice in the field of behavioral alternatives. The reflectiveness of the Y¡m Sang-s¡p character can be said to represent a basic trait of man on the way to modernity with its increasing reflexivity. In this respect Y¡m hit upon an essential quality of modern man and society more accurately than many other modernizers of the time with their ideological platforms. Yet, at the same time, we may note that the importance of reflectiveness already existed in Confucian ethics, though with an emphasis on ethical, rather than rational, reflexivity. Y¡m Sang-s¡p perhaps wanted to see ethical reflectiveness of the traditional sort renewed, or considering that the crisis mentality is usually marked by the abridgment of reflective space in the individual or the collectivity, he might have simply wanted to point it out as an indispensible precondition for a communicatively viable social life. In any case, reflectiveness here constitutes an inner space where diverse alternatives are weighed. It is in turn a precondition for the constitution of social space where the self and others come together without one being subsumed in the romantic project of another, and the possibility of communicative accommodation arises. To put it in Binswangerian terms, through these spaces, personal and collective, the spatial structure of existence is constituted with its breadth and height appropriately corrected for communication and communion.

But this reflective openness, now more open than ever as it goes beyond the limits of traditional ethics, carries its own problems. Tolerance and forgiveness are pivotal virtues in his world of moral choice. So is compromise—not only compromise among different positions and interests, but compromise with the conditions of the given reality in general, including the status quo of Korea under colonial rule. In “The Records of the Newly-Wed,” we note that the bridegroom’s family belongs to the relatively well-off middle class. The bridegroom received his education in Japan, and works simultaneously for the colonial Government-General and for a construction company operating in Korea and Manchuria. There are ample hints in the story that it is the family’s financial means and the husband’s social standing in the colonial political structure that make possible the generosity, forbearance, and eventually humane reconciliation of the story.

Romantic love, first introduced as an extravagant idea, begins to be naturalized as a credible form of emotional experience as it makes purchase on social reality with the mediation of the internal space of reflective ethical sensibility and the interpersonal space of communication. It is now a natural part of the apparatus of human personality —of a personality in harmony with itself and with social reality. Romantic love as an emotion becomes authentic as it ceases to be an extravagant idée fixe, sticking out from the natural and spontaneous life of the individual and community, and begins to blend into an existential space of proportionate breadth and height. Or it becomes almost authentic, we ought to say, as the amplitude of the existential space authenticating romantic love corresponds to the political and social reality constituted by colonialism. Not to be extravagant is to habituate oneself to colonialism. The authenticity achieved is then a colonial authenticity founded on the falsehood of colonialism. How the authentic emotion and self developed in a colonial context goes over into bad faith is another problem that should be dealt with in another context.

[김호기의 ‘우리 시대 사상의 풍경’](6) 인문주의, 인간과 삶에 대한 질문 : 이어령과 김우창 - 경향신문

[김호기의 ‘우리 시대 사상의 풍경’](6) 인문주의, 인간과 삶에 대한 질문 : 이어령과 김우창 - 경향신문

김호기의 ‘우리 시대 사상의 풍경’
(6) 인문주의, 인간과 삶에 대한 질문 : 이어령과 김우창

수정 2013.12.02

김호기 | 연세대 교수·사회학

“새 한국문화를 창조하자”는 이어령식 해법, “이성적 사회를 회복하자”는 김우창식 해법

사상이 세계를 바라보는 방법과 내용을 말한다면 그 주체는 당연히 인간이다. 인간이란 무엇인가는 어떤 사상이라 하더라도 출발점을 이루는 질문이다. 서양 근대 철학을 연 르네 데카르트는 인간을 생각하는 존재로 봤고, 정신분석학을 개척한 지그문트 프로이트와 자크 라캉은 인간을 무의식 또는 욕망의 존재로 이해했다. 사회생물학자 에드워드 윌슨은 인간을 생물학적 존재로 파악했다. 분명한 것은 우리 인간이 이성과 감성을 지닌 하나의 소우주로 존재한다는 점이다. 이러한 인간에 대한 탐구는 인문주의의 핵심 영역을 이룬다.

