소득분배상의 공정과 평등 개념의 고대 그리스․중국 경제사상사적 기원(起源)

Abstract

It is widely maintained in Korea, that the capitalist market system cannot realize justice, gongjeong (공정; 公正) or hyeongpyeong (형평; 衡平) in the distribution of income, while translating equity into these two Korean words. However, capitalist market system can actually realize equity in the distribution of income in the sense that incomes are in principle distributed according to the degree to which the service of each production contributes to producing goods and services. Therefore the statement presented above must be corrected in such a way as ‘the capitalist market cannot realize equality the distribution of income.' As shown in the statement above, mech confusion in the real meaning of such terms as gongjeong and hyeongpyeong in connection with the meaning of justice is made in Korea even in the academic circles. This article attempts to interpret that the origin of this confusion in Korea could be traced back to the characteristics of the meaning of righteousness (義) in the distribution of income and wealth (largely land) as perceived by ancient Chinese Confucian philosophers, which is similar to equality, but different from equity as perceived by ancient Greek, Roman philosophers as justice (正義). This article also attempts to define exactly the concept of justice, righteousness as perceived by Confucian philosophers, gongjeong, hyeongpyeong and gongpyeong (공평; 公平) in Korean words.