2018, Vol.49, No.

Philosophical Investigation 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.41

pISSN : 1598-7213 / eISSN : 2671-7565
https://journal.kci.go.kr/philinst

Arendt is compared to Heidegger in that he actualized philosophical thinking(Denken) through political action(Handeln). The relationship between thinking and action lies in the core of the two philosophers’ theories. This paper explores the common ground of the two philosophers on their shared concepts on thinking, which are often compared in the question of the relationship between thinking and action. Existing comparative study on the two philosophers generally focus on criticizing Heidegger from Arendt’s stance. Heidegger’s ‘ontological thinking’ is independent of the existing political philosophy. He emphasizes the responsibility of thinking over the social and political responsibility. This paper aims to compare Heidegger and Arendt’s philosophy focusing on the relationship between thinking and action as balanced as possible from the perspective of the history of effect. As a basis for the comparative study, this paper will first explore ‘Arendt’s acceptance and criticism,’ followed by examination on the two philosophers’ criticism on ‘not thinking’ and solutions for overcoming metaphysical thinking. The paper suggests possibility of how lack of discussions on thinking from Heidegger's theory can be supplemented through Arendt's theory; while Arendt's limits of optimistic metaphysical political theory can be extended through Heidegger's. The paper will then specifically compare and analyze their stances on ‘action', especially focusing on the relevance between thinking and action from the context of political life.

Taking ‘Being and music’(Sein und Musik) as the main talking point, this paper aims to examine Schopenhauer’s doctrine of music in the horizon of his life-philosophy, excavating the intimate relation between music and human-Dasein. A new understanding presented in this treatise is that Being reveals itself as music in the form time, so that humans as Homo musikus are ‘musical Da-sein’(musikalisches Da-sein) performing the understanding of Being(Seinsverständnis) through music.—music is a ‘supreme’ mode of existence in which human-Dasein performs it. To sum up, music is not a mere sensual amusement or contemplative art, but ‘ontological truth’ itself wherein the revealing and understanding of Being takes place. From this new perspective, I will investigate the preceding arguments critically. There have been some debates on Schopenhauer’s metaphysic of music—in terms of Romanticism, the aesthetics of feeling, or Hanslick’s idea of absolute music, in which process main controversial points were exposed. In those preceding debates we can often see Schopenhauer described as a theorist of absolute music, but this is not a very proper determination. Meanwhile, it was asserted by Dahlhaus that Schopenhauer took music as the “organ of philosophy”. This is directly related to the autonomy of music, which I will debate, focusing my criticism on Hanslick’s idea of absolute music. By penetrating into the depth of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, this research will reconsider the precedent assertions critically, and bring to light the existential significance of music for human-Dasein which is implied in his metaphysic of music.

It is a very important task to look at how independent the art can be from politics or economic power in the study of modern society. That is because the criteria of ‘yes or no’ that the art can move autonomously within the domain of social functioning can be an objective criterion on measuring the level of culture of one particular country. Therefore, it is a very convincing argument that ‘the art is a form of expression of human freedom’ and ‘autonomy of art’ reflects ‘the binding state of individuals in an unfree society’. Under this premise, art becomes the core of culture in a nation and a society, and at the same time it becomes a total measure of society. Accordingly economic wealth is a realistic indicator of the present state, but art reveals the future prospects of one particular society through the ‘utopian purpose setting’. But what is the social condition that art can have its own power, not just a maid of politics or economic power? In this study, we explore the conditions of the autonomy of the art through the explanation of the concept and its origin of the public sphere. The development of the concept of the public sphere is deeply related to the emergence and transformation of the western civil society. Social scientists have first formed a critical sphere from readers who periodically buy printed material, including newspapers, and the principle mediated there is called ‘publicity’. The basis of the formation process is the establishment of a ‘literary public sphere’ that can contain literary criticism. The task of measuring the activation of ‘the literary public sphere’, even in contemporary society, is very important in that it establishes criteria for measuring the degree of internal development of the social public sphere in terms of political and economical aspect. The need for this study begins with this premise.