인간에 대한 탐구를 인문주의의 핵심이라고 할 때 이어령(왼쪽 사진)과 김우창(오른쪽)은 한국의 인문주의를 대표하는 지식인들이다. 이어령이 한국의 문사철 전통에 기반한 인문주의를 일궈냈다면, 김우창은 한국 사회와 세계 사회의 경계에 서서 인문주의 본래의 정신을 탐구해 왔다. | 경향신문 자료사진

▲ ‘문사철의 인문학자’ 이어령, 정감 있는 디지털문화 설파
‘지식인들의 사상가’ 김우창, 인문주의 본래의 정신 강조

■ 인문주의란 무엇인가

인문주의(humanism)란 이중적 의미를 갖는다. 좁은 의미의 인문주의는 14세기 이후 서양에서 등장한 르네상스 정신을 지칭한다. 이탈리아의 단테, 네덜란드의 에라스무스, 영국의 토머스 모어 등 르네상스 지식인들은 그리스·로마 사상의 재발견을 통해 중세의 신본주의를 거부하고 인본주의를 제창했다. 넓은 의미의 인문주의는 르네상스 정신을 기반으로 해 발전된 인간 중심의 사상, 즉 인간을 세계의 중심에 놓아두고 역사와 사회를 이해하려는 사상적 흐름을 통칭한다. 서구 계몽주의는 이런 광의의 인문주의의 한 전형을 이룬다.

우리 사회에서 인문주의는 나름의 역사를 갖고 있다. 전통적인 유교문화는 ‘문사철(문학·역사학·철학)’을 중시했고, 서양에서 유입된 제도로서의 대학 역시 인문학을 그 중심에 놓아뒀다. 돌아보면 우리 사회 인문주의는 이중적 과제를 안고 있었다. 전통적 인문주의의 재해석이 하나였다면, 서구적 인문주의의 주체적 수용은 다른 하나였다. 이러한 이중적 과제는 한국인이란 누구인가라는 구체적 질문에서 출발해 인간이란 누구인가라는 보편적 질문으로 나아갔다.

인문주의가 대학과 학문의 중심을 이뤄온 만큼 우리 인문주의 발전에 기여해온 인문학자들은 결코 적지 않다. 우리 전통사상을 연구한 철학자 박종홍, 예술의 사회적 의미를 탐색한 영문학자 도정일, 서양 문명을 심도 깊게 소개한 역사학자 주경철 등은 우리 인문주의를 대표해온 지식인들이다. 여기서 나는 두 인문주의자들을 살펴보고자 한다. ‘한국적 인문주의’를 일궈온 이어령과 ‘보편적 인문주의’를 탐구한 김우창이 그들이다.

■ 이어령, 한국적 인문주의

이어령의 <디지로그>

나는 천재라는 말을 별로 믿지 않는다. 타고난 것보다 익히는 게 더 중요하다고 보기 때문이다. 하지만 우리 역사에서 세 사람은 정말 천재였을지도 모른다고 생각해 왔다. 아홉 번 연속 장원급제한 율곡 이이와 서자로 태어났음에도 당당하게 자기 시대를 열었던 초정 박제가, 그리고 해방 이후 종합 인문학자로 활동해온 이어령이 그들이다. 이어령은 국문학자·문화학자·기호학자·소설가 등을 아우르며 천재적인 글쓰기의 역량을 발휘해 왔다.

이어령은 1934년 충청남도 아산에서 태어났다. 서울대에서 국문학을 공부했고 이화여대에서 가르치다 은퇴했다. 출발부터 그는 범상치 않았다. 대학을 다니던 스물두 살에 기성세대를 비판하고 새로운 세대의 출발을 알린 <우상의 파괴>(1956)를, 스물네 살에 한국전쟁으로 모든 게 파괴된 이 땅에 창조의 씨앗을 뿌려야 한다는 <화전민의 선언>(1958)을 발표해 전후세대를 이끄는 기린아로 등장했다.

