진화론과 사건적 존재론: 화이트헤드의 다중위치적 존재론의 관점으로 조명하는 진화이론들의 포스트휴매니즘적 함의

Abstract

This article focuses upon what Whitehead really deconstructs rather than what Whitehead actually constructs, attempting to make dialogue with Darwin’s theory of evolution. The common denominator between Whitehead and Darwin, if any, can be found in what both of them tried to deconstruct. That is the issue of human being. In an age, in which the phenomena of human being itself has become problematic, one can find new terminologies like ‘trans-humanism’ or ‘post-humanism,’ but no one can define what they exactly mean. This article will try to explain the terms from the eyes of A.N. Whitehead, who saw ‘entity’ not as substance or ‘being’ but rather as process, and who proclaimed himself as a Platonist, evaluating the entire history of the Western philosophy as footnotes of Plato. Whitehead’s philosophy is not harmonious with this secular age, because his philosophy talked of God, truth and harmony, which are banned in public area and because it also delivered an imagination after human being, that is, the imagination of the post-humanism. Evolutionary theory and process philosophy encounter right at this point. For both of them point to the extinction and birth of being-human. Whitehead’s deconstruction of the frame of simple location goes beyond a theoretical refusal to the modern substantialism and subverts our common-sense-based understanding of being-human. At this point, Darwin’s theory of evolution makes us know that the origin of species does not from a remote ages or genes or environment but from just an in-between of individuals, that is, ‘between an individual and an individual, where ordinary differences emerge. Based upon this ordinary difference, the human species deviates from the existing boundary of the species and creates a new boundary of species.