사무엘 존슨과 18세기 계몽주의 공적 지식인의 초상: 21세기 융복합 시대의 새로운 통섭적 지식인을 향하여

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) as a most representative public intellectual in the 18th-century England. It seems to me that we need badly a public intellectual like Johnson in this age of functional specialization. Many literary scholars and humanities intellectuals now stick to their ivory tower separated from the secular realities of the world. They tend to be secluded technical producer of academic papers for the very small number of professionals. They cannot reach the society and history to which they belong. This is the very beginning of the so-called “Crisis of the Humanities.” We can discuss Dr. Johnson as public intellectual in three aspects. First of all, Johnson was a great scholar critic. As T. S. Eliot pointed out, Johnson was “one of the three greatest critics of poetry in English literature” (162) including John Dryden and S. T. Coleridge. The very essences of his criticism come from wide knowledge and acute understanding of language, close reading strategy, historical imagination and deep understanding of the humanities. Secondly, Johnson was a great prolific writer called “Great Cham of Literature” by Tobias Smollett. He read a wide range of books with various topics. Thirdly, Johnson was not a narrow specialist but an open-minded generalist who had a wide variety of intellectual curiosities and convergent or consilient methods. In other words, Johnson was really a public intellectual in the civil society of the 18th-century England with a vision of common reader, common culture and common humanities. How can we thresh Dr. Johnson as a critical intellectual for the 21st century? We can propose nine tentative memos as follows: (1) understanding importance of language in the humanities, and integration and interpenetration of language and literature; (2) the restoration of power of literature for the concrete life and society; (3) expanding the frontier of literary genres for the establishing the wisdom literature; (4) the return of dialogical imagination for the effective communication and comparison; (5) reestablishment of British literary tradition with balance, toleration and golden mean; (6) development of the convergent or consilient humanities; (7) reinvention of public intellectual with wise reading and critical consciousness; (8) avoidance of the philistinism and specialized professionalism; and (9) the pursuit of the whole man including spiritual problem in this age of rationalistic instrumentalism. In order to build a new convergent or consilient humanities in the public sphere for the 21st century we have to redraw and reproduce the portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson as public intellectual in the year of tricentenary anniversary of his birth.