(i) Bildung (Culture)
The concept of Bildung most clearly indicates the profound intellectual
change that still causes us to experience the century of Goethe as
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contemporary, whereas the baroque era appears historically remote. Key
concepts and words which we still use acquired their special stamp then,
and if we are not to be swept along by language, but to strive for a reasoned
historical self-understanding, we must face a whole host of questions
about verbal and conceptual history. In what follows it is possible to do no
more than begin the great task that faces investigators, as an aid to our
philosophical inquiry. Concepts such as "art," "history," "the creative,"
"worldview," "experience," "genius," "external world," "interiority,"
"expression," "style," "symbol," which we take to be self-evident, contain
a wealth of history.12
If we consider the concept of Bildung, whose importance for the human
sciences we have emphasized, we are in a fortunate situation. Here a
previous investigation" gives us a fine overview of the history of the word:
its origin in medieval mysticism, its continuance in the mysticism of the
baroque, its religious spiritualization in Klopstock's Messiah, which dominates
the whole period, and finally the basic definition Herder gives it:
"rising up to humanity through culture." The cult of Bildung in the
nineteenth century preserved the profounder dimension of the word, and
our notion of Bildung is determined by it.
The first important thing to note about the usual content of the word
Bildung is that the earlier idea of a "natural form"—which refers to
external appearance (the shape of the limbs, the well-formed figure) and
in general to the shapes created by nature (e.g., a mountain formation—
Gebirgsbildung)—was at that time detached almost entirely from the
new idea. Now, Bildung is intimately associated with the idea of culture
and designates primarily the properly human way of developing one's
natural talents and capacities. Between Kant and Hegel the form Herder
had given to the concept was filled out. Kant still does not use the word
Bildung in this connection. He speaks of "cultivating" a capacity (or
"natural talent"), which as such is an act of freedom by the acting subject.
Thus among duties to oneself he mentions not letting one's talents rust, but
without using the word Bildung.14 However when Hegel takes up the same
Kantian idea of duties to oneself, he already speaks of Sichbilden (educating
or cultivating oneself) and Bildung.15 And Wilhelm von Humboldt,
with his sensitive ear, already detects a difference in meaning between
Kultur and Bildung: "but when in our language we say Bildung, we mean
something both higher and more inward, namely the disposition of mind
which, from the knowledge and the feeling of the total intellectual and
moral endeavor, flows harmoniously into sensibility and character."16
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TRUTH AND METHOD
Bildung here no longer means "culture"—i.e., developing one's capacities
or talents. Rather, the rise of the word Bildung evokes the ancient mystical
tradition according to which man carries in his soul the image of God, after
whom he is fashioned, and which man must cultivate in himself. The Latin
equivalent for Bildung is formatio, with related words in other
languages—e.g., in English (in Shaftesbury), "form" and "formation." In
German, too, the corresponding derivations of the idea of forma—e.g.,
"Formierung" and "Formation"—have long vied with the word Bildung.
Since the Aristotelianism of the Renaissance the word forma has been
completely separated from its technical meaning and interpreted in a
purely dynamic and natural way. Yet the victory of the word Bildung over
"form" does not seem to be fortuitous. For in Bildung there is Bild. The idea
of "form" lacks the mysterious ambiguity of Bild, which comprehends both
Nachbild (image, copy) and Vorbild (model).
In accordance with the frequent transition from becoming to being,
Bildung (like the contemporary use of the German word "Formation"}
describes more the result of the process of becoming than the process itself.
The transition is especially clear here because the result of Bildung is not
achieved in the manner of a technical construction, but grows out of an
inner process of formation and cultivation, and therefore constantly
remains in a state of continual Bildung. It is not accidental that in this
respect the word Bildung resembles the Greek physis. Like nature, Bildung
has no goals outside itself. (The word and thing Bildungsziel—the goal of
cultivation—is to be regarded with the suspicion appropriate to such a
secondary kind of Bildung. Bildung as such cannot be a goal; it cannot as
such be sought, except in the reflective thematic of the educator.) In
having no goals outside itself, the concept of Bildung transcends that of the
mere cultivation of given talents, from which concept it is derived. The
cultivation of a talent is the development of something that is given, so that
practicing and cultivating it is a mere means to an end. Thus the
educational content of a grammar book is simply a means and not itself an
end. Assimilating it simply improves one's linguistic ability. In Bildung, by
contrast, that by which and through which one is formed becomes
completely one's own. To some extent everything that is received is
absorbed, but in Bildung what is absorbed is not like a means that has lost
its function. Rather, in acquired Bildung nothing disappears, but everything
is preserved. Bildung is a genuine historical idea, and because of this
historical character of "preservation" it is important for understanding in
the human sciences.
