Content area
Full text
Abstract
Hegel argues that Bildung (cultivation or education) involves an ability to reflect on one's habitual beliefs in a detached, uncommitted way. According to Hegel, the educated (gebildete) individual is able to consider a manifold of standpoints on a given issue through awareness of the historical and cultural variability of beliefs. Hans-Georg Gadamer invokes Hegel's account of Bildung in arguing that historical study permits current presuppositions (Vorurteile) to become reflected through the awareness of cognitive plurality and change that such study brings about. The paper mainly tries to show three things: (i) that Hegel is a source of inspiration for Gadamer in this regard but that there are also important differences between their accounts of Bildung; (ii) that these accounts are not unambiguous; and (iii) that Gadamer, in particular, makes somewhat elusive claims on the power of Bildung.
Introduction
Rousseau's Emile or On Education (1762) argues that the task of education is to help the child develop its natural abilities by isolating it from civilized life. Emile was greeted with considerable enthusiasm but was vigorously opposed by Hegel, whose account of education (Bildung) is the direct opposite of Rousseau's. According to Hegel, the purpose of Bildung is precisely to overcome nature through the inculcation of beliefs, norms, and customs, which thereby become second nature. This Bildung counters the child's insistence on the priority of its own beliefs and desires. But the second nature that is thus acquired may later in life become subject to a process of Bildung through formal education which creates a third nature, as it were, and this, Hegel holds, is one goal of historical study.
Thus, Hegel argues that the study of the ancient world is especially appropriate for providing this form of Bildung.1 The ancient world, Hegel says, is sufficiently alien (fremd) to "separate" (trennen) us from our natural state, that is, the culture to which we belong.2 But the ancient world is also similar enough to our culture to permit us to "find ourselves again" (uns wiederfinden) in it.3 As we shall see, this means that the individual that has acquired Bildung no longer simply takes the validity and significance of his culture for granted through the resources already available to it, he achieves reconciliation (Versöhnung) with...