이어령을 종합 인문학자로 널리 알린 책은 1962년 경향신문에 연재한 <흙 속에 저 바람 속에>였다. 이 책에서 그는 한국인이란 누구인가, 우리 문화의 본질은 무엇인가, 우리 체험의 원형은 무엇인가를 묻고 또 답했다. 전통문화의 비판적 성찰을 통한 새로운 한국문화의 모색은 그가 추구한 평생의 과제였다. 그는 1970년대 ‘신바람 문화’를 제시했고, 1988년 서울올림픽에선 남북 분단과 동서 냉전을 극복하려는 ‘벽을 넘어서’를 선보였다. 또 <축소 지향의 일본인>에서는 이웃 일본 문화에 대한 날카로운 통찰을 보여줬다.

숱한 베스트셀러를 출간해온 그는 최근 <디지로그>(2006)에서 ‘디지로그(digilog)’를 선언했다. 디지로그는 ‘디지털’과 ‘아날로그’를 결합한 조어다. 그의 메시지는 정감 있는 디지털 문화를 창출함으로써 우리 사회가 세계 사회의 새로운 리더가 되자는 데 있다. 디지로그론은 우리 문화의 특수성과 세계 문화의 보편성 사이에 가교를 놓으려 했던 이어령식 문화론의 결산인 것으로 보인다. 정보사회 안에 내재한 개인주의와 공동체주의, 하드웨어적 특성과 소프트웨어적 속성을 생산적으로 결합하려는 그의 발상은 역시 그답게 신선한 아이디어들로 가득 차 있다.

일생에 걸쳐 이어령은 전통과 현대, 동양과 서양, 산업사회와 정보사회를 가로질러 사유해 왔다. 그리고 그 안에서 한국인의 정체성을 재해석하고, 이에 기반해 우리 문화가 나아가야 할 방향을 모색했다. 번득이는 영감들로 가득한 그의 책들은 절로 감탄사가 나오게 한다. 물론 이러한 통찰들에서 논리적 연관성과 경험적 엄밀성이 다소 취약한 것은 아쉬움으로 남는다. 하지만 그가 펼친 아이디어들은 우리 문화를 제대로 이해하고 새롭게 만들어가는 데 소중한 자산이 될 것으로 보인다.

■ 김우창, 보편적 인문주의

김우창의 <정치와 삶의 세계>

사상가의 독자는 대중과 지식인의 둘로 나뉜다. 누구는 대중의 사상가인 반면, 또 누구는 지식인들의 사상가다. 우리 사회에서 ‘지식인들의 사상가’를 한 사람 꼽으라면 그는 김우창이다. 한국 사회와 세계 사회의 경계에 서서 이성과 감성, 개인과 구조, 구체성과 보편성의 의미를 묻고, 인간성을 온전히 실현할 수 있는 사회를 모색해 온 그는 인문주의 본래의 정신에 가장 충실한 보편적인 인문주의자라 할 만하다.

김우창은 1936년 전라남도 함평에서 태어났다. 서울대에서 영문학을, 미국 하버드대에서 문학·철학·경제사를 공부했다. 고려대에서 영문학을 가르치다 은퇴한 다음 이화여대에서 가르쳐 왔다. 그는 1970년대 ‘세계의 문학’의 편집위원으로 활동하면서 특유의 문학평론과 사회비평을 선보였다. 그의 <궁핍한 시대의 시인>(1977)과 <지상의 척도>(1981)는 학부 시절 내가 문학과 사회를 이해하는 데 가장 큰 영향을 미친 책들이다.

이른바 ‘진영 논리’가 두드러진 우리 사회에서 김우창은 이채로운 존재다. 그의 문학평론은 민중문학론과 자유주의문학론의 이분법을 거부했고, 그의 사회비평은 보수와 진보, 모더니즘과 포스트모더니즘, 민족주의와 세계주의의 이분법 역시 넘어서 있었다. 그가 추구한 것은 ‘심미적 이성’과 이에 기반한 ‘이성적 사회’였다. 심미적 이성이란 말을 쓴 메를로 퐁티에 따라 그는 유동하는 현실을 주목하고, 그것을 이성의 질서 속에 거두어들여 이론과 현실, 개인과 사회의 새로운 공존 및 조화를 추구했다.

