덕성함양에서 쾌락의 활용

Pleasure’s Role in the Character Education Viewed on The Nicomachean Ethics

쾌락추구는 현대의 문화코드일 뿐만 아니라, 교육의 환경이자 문제라고 할 만하다. 그렇다면 부정적인 쾌락과 긍정적인 쾌락의 구분을 넘어 덕성교육에서의 쾌락의 활용가능성을 점검할 필요가 있다. 이를 위해 여기서는 「니코마코스 윤리학」을 탐구대상으로 삼아 지성과 성품의 온전한 발휘가 활동의 완전성의 조건일 뿐만 아니라, 활동에 수반되는 쾌락의 조건임을 밝히고자 한다. 활동의 쾌락은 능동적인 쾌감으로서 덕에 부합하는 완전한 활동에 대한 감각적 자각이자 확증이다. 이처럼 활동의 쾌감이 완전하고 총체적인 활동에 대한 내면적 각성이라면, 행복은 이성적인 성찰과 선택만이 아니라, 또한 감정적 자기 확신에 의해 뒷받침되고 동행되어야 할 것이다. 그럴 때 덕에 부합하는 활동은 객관적인 필연성과 함께 또한 주관적인 필연성도 확보할 수 있을 것이다.

The pursuit of pleasure is to regard as an environment and a problem of the schooling. Under such circumstances it may be useful to classify pleasures in positive and negative ones, if we want to find out a proper way of making use of them in the character education. Such an assumption leads us to the attempt to examine the pleasure’s role in the character education implied in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle rejects the replenishment theory of pleasure, because it can cover only restorative pleasures. Moreover the process theory of pleasure is also unacceptable because pleasure, if it is a genesis, can not be an end. On the contrary Aristotle is here to interpret as an advocate of the activity theory of pleasure. Pleasure is declared as an unimpaired activity or the completion of an activity. Such an understanding of pleasure leads us to a new interpretation of Aristotle’s Ethics. Pleasure in intellectual activity as well as perception goes clearly along with virtue. However pleasure means a subjective self-evidence of the agent oneself, while the virtue is objectively the formal cause to an activity. For example, perception is objectively complete when the perceiving subject meets with its finest objects in his best condition. It can be also subjectively complete when the activity of perception is conceived as pleasant. Such a pleasure completes the activity not as its formal cause, but only as a supervening end. However its role in the character education is not to underestimate because it witnesses as an epiphenomenon the fulfilled meaning of activities inwardly.