고유섭의 미술철학에 대한 생명론적 접근

Abstract

Koh Yusup claims that Eastern art is an art not for art's sake but for human life. An art for human life is for him a transformed extension of the edificationism of beauty - by the edificationism of beauty he means a movement of melting beauty in a comprehensive moral pot. The edificationist emphasis on morals, however, can be a strait jacket to both human life and art. Edificationist moral discipline, when enforced too rigidly, may hamper the otherwise free spirit of art. Koh notices this problem and modifies edificationism by relating art to play. Even though it is actually a concept borrowed from Friedrich Schiller, Koh reinterprets play as a spontaneous practice of morals without any oppressive enforcement of them. Koh claims that Schiller's play thus reinterpreted is the same as that of Confucius when the latter says the "play in rituals," since only moral human beings can play both with and in beauty. Play is a concept which expresses the healthy and elastic relationship between beauty and morals. By modifying them to be mutually compatible, Koh interprets an art for human life as the gay play of beauty and morals. According to him, this gaiety is a hallmark of traditional Korean works of arts. He develops this notion into the philosophy of art as life and into the world-view of animism and shamanism. The animism which Koh found in our ancient fine arts should be understood in relationship with Shamanism. Shamanism is the Northern world-view which is composed of the following three tenets: 1) The view of life which consists in the belief that human soul lasts forever even after death. 2) The view of the other world which consists in the belief that man returns to the world in heaven where his ancestors dwells. 3) The view of the transmigration of souls which consists in the belief that the souls of ancestors in the other world come back to this life embedded in the bodies of newborn babies. Shaman is a moderator of communication who mediates this earthly world and the other world in heaven, the living and the dead, self and the other. Shamanism is based on the concept of circular time implied by the view of the transmigration of souls and on the concept of multi-layered spaces implied by the view of the other world. It is clearly distinguished from Confucianism since the latter understands human life as what is located only in the ordinary life-world between heaven and earth. It is also distinguished from Taoism since the latter is in search of the perpetual youth and longevity only in this earthly world.