Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition PDF
Preview Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition
forming humanity Forming Humanity Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition jennifer a. herdt the university of chicago press chicago and london The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2019 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2019 Printed in the United States of America 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 61848- 7 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 61851- 7 (e- book) DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226618517.001.0001 Published with the assistance of the Frederick W. Hilles Publication Fund of Yale University. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Herdt, Jennifer A., 1967– author. Title: Forming humanity : redeeming the German Bildung tradition / Jennifer A. Herdt. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019013312 | ISBN 9780226618487 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226618517 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, German—18th century. | Philosophy, German—19th century. | Humanism—Germany—History—18th century. | Humanism—Germany— History—19th century. | Moral development—Germany. | Bildungsromans—History and criticism. | Philosophy and religion—Germany—History—18th century. | Philosophy and religion—Germany—History—19th century. | Religion and culture. Classification: LCC B2743 .H47 2019 | DDC 170.943—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019013312 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). For Cora and Adam An diesem Tage, dem vergnügtesten seines Lebens, schien auch seine eigne Bildung erst anzufangen; er fühlte die Notwendigkeit, sich zu belehren, indem er zu lehren aufgefordert ward. Goethe contents Introduction | 1 1 From Paideia to Humanism | 27 2 Pietism and the Problem of Human Craft (Menschen- Kunst) | 56 3 The Harmonious Harp- Playing of Humanity: J. G. Herder | 82 4 Ethical Formation and the Invention of the Religion of Art | 112 5 The Rise of the Bildungsroman and the Commodification of Literature | 133 6 Authorship and Its Resignation in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister | 156 7 “The Bildung of Self- Consciousness Itself towards Science”: Hegel | 188 Conclusion | 237 Acknowledgments | 253 Notes | 257 Index | 313 introduction Once upon a time, we awoke to discover humanity as task. We were already human, to be sure. But we were not yet fully or perfectly human. We discovered ourselves internally riven, divided, torn by opposing forces. We found ourselves unformed, immature, not yet capable of taking responsibility for ourselves. Nor could we simply await our full humanity, like the ripening of a fruit. No, it was some- thing we had to take into our own hands. We had to become our own parents, our own teachers. At the same time, in taking up the task of forming humanity, we were conscious of participating in something greater than ourselves, something somehow transcendent. And we were keenly aware of the conditioned character of our self-f orming agency, of human beings as always already formed formers, inheritors of language and culture and historical memory. It was late eighteenth- century Germany. Kant was among those sounding the trumpet, proclaiming “man’s emergence from his self- incurred immaturity . . . the inability to use one’s understanding without the guidance of another.”1 Humankind was entering into adulthood, and it was time to put away childish things. Now we were capable of autonomy, of free self- determination. And in fact, Kant in- sisted, we had always been capable of this; our immaturity was “self- incurred.” We were not emerging out of a natural childhood but re- leasing ourselves from a kind of self- imprisonment, from chains of tradition and authority with which we had bound ourselves. The key to release was precisely recognition that we were in fact self- incarcerated. Kant regarded reason, Enlightenment, as the key to emergence
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