대동사회(大同社會)는 기계와 함께 오는가?: 유가적 이상사회와 인공지능의 공존 가능성

초록

This article reinterprets the Confucian concept of the Great Unity (大同社會, Datong Society) in the context of the contemporary age of artificial intelligence (AI), exploring the possibility of an ideal model of coexistence between humans and machines. The Liji (禮記), Liyun (禮運), presents the Datong Society as grounded in the principle of tianxia weigong (天下爲公, “the world is for all”), which emphasizes morality, publicness, and human dignity, while aiming at harmony between humanity and nature, as well as between Dao (道) and Qi (器). However, traditional Confucian communitarian thought is firmly anthropocentric and thus lacks sufficient discussion of the ethical status of non-human entities such as AI or their inclusion within the community. To overcome this limitation, the paper analyzes the Confucian doctrine of Dao-Qi unity (道器論) and argues that technology can serve as a medium for realizing moral order. It further proposes that, if AI is designed and operated in accordance with the order of the Dao, it may be incorporated into the Datong Society as a “moral artifact.” In doing so, this article envisions a “technological Datong Society” in which AI assists and actualizes human moral ideals, thereby laying a philosophical foundation for the reconstruction of communal ethics in the age of AI.

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