GERT BIESTA

BILDUNG AND MODERNITY: THE FUTURE OF BILDUNG IN A

WORLD OF DIFFERENCE

ABSTRACT. This paper asks whether there is a future for the age-old educational ideal of
Bildung. It is argued that the modern conception of Bildung in terms of “rational autonomy”
should be understood as the educational answer that was given to the political question
about citizenship in an emerging (modern) civil society. Raising the question about the
future of Bildung therefore means to ask what educational response would be appropriate
in our time. It is argued that our time is one in which the idea of a universal or total
perspective has become problematic. We now live in a world of difference in which the
rational autonomous life is only one of the possible ways to live. Beyond totalisation and
isolation, a possible future of Bildung might be found in the experience that we can only
live our life with others. In a “world of difference” Bildung might follow from a questioning
of “one’s right to exist” (Levinas). In this respect Bildung can happen anywhere and not
necessarily in those parts of the “Bildungssystem” that educators are most familiar and
comfortable with (i.e., the school). Bildung becomes a lifelong challenge and a lifelong
opportunity.

KEY WORDS: autonomy, Bildung, democracy, learning society, liberal education, multi-
culturalism, rationality

INTRODUCTION

To say anything meaningful about Bildung and modernity is quite a diffi-

cult task. The concept of Bildung brings together the aspirations of all
those who acknowledge – or hope – that education is more than the simple
acquisition of knowledge and skills, that it is more than simply getting
things “right,” but that it also has to do with nurturing the human person,
that it has to do with individuality, subjectivity, in short, with “becoming
and being somebody.” Bildung is a rich, but also a complex concept – a
concept, moreover, with a long history.
The concept of “modernity” is no less complex. It signifies a way in
which Western culture has tried to understand its own recent history, not
only as a description of that history but also as an evaluation of it. Until
not so long ago modernity signified improvement, progress, a movement
away from a dark past towards a brighter future. We now live in an era –
which some prefer to call “postmodern” – in which we have come to see
that being or becoming modern is no longer simply, straightforwardly and

Studies in Philosophy and Education 21: 343–351, 2002.

© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
344 GERT BIESTA

unproblematically “O.K.” This is not to say that modernity is over, or that

it is always “bad,” but it does indicate that the idea of “modernity” is more
ambivalent than we may have assumed it to be (see, e.g., Bauman, 1989,
1991).
To say something meaningful, therefore, about these two rich and
complex concepts and about their relationship is not easy. To do so in the
limited space available here is even more difficult. Yet I do believe that
it is of crucial importance to keep the conversation about Bildung going
even if we have so little time – and there is, of course, never enough time.
I believe that we need to continue to speak about Bildung because the
very concept allows us to say something different about education, or at
least it allows us to explore the ways in which education might be about
something more than simply the transmission of our facts and values to the
next generation.1
This immediately raises the question to what extent and in what way
the idea of Bildung can still make sense for us, here and now. In this paper
I will not so much try to answer this question. I will rather present some
observations which, so I wish to argue, should be taken into account when
we want to investigate the future of Bildung.

A HISTORY OF BILDUNG

It is important to acknowledge that there is no such “thing” as Bildung,

that is not as a “thing” on its own. We first of all need to be aware of
language and context. Is, so we could ask, the German word “Bildung”
the same as the Swedish word “Bildning”? Is that similar to the Dutch
word “vorming”? And what would this be in English? Liberal education,?
Edification (Rorty)? Cultivation? The key to addressing this issue is to see
that Bildung has a history – or perhaps we should say: that it has several
(possible) histories.
A brief look at one possible history of Bildung shows that there is both
an educational and a political dimension to it (see, e.g., Sünker, 1994). On
the one hand Bildung stands for an educational ideal that emerged in Greek
society and that, through its adoption in Roman culture, humanism, neo-
humanism and the Enlightenment became one of the central notions of the
modern Western educational tradition (see Klafki, 1986; Tenorth, 1986).
1 It is for precisely this reason that I have chosen to use the word Bildung in this paper
and not an English translation of it – if such a translation would be possible at all. Using the
word Bildung in this way is meant to be a reminder of the possibility to think differently
about education.
 BILDUNG AND MODERNITY 345