김우창의 저작들 가운데 내 시선을 특히 사로잡은 것은 2000년에 출간된 <정치와 삶의 세계>다. 내가 이 책을 주목한 이유는 인문학자로서 그의 역량이 유감없이 발휘된 저작이라는 데 있다. 우리 사회를 재생산해온 조정원리가 발전국가에서 신자유주의로 변화된 중대한 전환점이었던 1997년 외환위기와 그 결과에 대해 그는 탁월한 인문학적 성찰을 보여줬다.

김우창의 메시지는 규범의 회복이다. 폭력적인 근대화 과정에서 잃어온 이성과 성실성, 도덕적 가치를 새롭게 정초(定礎)하는 것만이 삶의 작은 행복들을 가능하게 한다는 게 그의 주장이다. 경제위기로부터 벗어나는 것도 시급하지만, 더욱 중요한 것은 인간과 삶의 의미에 대한 근본적 반성이다.

우리 삶을 구성하는 합리성, 양심, 예절, 환경, 지역공동체, 세계화, 그리고 정치에 대한 반성적 성찰을 통해 그는 좋은 사회를 위한 정신적 토양을 탐구한다.

독문학자 문광훈은 김우창의 인문주의가 갖는 특성을 ‘이성적 사유의 현대적 가능성’ ‘내면성의 사회적 확산’ ‘반성적 사유의 교향악’으로 파악한다. 온당하면서도 정확한 평가다. 철학적 인간학에 기반해 이성적 사회의 실현을 꿈꿔온 그의 인문주의는 우리 사회에서 관찰할 수 있는 가장 넓고 깊은 사상의 모험이라 할 수 있다. 그의 책들이 대중들이 더 많이 접근할 수 있도록 좀 더 쉬운 언어로 쓰였으면 하는 아쉬움이 물론 없지는 않다. 하지만 복합사회에 대응하는 사유의 복합성을 강조하는 그에게 이는 쉽지 않은 일인 것으로 보인다.

■ 인문주의의 미래

최근 우리 사회에서는 ‘인문학 열풍’이 거세다. 주목할 것은, 사회에서 인문학에 대한 관심이 높아진 것에 반해 정작 대학 안에선 무관심이 커져 왔다는 점이다. 이러한 차이는 세대가 놓인 서로 다른 위치에서 비롯된다. 젊은 세대에겐 취업이 당장 중요한 문제라면, 제법 나이든 세대에겐 이제 삶이 중요한 문제로 등장했기 때문이다.

이러한 인문학 열풍은 현대사회의 구조변동과 무관하지 않다. 여기에는 두 요인이 중요하다. 현대사회가 낳아온 소외와 관료화에 따른 삶의 황량함에 대한 자각이 하나라면, 최근 신자유주의 세계화와 정보사회의 진전에 따른 노동시장의 변동이 다른 하나다. 특히 후자가 가져온 청년실업, 퇴출의 공포, 조기 은퇴, 노후 일자리 부족 등은 사회학자 리처드 세넷이 강조하듯 인간성을 부식시키는 자본주의 현실에 맞서 인간 존재와 삶의 의미에 대한 근본적인 문제를 던지게 한다.

인간이란 무엇인가에 대한 질문은 결국 왜 사느냐, 어떻게 사느냐, 무엇을 위해 사느냐로 귀결된다. 인간의 모습이 하나가 아니듯, 삶의 의미도 하나일 수는 없다. 우리 인간은, 우리 한국인은 같은 존재이면서도 다른 존재다. 존재의 의미를 묻고 자신에게 걸맞은 삶을 기획해야 하는 것은 현재 우리에게 부여된 중요한 과제이며, 이에 대한 응답은 인문주의가 맡아야 할 마땅한 책무다. 우리 인문주의의 과거를 돌아보고 미래를 모색하는 데 이어령과 김우창의 인문주의는 더없이 소중한 자산이 될 것이라고 나는 생각한다.

