위기가 아닌 적이 없었다. 그러나 때마다 위기는 달랐다 : 위기 담론의 근원, 변화, 한국적 양태

Abstract

In this article, I examined the origin and the change of meaning of the concept ‘crisis’ and demonstrated its change of meaning, as follows:The concept ‘crisis’ has been used broadly by the humanity from remote antiquity to our days. It means that this concept has been permanently functional in the evolutionary history of the humanities. However, the meaning of this concept has been varied with the passage of time. While, in ancient times, the crisis meant the somewhat predictable, critical moment on the brink of the change of any situation, modern men see the crisis as unpredictable and continually approaching state of big catastrophes. Despite of the negative appearance of anxiety, fear and chaos, what lies under this change of meaning was the will of modern men who wanted to take the initiative of and credit for the world’s changes and to prove themselves to be the constitutive subject of the World. That is, what appeared to be the inevitable catastrophe against the modern men has actually been the optimum opportunity for modern men to realize this will. In this sense, the crisis, for the modern society, is not the disaster but the project of the modern men to proactively accelerate the changes of the world. The modern men found the organ inside their body to signify the extent of the organic experiment, i.e., the experience of realizing their will to the cranial nerve, and, subsequently to the consciousness and feeling. This organ was the sensibility. With the birth of the sensibility, the crisis was rooted in the ordinary life of mankind. After these examinations, I turn the question to the sense of crisis of Korean intellectuals since the encounter with the Modern Civilization. The Korean intellectuals took the severe shock from the Western civilization which swept them as the chance for setting up themselves on the stage as the modern subjects. Their intention couldn’t be realized naturally because the ‘implanted’ modernity needed time for maturation and the colonization by a modernized neighboring country plainly pressed Korean people against the will to accept the Modernity. As such, Korean intellectuals had to find a way to their own methodology to adjust on the Modernity. I was able to extract such attitudes from two poets, Kim So Wol and Han Yong Un. These two attitudes upon the situation of crisis can be named respectively ‘mysticism of man who denies the loss’ and ‘realism of man who is obliged to lose’. I reasoned that not only these two attitudes were the basic attitudes of the Korean intellectuals, but also they obsessed Koreans’ judgments and actions even until now.