Central in this tradition is the question as to what constitutes an educated

or cultivated human being. The answer to this question is not given in
terms of discipline, socialisation or moralisation, i.e., as the adaptation to
an existing “external” order. Bildung refers to the cultivation of the inner
life, i.e., the human mind or human soul.
Initially the question of Bildung was approached in terms of the content
of Bildung. A decisive step in the development of the modern conception
of Bildung was taken when the acquisition of contents became recognised
as a constitutive aspect of Bildung (Herder, Pestalozzi, Humboldt). Since
then Bildung has always also been self-Bildung. A further step took place
with the Enlightenment where self-Bildung became defined in terms of
rational autonomy. Kant provided the classical definition of Enlighten-
ment as “men’s release from his self-incurred tutelage [Unmundigkeit]
through the exercise of his own understanding” (Kant, 1959). Kant also
argued that men’s “vocation and propensity to free thinking” could only
be brought about by means of education (see Kant, 1982, p. 701; trans-
lation G.B.), thereby giving education a central position in the process of
Enlightenment.
Although for Kant the idea of rational autonomy was a central educa-
tional aim and ideal, it was also – and perhaps even primarily – an answer
to the question about the role of the subject in the emerging civil society,
viz., as a subject who can think for himself (not yet herself; see Rang, 1986,
pp. 53–54) and is capable of his (not yet her) own judgements. In doing so
Kant provided a conception of citizenship, an answer to the question what
it means to be a citizen in a civil – can we say democratic? – society, and
at the same time provided a programme and a legitimation for citizenship
education.
From this (too brief2 ) account of the history of the concept of Bildung
we can learn three things. We can first of all see that Bildung is not exclu-
sively an educational idea in the sense of being only concerned with the
individual. There is also a social and political dimension to it. We can
further see that the idea of rational autonomy – which, so it seems to me is
still very influential as an educational ideal today – can, given its history, be
identified as a typically “modern” idea. Thirdly, and most importantly for
what I wish to say here, it shows that the (modern) conception of Bildung
was a very specific answer to a very specific question – the question
of citizenship in an emerging civil society – and not, therefore, some-
thing universal, external or “typically human” (not in the least because
of what counts as “human” is itself at stake in the different articulations of
Bildung).
2 I have discussed this in more detail in Biesta, in press.
346 GERT BIESTA

The idea that Bildung is an answer to a question – and we could perhaps

say an educational answer to a political question – is of crucial importance
if we want to think about the future of Bildung. It suggests that the first
question that we need to ask should not be how much Bildung still is
possible in the world that we live in now. (Such a question would assume
that the meaning of Bildung is itself static and objective.) We rather need
to start by asking the question as to what kind of problems we are faced
with today. We need, in other words, to begin with a “diagnosis” of our
time. It is only on the basis of our answer to that question that we can then
return and ask what kind of educational response, what kind of Bildung
might be needed or might make sense for us here and today – and what
kind of Bildung might be possible.
Surely, the question of a diagnosis of our time is a tremendously diffi-
cult and complex question. Not only because we can only attempt to
identify the problems we are faced with. But also because we should
acknowledge that such a diagnosis depends on the position from which
it is given – which immediately shows that it is already problematic to
speak of “our” time, because the “our” suggests a false inclusiveness. We,
or better: I, have to be very careful here.

A DIAGNOSIS OF “OUR” TIME

One way to characterise the situation we are in today, is to say that we live
in a world in which the general or the universal has been put into question;
where, to put it differently, the general or universal has become a problem.
The point here is not so much to say that we live in a plural world, because
when we look at the history of mankind we can see that there has always
been plurality. What has changed, however, is the way in which we – or at
least some of us – try to understand what (this) plurality is. What has been
put into question, to be more precise, is the idea that it is possible to see,
overview, describe, and conceptualise this plurality from a point outside
of it.
One way to make clear what is at stake here, is by making a distinc-
tion between diversity and difference (see Bhabha, 1990). If we think of
plurality in terms of diversity, we look at it as a collection of variations
that have a similar ground or origin. An example of this can be found in
thinking about plurality in terms of cultural variations of human nature.
In this case nature provides a common (back)ground against which plur-
ality can be seen as a collection of (cultural) variations of nature. What is
suggested in this way of thinking is that we are all basically “the same”
and that our differences are “merely cultural.”
 BILDUNG AND MODERNITY 347

