공동체로서의 지식사회를 위한 윤리교육의 과제

Abstract

Our society is called ‘knowledge society’. The knowledge society is the society in which knowledge is the basis of social development and economic profit. The knowledge society contributed a lot to the prosperity of general human life. However, it brought some negative side-effects. The purpose of this paper consists in examining basic features of the knowledge society, showing a direction for developing the knowledge society as a desirable community to live in, and suggesting some tasks of ethical education for it. In chapter 2, I explained some basic features of knowledge society. The knowledge society is mainly characterized by ‘the pursuit of profit’ and ‘market fundamentalism’. Market fundamentalism is an ideology which believes that the public interest is best served by the accumulated effects of freeing people to pursue their private interests. However, the unlimited pursuit of self-interest does not necessarily serve the common interest of the public good. Here I pointed out the fact that the knowledge society should not be confused with 'knowledge economy' nor with 'market society.' When the knowledge society is understood as the commercialized market society, it could destroy or corrupt itself. In chapter 3, I explained some basic features of information society, especially the concept of 'digital revolution' and 'the emergence of cyber space'. Here I compared two approaches to information society. One is the instrumental perspective, which regards the technological skills and knowledge merely as an instrument for one's profit or purpose. The other is the communitarian perspective, which regards the cyber space as a reality, as a new form of human life. In the latter case, netizenship and its ethics are important. I argued that this communitarian approach is needed for solving various social problems caused in modern information and knowledge society. In chapter 4, I argued that we need to approach the knowledge society with a communitarian perspective in order to overcome the social problems caused by mistaken commercialized concept of the knowledge society. I especially dealt with the concept of the knowledge society as a 'globalized society'. 'Globerlized society' should be understood as a society in which the virtues such as tolerance, caring for the disadvantaged, respecting the comprehensive cultures are respected. Then I suggested some tasks of ethical education for the knowledge society. First, we need to teach netizenship, together with its ethics. Second, we need to teach the internal values and ethics of the technological activity in information society or knowledge society. Third, we need to teach various abilities and virtues required for the knowledge society such as creativity, the ability to learn by oneself, communication skills, respecting and caring others, open-mindedness, the love for the community, sharing, equality, etc., Fourth, we need to teach the cosmopolitan citizenwhip for a globalized society, together with the communitarian ethics of caring as well as comprehensive cosmopolitan civic virtues. Finally, we have to teach the limitation of the market value, together with teaching to respect the respective internal goods of each practice.