Paideia as Bildung in Germany in the Age of Enlightenment...

Paideia as Bildung in Germany in the Age of Enlightenment ABSTRACT: There have been many interpretations of Bildung in the history of German philosophy, from the Medieval mystics to the secularization of the Enlightenment. Wilhelm von Humboldts work at the end of the 18th century is a good example. He placed the idea of Bildung at the center of his work because it was rooted in a dynamic, transforming idea of the natural and human worlds while also being oriented toward a model of balance and perfection. Von Humboldts interpretation of modernity is characterized by a strong emphasis on change as well as the need to find criteria for guiding such a transformation that has no intrinsic or predetermined end. Love of classical antiquity†¦show more content†¦In this way, to render the semantic extent of the term, the meanings of forma and formatio and imago and imitatio are involved as well; and the following two concepts are implied: firstly the concept of production according to an order that gives rise to a form (to something subside nt on the basis of mutually congruent rules) and secondly the conformation of the said act to an image given as assumption, as a model endowed with an absolute value which this image must resemble or aim for. The original meaning of bilden, as the Deutsches Wà ¶rterbuch by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm states, is that of a plastic activity on the sensory level and means giving shape, producing a certain object abiding to the rules which preside over the Art. In this case bilden is a synonym for gestalten and formieren. But the relationship of reproduction, and therefore of resemblance with respect to an image must be added to this , and this addition to an Urbild pushes bilden well beyond the pure and simple formation of an object and gives rise to the complex relationship between model and copy, original and reproduction which implies a very different approach to the question. Such a double meaning