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TRANSCENDING THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION
Thus even a preliminary glance at the linguistic history of Bildung
introduces us to the circle of historical ideas that Hegel first introduced into
the realm of "first philosophy." In fact Hegel has worked out very astutely
what Bildung is. We follow him initially.17 He saw also that philosophy
(and, we may add, the human sciences, Geisteswissenschaften) "has, in
Bildung, the condition of its existence." For the being of Geist (spirit) has
an essential connection with the idea of Bildung.
Man is characterized by the break with the immediate and the natural
that the intellectual, rational side of his nature demands of him. "In this
sphere he is not, by nature, what he should be"—and hence he needs
Bildung. What Hegel calls the formal nature of Bildung depends on its
universality. In the concept of rising to the universal, Hegel offers a unified
conception of what his age understood by Bildung. Rising to the universal
is not limited to theoretical Bildung and does not mean only a theoretical
orientation in contrast to a practical one, but covers the essential character
of human rationality as a whole. It is the universal nature of human
Bildung to constitute itself as a universal intellectual being. Whoever
abandons himself to his particularity is ungebildet ("unformed")—e.g., if
someone gives way to blind anger without measure or sense of proportion.
Hegel shows that basically such a man is lacking in the power of
abstraction. He cannot turn his gaze from himself towards something
universal, from which his own particular being is determined in measure
and proportion.
Hence Bildung, as rising to the universal, is a task for man. It requires
sacrificing particularity for the sake of the universal. But, negatively put,
sacrificing particularity means the restraint of desire and hence freedom
from the object of desire and freedom for its objectivity. Here the
deductions of the phenomenological dialectic complement what is stated
in the Propaedeutik. In his Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel works out the
genesis of a truly free self-consciousness "in-and-for-itself," and he shows
that the essence of work is to form the thing rather than consume it.18 In
the independent existence that work gives the thing, working consciousness
finds itself again as an independent consciousness. Work is restrained
desire. In forming the object—that is, in being selflessly active and
concerned with a universal—working consciousness raises itself above the
immediacy of its existence to universality; or, as Hegel puts it, by forming
the thing it forms itself. What he means is that in acquiring a "capacity," a
skill, man gains the sense of himself. What seemed denied him in the
selflessness of serving, inasmuch as he subjected himself to a frame of mind
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TRUTH AND METHOD
that was alien to him, becomes part of him inasmuch as he is working
consciousness. As such he finds in himself his own frame of mind, and it
is quite right to say of work that it forms. The self-awareness of working
consciousness contains all the elements that make up practical Bildung:
the distancing from the immediacy of desire, of personal need and private
interest, and the exacting demand of a universal.
In his Propaedeutic Hegel demonstrates the nature of practical Bildung, of
taking the universal upon oneself, by means of a number of examples. It
is found in the moderation which limits the excessive satisfaction of one's
needs and use of one's powers by a general consideration—that of health.
It is found in the circumspection that, while concerned with the individual
situation or business, remains open to observing what else might be
necessary. But every choice of profession has something of this. For every
profession has something about it of fate, of external necessity; it demands
that one give oneself to tasks that one would not seek out as a private aim.
Practical Bildung is seen in one's fulfilling one's profession wholly, in all its
aspects. But this includes overcoming the element in it that is alien to the
particularity which is oneself, and making it wholly one's own. Thus to
give oneself to the universality of a profession is at the same time "to know
how to limit oneself—i.e., to make one's profession wholly one's concern.
Then it is no longer a limitation."
Even in this description of practical Bildung by Hegel, one can recognize
the basic character of the historical spirit: to reconcile itself with itself, to
recognize oneself in other being. It becomes completely clear in the idea of
theoretical Bildung, for to have a theoretical stance is, as such, already
alienation, namely the demand that one "deal with something that is not
immediate, something that is alien, with something that belongs to
memory and to thought." Theoretical Bildung leads beyond what man
knows and experiences immediately. It consists in learning to affirm what
is different from oneself and to find universal viewpoints from which one
can grasp the thing, "the objective thing in its freedom," without selfish
interest.19 That is why acquiring Bildung always involves the development
of theoretical interests, and Hegel declares the world and language of
antiquity to be especially suitable for this, since this world is remote and
alien enough to effect the necessary separation of ourselves from ourselves,
"but it contains at the same time all the exit points and threads of
the return to oneself, for becoming acquainted with it and for finding
oneself again, but oneself according to the truly universal essence of
spirit."20
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In these words of Hegel the Gymnasium director, we recognize the
classicist's prejudice that it is particularly in the world of classical antiquity
that the universal nature of the spirit can most easily be found. But the
basic idea is correct. To recognize one's own in the alien, to become at
home in it, is the basic movement of spirit, whose being consists only in
returning to itself from what is other. Hence all theoretical Bildung, even
acquiring foreign languages and conceptual worlds, is merely the continuation
of a process of Bildung that begins much earlier. Every single
individual who raises himself out of his natural being to the spiritual finds
in the language, customs, and institutions of his people a pre-given body of
material which, as in learning to speak, he has to make his own. Thus
every individual is always engaged in the process of Bildung and in getting
beyond his naturalness, inasmuch as the world into which he is growing is
one that is humanly constituted through language and custom. Hegel
emphasizes that a people gives itself its existence in its world. It works out
from itself and thus exteriorizes what it is in itself.
