Bildung in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

The paper focuses on Hegel’s concept of Bildung and its significance for his account of the concrete subjectivity. It is pointed out that it would be a misinterpretation of Hegel's account of Bildung to reduce it either to a merely individual intellectual event (education, narrowly construed) or to economic production. In Hegel, Bildung is a real historical process that takes place within the life of any individual, any culture and (in principle) even the human race. That is a concrete universal process in which we human beings necessary participate and through which we become aware of ourselves and our natural and social environment. The link Hegel sets between the process of individual enculturation and Bildung of “cosmic” spirit indicates the essential interdependence of individual and universal in social and cultural life. Just as there is noindividuality without the individual’s participation in the universal social and cultural life, there cannot be achieved any universal context without activity of the individuals. In the process of enculturation, the individual (here as a collective historical subject,humanity at large) creates culture and at the same time creates himself through culture