포스트 시대 인문교육에서 리비스의 효용

The Use of Leavis in Liberal Education of the "Post" Era: Vis-a-Vis Terry Eagleton's Function of Criticism

This paper reconsiders the literary and cultural discourses of F. R. Leavis and their relevance in the current “crisis of humanities”. To this end, Leavis is considered in light of the critiques offered against him by Terry Eagleton, who can be considered representative of the anti-humanist theoretical trends insofar as he combines structuralist and Marxist perspectives that have led the dominance of theory since the late 20th century. Leavis has been branded as a critic who represents an obsolete humanist and pre-theoretical literary approach. Though Leavis did succeed a humanist tradition in his firm belief in the creativity of human practices, he became increasingly critical against basic humanist and ‘essentialist’ ideas of the human subject, language, and the world. In this sense, Leavis and these post-theorists share a critical stance against modernity and its hierarchical dichotomies of subject and object, language and reality. However, Leavis does not stop at valorizing the “negative” term over the “positive” as these theorists tend to do, but strives for a new conceptualization of these terms that goes beyond the dichotomy, through his reflections on the nature of language, literature, and criticism as well as on the function of education and the university. In this manner, he shows a way to transcend humanist doxa and to retain and renew the humanist critical spirit in today’s liberal education.