When, on the other hand, we think about plurality in terms of differ-

ence we take the fact that we differ or that there is difference as just we
encounter and experience it – which more often than not will mean: as
it confronts us. We take plurality, in other words, as it “comes.” What is
implied in the latter approach is the recognition that any attempt to place
the different positions in an overarching framework can only be done from
one of the positions “within” that framework (which already means that
such a position is never simply “within”).
What I am trying to say here is one way to express what Lyotard (1979)
has referred to as the postmodern condition. The reason why I am not
putting this label upfront is because I don’t think that the postmodern is an
“objective” condition, i.e., a state we are in. Just as modernity is a way to
understand our recent history, so is postmodernity (see Biesta, 1995).
The idea that our plural world is not a world of diversity but a world of
difference can be defended on theoretical grounds. We can, for example,
think of this idea as the logical outcome of taking the process of human
communication seriously (see Biesta, 1999a). The main reason, however,
for making the shift from diversity to difference is of an ethical nature.
It stems from the recognition that any attempt to describe the plurality in
terms of one of the positions within that plurality – and in doing so assume
that this tells the “whole” story – does injustice to the other “positions.”
Thinking about plurality in terms of difference is, therefore, a way not to
mistake the part for the whole. It is a way not to totalise. In this respect we
could say – I will only mention it here – that thinking about plurality in
terms of difference is one way to take democracy seriously.

A BILDUNG OF THE FUTURE

If we acknowledge that the plural world in which we live today is a world

of difference – or if we are at least willing to explore what such a diagnosis
would mean for the future of Bildung – we can then return to the question
as to what kind of Bildung would be appropriate (or needed) in such a
world, and also what kind of Bildung would be possible.
To begin with the last question: I think that we should give up the idea
of Bildung as a transition – or as some would call it: a liberation – from
the life of tradition to the rational life, the life of reason (see also Biesta,
1998; Biesta, in press). We must at least acknowledge that what is called
the rational life is itself but one tradition (which doesn’t say anything about
the value of that tradition yet, but simply relocates the rational life in the
world of difference itself). Further I think that we must acknowledge that
348 GERT BIESTA

there is not just one rational life but that there can be many (see Winch,
1958).
If we think of the rational life as the examined life that Socrates had
in mind when he claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living,
my point could be read as the claim that we should and can only lead an
unexamined life. This is not what I have in mind. What I want to argue
here is primarily that the examined life – in the specific sense of a life
exclusively based on rational beliefs – is, if possible at all, only one way to
lead a meaningful life, and not necessarily the best way. In this respect I am
inclined to answer to Socrates that while the unexamined life may not be
worth living, the unlived life is definitely not worth examining. We should
situate the examined life. We should try to find out where it makes sense
and where it doesn’t and not think that it is the uncontestable aim of all
Bildung. It is for this reason that I want to argue that the modern conception
of Bildung as “rational liberation” is no longer possible in a world in which
we take difference seriously and for that reason avoid totalisation.
But besides totalisation there is another danger in such a world, and I
want to argue that this danger must be avoided too. This is the danger of
isolation.
Isolation is the idea that we can and should lead our different lives
totally disconnected from each other. Of course we should not create prob-
lems where they do not exist. That is to say: in some situations it can
be wise and it can be possible to create a certain distance between the
different lives that people lead. There are historical examples, e.g., the
way in which religious plurality was dealt with in the Netherlands, where
this strategy was wise – at least for some time (see Biesta and Miedema,
1995). But there is definitely a limit to such an approach – both in space
and in time – and the bottom line here has to be a recognition of a basic
human interdependence. Such a recognition can come from the “inside,”
for example through empathy or moral imagination. But it can also come
from the “outside,” for example from the recognition that we are all facing
the same problems (see Dewey, 1929) – which could well be the case in
the current “globalisation” of ecological problems.
If, against this background, there is a task – a future task, a future – for
Bildung here, it might be to help to create an awareness, or better, perhaps,
an experience that the only way in which we can live our lives is with
others. (And the question that follows from there is, of course, what that
would mean in more detail.3 )
At precisely this point I do think that we can make use of the heritage of
the modern tradition of Bildung, that is of that part in which the importance
3 I have explored this in Biesta, 2000.
 BILDUNG AND MODERNITY 349

