Recent devaluations of a liberal arts education call the formative concept ofBildung, a defining model of self-cultivation rooted in 18th and 19th century German philosophy and culture, into question and force us to reconsider what it once meant and now means to be an educated individual. This volume uses an arc of interdisciplinary scholarship to map both the epistemological origins and cultural expressions of the pivotal notion ofBildung at the heart of pursuit in the humanities. From its intriguing original historical manifestations to its continuing resonance in current ongoing debates surrounding the humanities, the editors urge us to ask and discover how the classical concept ofBildung, so central to humanistic inquiry, was historically imagined and applied in its original German context.

Ulrich Kinzel is Professor of German Literature at the University of Kiel. His research and teaching include seventeenth to twentieth century German literature and culture as well studies in comparative literature and culture. He is the author of Ethische Projekte. Literatur und Selbstgestaltung im Kontext des Regierungsdenkens. Humboldt, Goethe, Stifter, Raabe (Verlag Vittorio Klostermann,  2000) and editedLondon Urban Space and Cultural Experience (Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 2010).

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

IntroductionJennifer Ham, Ulrich Kinzel, and David Tse-chien Pan

Chapter 1. Self-cultivation and the Police State: The Political Context of Wilhelm von Humboldts Concept ofBildungUlrich Kinzel

Chapter 2. Fichtes Conception ofBildung and German National IdentityDavid Tse-chien Pan

Chapter 3. Becoming Solid:Bildung and Storage Media in Moritzs and Goethes Italian TravelsSean Franzel

Chapter 4. Schinkels Altes Museum as Bildungsmuseum:  The Aesthetic Education of a National Community and the Makings of the Modern MuseumAndrea Meyertholen

Chapter 5. FromBildungsmaschine toWillenserziehung:  Nietzsches Project of Heroic MindsJennifer Ham

Chapter 6. The Self-Formation of Poetic Expression: Wilhelm DiltheysGeistesgeschichteAnna Guillemin

Chapter 7.Bildung as Dialectical and Theological Hermeneutics in the Service of the HumanitiesJohn Smith

Conclusion

Index