인식의 매체성과 인식의 해석학: 카시러 문화철학의 매체이론적 재구성

Abstract

“Knowledge as a philosophical problem” has been one of the core themes of philosophy since ancient Greece, but knowledge seems to have lost its central position in contemporary European philosophy. On the one hand, the status of methodological scholarship that provides true knowledge about the world has been transferred to the sciences, as in physics, while on the other, questions about the nature of knowledge are embraced by branches of philosophy, such as phenomenology and hermeneutics, that emerged to criticize and overcome the limits of modern epistemology. However, we should not relinquish the question of knowledge itself; If knowledge functions as an “intermediate dimension” that connects humans with life, the world, and society, it rests on the complex system of various media, including mythos, language, and technique, etc. that is “knowing”(Erkennen) in a broad sense. Starting here, this paper aims at the medium-theoretical turn of human knowledge which is disclosed in E. Cassirer’s philosophy of culture. More specifically, this paper focuses on the cultural philosophical transition of epistemology and its structural expansion and human understanding through symbolic media. The first part will examine how Cassirer’s philosophy of culture criticizes traditional epistemology and accomplishes structural expansion of the principles of knowledge by tracing his philosophical transition from modern epistemology represented by Descartes to Kant’s critique. Through this, how the fundamental structure of traditional epistemology and the composition of its core concepts are expanded with the concept of understanding will be viewed via Cassirer’s philosophy of culture. However, the medium-theoretical turn of knowledge that Cassirer outlines is not limited to the structural expansion of epistemology, and the second part of this paper provides a broader overview from the starting point described above. Specifically, the “humanistic turn” is discussed through a new definition of “humanity” (Humanität) which focuses on “mediality” (Medialität), an essential characteristic of human understanding. Next, it deals with essential meaningfulness and the problem of freedom as two key elements of mediated understanding, before finally considering the structure in which the core concepts of traditional epistemology can be reorganized. In conclusion, this paper argues that the medium-theoretical turn of human knowledge revealed in Cassirer’s philosophy of culture is an attempt to explore the problem of knowledge in the cultural facts of human understanding. As a result, the problem of knowledge is newly transformed into a problem of hermeneutics which interprets (auslegen) cultural facts as primary phenomena and their symbolic nature.