Thus what constitutes the essence of Bildung is clearly not alienation as
such, but the return to oneself—which presupposes alienation, to be sure.
However, Bildung is not to be understood only as the process of historically
raising the mind to the universal; it is at the same time the element within
which the educated man (Gebildete) moves. What kind of element is this?
The questions we asked of Helmholtz arise here. Hegel's answer cannot
satisfy us, for Hegel sees Bildung as brought to completion through the
movement of alienation and appropriation in a complete mastery of
substance, in the dissolution of all concrete being, reached only in the
absolute knowledge of philosophy.
But we can acknowledge that Bildung is an element of spirit without
being tied to Hegel's philosophy of absolute spirit, just as the insight into
the historicity of consciousness is not tied to his philosophy of world
history. We must realize that the idea of perfect Bildung remains a
necessary ideal even for the historical sciences that depart from Hegel. For
Bildung is the element in which they move. Even what earlier usage, with
reference to physical appearance, called "perfection of form" is not so
much the last state of a development as the mature state that has left all
development behind and makes possible the harmonious movement of all
the limbs. It is precisely in this sense that the human sciences presuppose
that the scholarly consciousness is already formed and for that very reason
possesses the right, unlearnable, and inimitable tact that envelops the
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TRUTH AND METHOD
human sciences' form of judgment and mode of knowledge as if it were the
element in which they move.
The way that Helmholtz describes how the human sciences work,
especially what he calls artistic feeling and tact, in fact presupposes this
element of Bildung, within which the mind has a special free mobility.
Thus Helmholtz speaks of the "readiness with which the most varied
experiences must flow into the memory of the historian or philologist."21
That may seem to be a description from an external viewpoint: namely, the
ideal of the "self-conscious work of drawing iron clad conclusions,"
according to which the natural scientist conceives himself. The concept of
memory, as he uses it, is not sufficient to explain what is involved here. In
fact, this tact or feeling is not rightly understood if one thinks of it as a
supervening mental competence which uses a powerful memory and so
arrives at cognitive results that cannot be rigorously examined. What
makes tact possible, what leads to its acquisition and possession, is not
merely a piece of psychological equipment that is propitious to knowledge
in the human sciences.
Moreover, the nature of memory is not rightly understood if it is
regarded as merely a general talent or capacity. Keeping in mind, forgetting,
and recalling belong to the historical constitution of man and are
themselves part of his history and his Bildung. Whoever uses his memory
as a mere faculty—and any "technique" of memory is such a use—does not
yet possess it as something that is absolutely his own. Memory must be
formed; for memory is not memory for anything and everything. One has
a memory for some things, and not for others; one wants to preserve one
thing in memory and banish another. It is time to rescue the phenomenon
of memory from being regarded merely as a psychological faculty and to
see it as an essential element of the finite historical being of man. In a way
that has long been insufficiently noticed, forgetting is closely related to
keeping in mind and remembering; forgetting is not merely an absence
and a lack but, as Nietzsche in particular pointed out, a condition of the life
of mind.22 Only by forgetting does the mind have the possibility of total
renewal, the capacity to see everything with fresh eyes, so that what is long
familiar fuses with the new into a many leveled unity. "Keeping in mind"
is ambiguous. As memory (mneme), it is connected to remembering
(anamnesis).23 But the same thing is also true of the concept of "tact" that
Helmholtz uses. By "tact" we understand a special sensitivity and sensitiveness
to situations and how to behave in them, for which knowledge from
general principles does not suffice. Hence an essential part of tact is that it
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TRANSCENDING THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION
is tacit and unformulable. One can say something tactfully; but that will
always mean that one passes over something tactfully and leaves it unsaid,
and it is tactless to express what one can only pass over. But to pass over
something does not mean to avert one's gaze from it, but to keep an eye on
it in such a way that rather than knock into it, one slips by it. Thus tact
helps one to preserve distance. It avoids the offensive, the intrusive, the
violation of the intimate sphere of the person.
