Abstract

The argument is that Bildung has occupied Habermas from the earliest writings. In these writings he criticizes the idea of being educated as an expression of innate abilities and emphasizes instead the significance of the social conditions of the upbringing. This is the subject of the first section. The second section provides a presentation of the ideology-critical analysis of Bildung found in Habermas’s doctoral thesis on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. The basic critique is that the ideal of individual Bildung is too tightly connected to economic and political dominance, but still the ideal contains some truth. The third section maps his relatively sparse comments regarding Bildung in the subsequent decades. Significant here is Knowledge and Human Interest, where he works himself out of the philosophy of consciousness framework towards the Theory of communicative action. This becomes the communicative approach, which becomes the framework of Habermas’ discussion of Bildung, both in relation to philosophical ethics – discourse ethics – and in more specific discussions, such as what is the role of the university in modern society. Finally just a few words on the political philosophy and the philosophy of law, which Habermas presents in Between Facts and Norms, where he once again allows Bildung have a positive normative significance, but now in a collective communicative perspective.