사회인문학의 창안: ‘사회의 인문성’ 提高, ‘인문학의 사회성’ 發揚을 향한 융합학문의 모색

Abstract

Many scholars agree that nowadays the Humanities are in a severe crisis. For the last several decades, Social Science and Market Science have dominated the main flows and discourses of the scholar community and the society. The humanities also became market-oriented with emphasis on productivity and efficiency, at the same time, secluded themselves from the society by sticking only to the purity of learning and therefore detaching themselves from the liberal arts and science. But the social propensity of being anti- or counter-humanities became become worse, and humanities’ propensity of being anti- or counter-society has become deeper as well. Almost all of the remedies for the crisis, however, have been including only the surgical, financial, and functional approaches. Now, more fundamental, subversive and revolutionary ideas and designs are needed. Without those kinds of sea changing of thoughts, it would be impossible to overcome the current crisis of the academia and the society. What remains? First of all, we should recover and reinvent the social quintessence of the humanities as a Social Humanities. Every field of the humanities basically has been and must be social. Human science and social science fundamentally come from the society, as social products. Without close communication with the society, human and social science will lose their ground at all. Of course social science also should be very humanistic by coping with market efficiency. In order to transform the society humanistic, the Social Humanities must pursue the followings always bearing it in their minds ; The social humanities should pursue 1) the union of the public/entirety and the individuality/internality, 2) the union of communication/dialogue and the interconnectedness/integrity, 3) the topos/substantiality and the universality/worldliness. 4) the general education and the specialty, 5) the criticism and the commitment/ participation. Based on these codes, the scholars should try to communicate between the apparent divisions such as the Humanities and the Social Science, the Humanities and the Science, and also should pursue the disciplinary studies and area studies. By doing so, it would help retrieving the essence of the integrated Art and Science. Ultimately, the scholars should contribute to create a more humanistic academia, society and the world, and try to eliminate the human pains which is the eternal calling for the Humanities and all the other academia.