아름다움과 진리- 우현(又玄) 고유섭(高裕燮) 예술철학에 대한 존재론적 해석 -

Abstract

This study is primarily focused on the conceptual relationship between beauty and truth in Yu-Seop Koh's philosophy of fine arts. Koh has a big reputation as a pioneer in the historical study of Korean art and aesthetics. He certainly deserves this reputation. He was the first Korean to study aesthetics and art history in college. Furthermore, he still remains a crucial figure in the historical study of Korean art and aesthetics. But it is not straightforward to define him as an aesthetic thinker. His bachelor’s thesis is about Konrad Fiedler’s philosophy of fine arts. As is well-known, Fiedler is very critical of aesthetics. He believes that neither aesthetic sensation nor aesthetic theory has anything to do with art. According to Fiedler, art is a search for truth and knowledge. He denies the privileged position of conceptual language as the medium of acquiring knowledge. The essence of art is the world-formative activity, expressing the world in its pure visibility. We have an access to the perceptual knowledge of the world in its non-conceptual essence through the formative activity of art. Fiedler was an inspiring follower of Kant. But his philosophy of fine arts took Kant’s ideas in a new direction. I think that Fiedler’s philosophy was constantly moving towards a special kind of a phenomenology very similar to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. Interestingly, it seems that Koh’s philosophy too was moving towards a phenomenology of perception, which shows, I believe, the lasting impact of Fiedler on Koh’s development of his own philosophy of fine arts. Koh maintains that an artistic beauty equals to an artistic knowledge of truth. For his argument he analyzes the Korean word for ‘beauty’, namely ‘아름다움’(pronounced as ‘arumdaum’). According to him, ‘아름다움’ means a true or good knowledge. Koh believes that an artistic beauty is an artistic revealing of a true or good knowledge. And I think that Koh’s philosophy of fine arts can be defined as a prototype of a phenomenological ontology of art in the Heideggerian sense.