동서 ‘문화⋅문명’의 개념과 그 전개 - 현대 문명 담론의 개념적 이해를 중심으로 -

Abstract

Generally, modern era is called the age of ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’. Particularly, crossed with today’s globalization arguments, the civilization discourse striving to recognize the spirit of the age and the crisis in the post-Cold War era through ‘civilization’ linked with culture and flexibly respond to the circumstances has been emerging as the 21st century’s new topic of conversation. In line with this trend, the paper attempts to conduct an etymological analysis of both culture and civilization to gain a conceptual understanding of ‘modern civilization discourse’ and build a foundation for its creative development. In addition, it intends to serve as a stepping stone for future-oriented ‘civilization studies’ by re-examining an occidental foundation and contemporary evolution of both of these. The semantic formation of Western culture and civilization was developed along with the fate of ‘civil class’ and ‘civil society’ during the modern Enlightenment period in the 17th and 18th century. While the concept of ‘civilization’ reflects the social fate of civil class in England and France, the concept of ‘culture’ implies the fate of civil class in Germany. German intellect gave a special meaning to culture and added cultural criticism to the Enlightenment-oriented civilization and also alienated the civilization, which led to hostile disintegration between both of these. Nevertheless, the present concept of ‘civilization' is being steadily reincarnated as a ‘global perspective’ defining an ecological network of civilization. or as a modern concept of civilization focusing on decentralization for true co-existence of human civilizations. Also, it is continuing to be creatively recognized as metamorphosed into a modern concept of ‘co-existence between civilizations.'As such, including the Western European conceptual history of culture and civilization, this paper examined the Western Europe’s arguments over complicated concepts unrolled concerning these two words and also analyzed the development of oriental meaning intertwined with the Western European arguments due to its interpretation and introduction. By doing so, the paper intended to enhance in-depth understandings on the several Eastern and Western civilization discourses in modern era and thus, engage public opinion to the matter of possibility of establishing ‘civilizational studies’ which will cover the deficit of ‘cultural studies’, a currently active research area. That is because the activation of ‘cultural studies’ can anticipate more enriched implications and enlarged horizons on condition that it is paralleled by ‘civilization studies’ having mutually supportive relationship.