Kim, K. M. (1998). Korean aesthetic consciousness and the problem of aesthetic rationality. Canadian Aesthetics Journal, 2. - References - Scientific Research Publishing

Kim, K. M. (1998). Korean aesthetic consciousness and the problem of aesthetic rationality. Canadian Aesthetics Journal, 2.

has been cited by the following article:

TITLE: The Aesthetic Turn in Everyday Life in Korea
AUTHORS: Kwang Myung Kim
KEYWORDS: Aesthetics of Everyday Life; Everydayness; Aesthetic Turn; Korean Aesthetic Consciousness; Aesthetic Contemplation
JOURNAL NAME: Open Journal of Philosophy, Vol.3 No.3, July 30, 2013
ABSTRACT: We are living in the transitional age from the rational, analytical, and scientific to the cultural, sensitive, and aesthetic. The aesthetics of everyday life lies at the center of this age. There is no boundary between art and life in contemporary art. Almost all the contents and objects of everyday life became a work of art in the condition of searching for the aesthetic. Since aesthetic theory was shifted from the artist-centered or a work of art-centered to the audience, spectator or beholder-centered, art and everyday life were more closely related to each other. So aesthetic attention or attitude is not specific to art, but pervasive broadly in everyday life. We can embrace the aesthetic concerns in everything we make and use every day. In the long tradition of Korean art, it can be seen that aesthetic consciousness is steeped in day-to-day life as well as the arts. I want to consider the problems of everydayness, Korean aesthetic consciousness in daily life, and contemplation in the aesthetic consciousness. Korean art was characterized by its “lack of refinement” and “nonchalance”. The characteristics of Korean art as the qualities of “technique without technique”, “Planning without plan”, “asymmetrical symmetry” have dominated the everyday consciousness of Korean people as well as Korean art. The extension of aesthetic emotion through experimentation shows us the change of aesthetic consciousness as a new possibility of interpretation. We stand in an urgent situation of the need for a new theory of art. It will be related to the future of aesthetics. For this reason, I think we have to consider the meaning of the aesthetic turn in everyday life.

Kwang-Myung Kim, Korean Aesthetic Consciousness and the Problem of Aesthetic Rationality - PhilPapers

Korean Aesthetic Consciousness and the Problem of Aesthetic Rationality

Kwang-Myung Kim

Canadian Aesthetics Journal 2 (1998) Copy BIBTEX

Abstract

Aesthetic emotions are reputed to be irrational, but, aesthetic emotions as mental phenomena bear complex relations to rationality. Emotions give us knowledge about the world. The aesthetic consciousness of Korean is the internal roots of the Korean's mentality. The aesthetic consciousness and the mentality are inseparably related to each other. The aesthetic consciousness as the analogy of reason, in the context of A.G. Baumgarten plays a role to extend the logical world. Aesthetic rationality is the common sense or the communicative rationality of it. For the argument of universality we discuss the problem of aesthetic rationality. Since the modern aesthetics, the problem of aesthetic rationality came on the stage of aesthetics. Shamanism as the deep-rooted element of Korean mentality is the most authentic cultural legacy of Koreans. Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and other religious elements influence the unique nature of the Korean character together with shamanism. They play a decisive role in determining the Korean mentality or consciousness. For Koreans, nature is a mirror of the self and a world of meditation which gives life, restoring all things to their proper state. As a peculiar color consciousness, Korean monochrome is characterized by vitality, spontaneity and unconcern for technical perfection. Korean art also tends to be devoid of an artificial movement and this reflects dislike of disturbance, deformation and convention. If we are to consider Korean contemporary art from an international perspective, we must define what it means to be Korean, i.e. our cultural habits and artistic elements hidden in the artist's unconsciousness. In this age of multiculturalism, the new interpretation on tradition makes it possible to merge the Korean art with the world stage. The extension of aesthetic emotion through experimentation shows us the change of aesthetic consciousness as a new possibility of interpretation.

Keywords

Daoism art aesthetic rationality aesthetic consciousness Korea Korean aesthetics shamanism Buddhism Confucianism

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