Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition

by Jennifer A. Herdt

Kant’s proclamation of humankind’s emergence from “self-incurred immaturity” left his contemporaries with a What models should we use to sculpt ourselves if we no longer look to divine grace or received authorities?  Deftly uncovering the roots of this question in Rhineland mysticism, Pietist introspection, and the rise of the bildungsroman, Jennifer A. Herdt reveals bildung, or ethical formation, as the key to post-Kantian thought. This was no simple process of secularization, in which human beings took responsibility for something they had earlier left in the hands of God.  Rather, theorists of bildung, from Herder through Goethe to Hegel, championed human agency in self-determination while working out the social and political implications of our creation in the image of God.  While bildung was invoked to justify racism and colonialism by stigmatizing those deemed resistant to self-cultivation, it also nourished ideals of dialogical encounter and mutual recognition.  Herdt reveals how the project of forming humanity lives on in our ongoing efforts to grapple with this complicated legacy.

Genres: Philosophy, History

312 pages, Hardcover

Published August 22, 2019

About the author

Jennifer A. Herdt is Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale University. She joined the Yale faculty in 2010, following eleven years on the faculty of theology at the University of Notre Dame. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Her primary interests are in the history of moral thought since the 17th century, classical and contemporary virtue ethics, and contemporary Protestant social ethics and political theology. She is the author of Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago: 2008), Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: 1997), and of over 20 articles and book chapters that have appeared in a variety of journals. They deal with subjects ranging from humility and the code of the streets, indiscriminate divine love, Locke and martyrdom, and connections between divine compassion and the mystification of power.

Living in the Philippines for 10 years, Herdt grew up in a tight-knit international scientific community, religiously pluralistic. Raised Methodist, she and the other children freely batted around questions about religion and the tensions between faiths. A desire to ponder and resolve theological matters started there and never left her.

Reviews

[Ben Smitthimedhin]

One of my favorite classes from college is History of the English Novel with Dr. Karen Prior. In it, she traces how the emergence of the English novel coincides with the rise of the individual and how it sheds light on the value of ordinary lives in the formation of society. It’s not a surprise therefore that we explored the Bildungsroman as an important genre in this history, and forging through The History of Tom Jones with some of my classmates who didn’t drop the class is still one of my proudest achievements in life.

So it was a delight to read Jennifer Herdt’s Forming Humanity, a book tracing the history (and evolution) of the German Bildung tradition. Reading through it brought me back to that class. Herdt’s analysis dispels the simplistic narrative of secularism that humans simply turned from God towards self and dropped God off somewhere along the way. Instead, she narrates how the Bildung tradition wrestles through the implications of what it means for humans to be created in the image of God.

She explores how the doctrine of Imago Dei was contested with varying emphases (how marred are we by sin?); how Pietiesm’s “inward” devotion unintentionally led to the overemphasis seeing God within the self in Boehme and Eckhart; J.G. Herder’s emphasis on the ethical treatment of others and the development of a just society (which reminded me so much of Confucius); Hegel’s attempt to account for evil as “a holding on to difference in opposition, an exclusion of otherness, a refusal of the other’s self-gift,” and so much more.

What makes Herdt’s project unique is her inclusion of Barth as a critical voice, which aids in parsing out what’s useful and what’s not in the Bildung tradition. Herdt’s plea at the end for Christians to listen to the voices of those in the margin and to include them in the project of Bildung illuminates a way forward for a more complete picture of humanity.

[noblethumos]

Jennifer A. Herdt’s Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition (University of Chicago Press, 2019) is a significant contribution to contemporary debates in moral philosophy, theology, and intellectual history. Herdt’s work is a sophisticated and deeply engaged rehabilitation of the German tradition of Bildung—a complex concept often translated as “formation” or “education”—as a moral project of human self-cultivation deeply rooted in theological and philosophical commitments. She argues that Bildung, far from being the secular, individualistic enterprise often portrayed by its critics, originated within a framework of theological and moral reflection aimed at the formation of free, responsible, and relational human beings.


At the heart of Herdt’s argument is a nuanced historical narrative that situates the origins and evolution of the Bildung tradition within the broader context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German thought. She skillfully navigates figures such as Johann Gottfried Herder, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, as well as lesser-known but pivotal thinkers like Christoph Martin Wieland and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Herdt shows that the early advocates of Bildung were not simply secular humanists but deeply invested in theological questions concerning human nature, freedom, and moral formation.


Herdt’s central thesis is that Bildung was conceived as a means of forming humanity both individually and collectively. In this sense, the tradition aimed at cultivating Bildung not just as intellectual or aesthetic development, but as moral formation—a shaping of the self in and through community, history, and ethical responsibility. Through close readings and intellectual genealogy, Herdt argues that modern moral philosophy has lost sight of this formative vision, often prioritizing procedural autonomy or moral duty over the complex, narrative development of moral identity. Bildung, for Herdt, offers a corrective by emphasizing the dynamic, historical, and relational dimensions of ethical life.


One of the book’s most original contributions is its sustained theological engagement. Herdt draws on Christian theological resources, particularly Augustinian and Reformed traditions, to recover the theological roots of Bildung and to argue for its continuing relevance. Rather than portraying religion and Enlightenment as inherently antagonistic, she demonstrates how Protestant theological commitments—especially the emphasis on the imago Dei and the transformative work of grace—shaped early articulations of moral and cultural formation. This allows Herdt to articulate a vision of moral anthropology that affirms both divine initiative and human responsibility, resisting both moral voluntarism and deterministic accounts of human nature.


Herdt also engages critically with twentieth-century critiques of Bildung, particularly those influenced by the Frankfurt School. Thinkers such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer rightly identified how the rhetoric of Bildung could be co-opted by bourgeois and nationalist ideologies, contributing to exclusionary or oppressive social orders. However, Herdt contends that such critiques often fail to distinguish between the original aspirations of the Bildung tradition and its later distortions. Her approach does not deny these historical misuses but calls for a more careful retrieval that can reclaim the formative potential of Bildung for moral and political renewal.


Methodologically, Forming Humanity is a model of interdisciplinary scholarship. Herdt combines historical analysis, philosophical argument, and theological reflection in a manner that is both rigorous and accessible. Her command of both primary texts and secondary literature is impressive, and her prose is clear, persuasive, and rich in insight. The book will be of particular interest to scholars in moral philosophy, theology, German intellectual history, and education, but its implications extend to broader discussions about moral formation in contemporary liberal societies.


Forming Humanity is a profound and timely intervention in debates about the nature of moral education, the role of tradition, and the formation of ethical selves. By recovering the theological and moral depth of the Bildung tradition, Herdt challenges contemporary assumptions about autonomy, secularism, and the moral self. Her work not only deepens our understanding of a pivotal moment in the history of Western thought but also offers a constructive vision for renewing moral discourse today. It is a book that richly deserves the careful attention of scholars and educators committed to the task of forming humanity in an age of moral fragmentation.

GPT