Rationality: Re-claiming its Normative Foundations

본 연구의 목적은 근대적 개념으로서의 합리성의 의미를 Jürgen Habermas의 사회이론을 통해 재검토하고 그의 의사소통적 합리성 개념의 관점에서 그것의 교육학적 토대를 재구축하기 위한 이론적 근거를 마련하는 데에 있다. 이를 위해서 이 논문에서는 서양 근대사회에 대한 Max Weber의 사회학적 분석작업을 통해 개념화된 근대적 합리성이 어떤 과정을 통해서 그 도구적 특성의 시각에서만 파악되었는가 하는 점을 Habermas의 논의를 빌어 밝히고, 이후 합리성에 대한 Weber의 협소한 시각이 Habermas에 의해서 어떤 방식으로 극복될 수 있는가를 논의한다. The purpose of this study is to reexamine the meaning of the modernist conception of rationality from Jürgen Habermas's social-theoretical point of view and reestablish its educational basis in the context of his notion of communicative rationality. The study starts from a critical review of the instrumental aspect of rationality that was first conceptualized by Max Weber's sociological analysis of modern Western society's rationalization process and continues to criticize Weber's framework from Habermas's standpoint presented in his linguistic reconstruction of the Enlightenment rationality. Habermas's criticism of Weber's view reflected on the thesis of societal rationalization is concentrated on the point that Weber's construction of the rationalization process shows the rationalization process of modern society only at its institutional level without giving as much attention to the rationalization process of people's communicative action at the level of their ordinary lifeworld and for this reason it eventually narrows down the meaning of rationality into a conceptually incomplete form. Although how Habermas's efforts can be systematically structured into an educational theory is not systematically illuminated in this particular piece of study, this essay takes this point as its basic framework to reconsider the conceptual possibility of rationality that can, and should, work as a normative standard for educational practices