한국정치사상 어떻게 할 것인가?: 반성과 대안

Abstract

This paper addressed the subject, “How we can engage in the Korean Political Thought,” which the author has been long agonized over as a strategy to overcome Western-centrism in Korean political thought. Although its academic quality is not elaborate and solid yet, the paper was presented at the Conference organized by the Institute of Social Sciences at Sogang University in May 2007, for the purpose of soliciting provocative comments from colleagues and students at the Sogang community. In the paper three issues were addressed as preliminary reflection: what political thought is, the relationship between the change of the world and the innovation of political thought, and the meaning of “Korea” in the Korean political thought. Then three alternative strategies were presented. The first strategy was the deliberate reverse strategy of Western-centrism by “Koreanizing” academic agenda-setting in political thought, the refusal of interpreting Korean politics by indiscriminate reliance upon Western political theory, and placing Korean politics at the center instead of marginaliz ing them. The second strategy consisted of three components: Koreanization of Western political thought, making traditional political thought “contemporary”(or the upgrading traditional political thought to keep up with the contemporary world), and focusing on contemporary Korean politics for inventing new political thought. The third strategy was to follow general methods observed in the history of political thought: to focus on significant political phenomena and events in order to articulate new political theory and to innovate new political theory engaging in the serious debate with the past tradition of political theory.