자연과 사회의 관계 다시 생각하기: 인간주의, 포스트휴머니즘, 자연주의 논쟁

Abstract

This paper criticizes the modern paradigm of knowledge in terms of the relations between nature and society. Firstly it focuses on the debate on human capacities within natural limits between two theoretical realists Ted Benton and Kate Soper. Soper argues that, while accepting that the human-being is a natural being as well as a social one, we have to underline the unique capacities of the human-being to change the existing consumerist capitalism which has jeopardized our planet. In replying to it, Benton suggests that we can explore the cultural and historical capacities of the human-being from a perspective of non-reductionist naturalism. Synthesizing this tension in a productive way, we can reach to the conclusion that the human-being bound to the historical and cultural limits could possibly change them when experiencing the biological and natural limits within it. From the position of Benton and Soper, post-humanism and new materialism might be an over-reaction to dualism of nature and society forced by the era of ecological crisis. Importantly, they fails to explain the historical conditions as a historical combination of natural limits and society and to derive a political direction from it. This paper acknowledges an ethical-normative attitude of new materialism and posthumanism as persuasive, but tries to produce a new paradigm of knowledge for a political project to realize ethical-normative hope. This new paradigm, while being epistemologically open, never gives up a possible rational discussion and deliberation, which is distancing from epistemological relativism.