The tact of which Helmholtz speaks is not simply identical with this
phenomenon of manners and customs, but they do share something
essential. For the tact which functions in the human sciences is not simply
a feeling and unconscious, but is at the same time a mode of knowing and
a mode of being. This can be seen more clearly from the above analysis of
the concept of Bildung. What Helmholtz calls tact includes Bildung and is
a function of both aesthetic and historical Bildung. One must have a sense
for the aesthetic and the historical or acquire it, if one is to be able to rely
on one's tact in work in the human sciences. Because this sense is not
simply part of one's natural equipment, we rightly speak of aesthetic or
historical consciousness, and not properly of sense. Still, this consciousness
accords well with the immediacy of the senses—-i.e., it knows how to make
sure distinctions and evaluations in the individual case without being able
to give its reasons. Thus someone who has an aesthetic sense knows how
to distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly, high and low quality,
and whoever has a historical sense knows what is possible for an age and
what is not, and has a sense of the otherness of the past in relation to the
present.
If all that presupposes Bildung, then what is in question is not a
procedure or behavior but what has come into being. It is not enough to
observe more closely, to study a tradition more thoroughly, if there is not
already a receptivity to the "otherness" of the work of art or of the past.
That is what, following Hegel, we emphasized as the general characteristic
of Bildung: keeping oneself open to what is other—to other, more
universal points of view. It embraces a sense of proportion and distance in
relation to itself, and hence consists in rising above itself to universality. To
distance oneself from oneself and from one's private purposes means to
look at these in the way that others see them. This universality is by no
means a universality of the concept or understanding. This is not a case of
a particular being determined by a universal; nothing is proved conclusively.
The universal viewpoints to which the cultivated man (gebildet)
keeps himself open are not a fixed applicable yardstick, but are present to
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TRUTH AND METHOD
him only as the viewpoints of possible others. Thus the cultivated
consciousness has in fact more the character of a sense. For every
sense—e.g., the sense of sight—is already universal in that it embraces its
sphere, remains open to a particular field, and grasps the distinctions
within what is opened to it in this way. In that such distinctions are
confined to one particular sphere at a time, whereas cultivated consciousness
is active in all directions, such consciousness surpasses all of the
natural sciences. It is a universal sense.
A universal and common sense—this formulation of the nature of
Bildung suggests an extensive historical context. A reflection on the idea of
Bildung like that which lies at the basis of Helmholtz's thinking leads us far
back into the history of this concept. We must pursue this context a little
if we want to liberate the problem the human sciences present for
philosophy from the artificial narrowness in which nineteenth-century
methodology was caught. The modern concept of science and the associated
concept of method are insufficient. What makes the human sciences
into sciences can be understood more easily from the tradition of the
concept of Bildung than from the modern idea of scientific method. It is to
the humanistic tradition that we must turn. In its resistance to the claims of
modern science it gains a new significance.
It would be worth making a separate investigation into the way in
which, since the days of humanism, criticism of "scholastic" science has
made itself heard and how this criticism has changed with the changes of
its opponent. Originally it was classical motifs that were revived in it. The
enthusiasm with which the humanists proclaimed the Greek language and
the path of eruditio signified more than an antiquarian passion. The revival
of the classical languages brought with it a new valuation of rhetoric. It
waged battle against the "school," i.e., scholastic science, and supported an
ideal of human wisdom that was not achieved in the "school"—an
antithesis which in fact is found at the very beginning of philosophy.
Plato's critique of sophism and, still more, his peculiarly ambivalent
attitude towards Isocrates, indicate the philosophical problem that emerges
here. Beginning with the new methodological awareness of seventeenthcentury
science, this old problem inevitably became more critical. In view
of this new science's claim to be exclusive, the question of whether the
humanistic concept of Bildung was not a special source of truth was raised
with increased urgency. In fact we shall see that it is from the survival of
the humanistic idea of Bildung that the human sciences of the nineteenth
century draw, without admitting it, their own life.
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At the same time it is self-evident that it is not mathematics but
humanistic studies that are important here. For what could the new
methodology of the seventeenth century mean for the human sciences?
One has only to read the appropriate chapters of the Logique de Port-Royal
concerning the rules of reason applied to historical truths to see how little
can be achieved in the human sciences by that idea of method.24 Its results
are really trivial—for example, the idea that in order to judge an event in
its truth one must take account of the accompanying circumstances
(circonstances). With this kind of argument the Jansenists sought to
provide a methodical way of showing to what extent miracles deserved
belief. They countered an untested belief in miracles with the spirit of the
new method and sought in this way to legitimate the true miracles of
biblical and ecclesiastical tradition. The new science in the service of the
old church—that this relationship could not last is only too clear, and one
can foresee what had to happen when the Christian presuppositions
themselves were questioned. When the methodological ideal of the
natural sciences was applied to the credibility of the historical testimonies
of scriptural tradition, it inevitably led to completely different results that
were catastrophic for Christianity. There is no great distance between the
criticism of miracles in the style of the Jansenists and historical criticism of
the Bible. Spinoza is a good example of this. I shall show later that a
logically consistent application of this method as the only norm for the
truth of the human sciences would amount to their self-annihilation
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