다문화 시대에 정체성을 위하여 (To the Identity in Multicultural Society)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국해석학회
· 수록지 정보 : 해석학연구 / 25호 / 205 ~ 234페이지
· 저자명 : 정기철

초록

필자는이 글에서 그것들이 정체성을 왜곡하고 조작하는 매체로 작용하고있음을 고발할 것이다. 반면에 이 글은 우리 사회가 지향해야 할 구체적인 방향제시보다는 추상적인 보편성을 드러낼 뿐이라는 비판을감수해야 할 것이다. 왜냐하면 이 글은 한국 사회 특유의 정치ㆍ사회ㆍ문화적인 맥락을 분석하는 작업 없이 다수의 문화를 보편적인가치로 두는 단일 중심 다문화주의보다 인간존중을 바탕으로 한 다문화주의를 지향하고 있기 때문이다. 그렇지만 이 글은 다문화 사회가 경제ㆍ정치 논리에 근거해서만 정책입안 되어서는 안 된다는 것을 밝히는 것으로 큰 위로를 삼고자 한다.
불란서 철학자 리쾨르의 『타자로서 자기 자신』4)과 『역사, 기억 그리고 망각』5)이라는 두 저서가 필자의 관심을 불러일으켰다. 앞의 책은 ‘정체성’ 개념에 대한, 뒤의 책은 ‘다문화 사회’ 문제에 대한 철학적 고찰을 하고 있다. 후자의 책은 유럽 연합이 탄생하면서 다민족ㆍ다문화 국가가 가질 수밖에 없는 ‘정체성의 혼란을 어떻게 극복할 것인가?’라는 주제를 담고 있다. 이에 대한 필자의 소개6)가 이미 이루어졌기 때문에, 이 글에서는 전자의 책을 근거로 정체성의 주제를 논의해 갈 것이다.

영어초록

We asked here about the necessary and meaningness of the argumentation about the identity in multicultural society. Paul Ricoeur’s book Oneself as Another, represents a major achievement in the development of a philosophy of selfhood. By dialectically linking the self to otherness,others, and the Other, Ricoeur makes a substantial move beyond Modern philosophical theories of identity and selfhood. However, contrary to Ricoeur’s own intentions, his unique formulation of selfhood defined in terms of the power-to-do, or conatus, ultimately inscribes the other within the circle of the self-same, and thereby fails to let the other be other. If someone or something is not the same as another person or thing, this may indicate that each has an individual identity.
Selfhood may refer to an identity which belongs to an individual person or thing, and not another. Ricoeur explains that sameness is not selfhood. Sameness may denote a numerical identity, such as oneness or unity (as opposed to plurality). Sameness may also denote a qualitative identity such as a resemblance or similarity. Sameness may also denote an uninterrupted continuity or a lack of variation and lack of diversity.
The central theme here is the concept of personal identity, within which Ricoeur examines three major issues: the idea of self, of identity or sameness, and of relation to that which is not self.
Probing to the heart of selfhood, Ricoeur finds otherness. In this 234 ║ 해석학연구 제25집논문접수일: 2010. 01. 13.
심사완료일:1차 심사: 2010. 01. 21.
2차 심사: 2010. 01. 20.
게재확정일: 2010. 01. 27.
eminent thinker’s theory of personhood, the self is a character-narrator of its own history, its autonomy intimately bound up with solicitude for one’s neighbors and with justice for each individual. Ricoeur reads life histories as literary narratives and attempts to show how practical wisdom should flow from our intuitive moral judgments of what the good life might be like. His ethics of reciprocity and caring draws freely on the whole of Western philosophy, from Plato,Aristotle and Greek tragedy to Heidegger, language theory and John Rawls. Applying the tools of analytic philosophy to these questions, I discover a sense of ‘self’ that is not personal and holds for all grammatical persons. A notion of solicitude is central here, for by showing that there are nonpersonal aspects of the self that require solicitude, I indicate the direction from the self to the other. The identification of the nonpersonal concept of the self with the concept of the other thus exposes the key to the Moral Law.
According to Ricoeur, selfhood implies otherness to such an extent that selfhood and otherness cannot be separated. The self implies a relation between the same and the other. This dialectic of the self and other contradicts Descartes’ cogito (“I think, therefore I am”),which posits a subject in the first person (an “I,” or an ego) without reference to an other. The hermeneutics of the self reaches a different type of certainty than that of the philosophy of the cogito.
While hermeneutics leads to an attestation (belief) of truth or certainty, the cogito asserts indubitable knowledge of truth or certainty.

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