From Bildung to Learning Society. Philosophical Foundations and Mutations of a Modern Ideal

The main objective of this project is to compare the modern philosophy of Bildung and the contemporary paradigm of the Learning Society (LS) by systematically analyzing their homological structures. Through this comparison, we aim to expose the important conceptual mutations of the ideal of educational autonomy occurring from the first paradigm to the latter. This research combines history of philosophy and political philosophy and will follow a plan in four steps: 1. Historical reconstruction of the constellation of texts formed around the concept of Bildung in classical German philosophy, through an original typology of the contrasting positions of the main authors of this period, from Herder to Humboldt. 2. Identification and analysis of the most significant critical transformations of the Bildung concept by influential philosophers since the second half the 19th century. 3. Establishment of a corpus of scientific and political texts and discourses on the LS, for comparing the paradigm of LS to the modern philosophy of Bildung following an analytical grid pointing the conceptual and normative homologies and mutations between them. 4. Concrete application of this systematic comparison and testing of the heuristic potential of the Bildung philosophy in the particular context of the current debates on the transformations of the Idea of University. The novel aspects of the this project are twofold: (a) To provide an innovative comparative method for systematically analyzing the contemporary mutations of modern philosophical concepts. (b) To lay the foundations for a comprehensive philosophy of University and academic freedom. Through an analysis of political-educational narratives, we will show that the great narratives of the philosophical modernity – such as emancipation through self-cultivation – have not become obsolete or ineffective, but continue to be operating in current discourses under critical and fragmented forms.