of the encounter with what is other and different is given a central place.
But two qualifying remarks should be made here.
First of all it must be stressed that the reason for doing so should not
be to try to make what is strange and other familiar to us. I am more
thinking of something which Hannah Arendt has referred to as “visiting.”
Visiting is not trying to think the thoughts of someone else, but “being and
thinking in one’s own identity where actually one is not” (Arendt, 1977,
p. 241), and thereby permitting oneself the disorientation that is necessary
to understand how the world can look different to someone else. Rather
than making the strange familiar, therefore, we could say that visiting is an
approach to Bildung that aims at making the familiar, that what we thought
we knew and understood, strange.
Secondly: by stressing the importance of experiencing that we can only
lead our lives with others, I mean to say that the task of Bildung is not one
where we should only be with others in our imagination. The point is that
we should actually be with others, that we should actually experience what
or who is different. Bildung should actually make such an encounter with
what is other, with was is different possible. Being in such a situation can
put a challenge to our own “certainties,” which in turn can lead us to recon-
sider our own “position.” Another way to reply to Socrates could therefore
be to say that an unchallenged life, a life in which the question about one’s
“right to exist” (Levinas), is not worth living (see Biesta, 1999b).

THE PLACE OF BILDUNG

If the foregoing remarks suffice as a very general outline of an answer to

the question as to what Bildung could or should be in a world of difference,
the final question that I want to address is where Bildung should take place.
The traditional answer to this question – and definitely the most easy
one for “us” educators – would be to say that Bildung should take place and
does take place in what the Germans call the “Bildungssystem,” and what
we could translate as the educational system, i.e., the school, the college
and the university. The immediate reaction here could of course be to say:
Yes, let’s try it, let’s do it, let’s see if we can make the educational system
into a place where we can really encounter what and who is other.
All this is well as long as we can assume that the educational system can
be part of the solution. But if we want to think about the future of Bildung
we need to take into consideration that in some cases in our (post)modern
society the educational system is not or no longer part of the solution
but has itself become part of the problem. I am not only thinking here
of those countries with a strong presence of private schools, either for
350 GERT BIESTA

reasons of class (e.g., England) or religion (e.g., the United States), which
tremendously restricts the opportunities for experiencing what and who is
other (see, e.g. Feinberg, 1998). I am also thinking of the effects that very
restrictive, outcome-based national curricula have on the opportunities for
young people to experience difference and otherness.
While we should continue to struggle for the educational system to be a
place or space where a real encounter with who or what is other is possible,
we should at the very same time keep our eyes open – optimistically – to
see if there are other places where Bildung happens or might happen. With
an eye to the future of Bildung we should not restrict our attention to the
educational system, because it might well be that more important things are
happening elsewhere. What, for example, about the internet? How much
difference and otherness can be experienced there? How “real” are those
experiences and encounters?
In all cases, and this is my final remark, the “disorientating” encounters
that are central to the future of Bildung which I have outlined here should
not be restricted to the early years of life. We should not think of Bildung –
let alone a future Bildung, a Bildung of (and for?) the future – as a process
in which we create a democratic character or democratic dispositions early
in life and then leave it all to the individual. Such an individualistic (and in
a sense psychological) approach to the question of Bildung forgets that we
should not only focus on the acquisition of the right “habits” (including
reflective habits and habits of reflection), but should be aware that these
“habits” also need an appropriate “habitat” in order to endure. Not only,
therefore, is the conception of Bildung that I have outlined in this paper a
lifelong task. It is also a task that should not only focus on the individual,
but on society as well. It is, in that sense, at the very same time a thoroughly
political task.
What emerges from these reflections on the future of Bildung is, there-
fore, an image of a learning society conceived as a society in which the
real encounters with who and what is other are a constant and continuous
possibility. Such a society we could well call a democratic society.

REFERENCES

Arendt, H. (1977). Between past and future. Eight exercises in political thought.
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Bauman, Z. (1991). Modernity and ambivalence. Oxford: Polity.
Bauman, Z. (1989). Modernity and the holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bhabha, H.K. (1990). The third space. An interview with Homi Bhabha. In: J. Rutherford
(Ed), Identity. Community, culture, difference (pp. 207–221). London: Lawrence &
Wishart.
 BILDUNG AND MODERNITY 351

Biesta, G.J.J. (1995). Postmodernism and the repoliticization of education. Interchange 26,
161–183.
Biesta, G.J.J. (1998). Say you want a revolution . . . Suggestions for the impossible future
of critical pedagogy. Educational Theory 48(4), 499–510.
Biesta, G.J.J. (1999a). Radical intersubjectivity. Reflections on the “different” foundation
of education. Studies in Philosophy and Education 18(4), 203–220.
Biesta, G.J.J. (1999b). Where are you? Where am I? Education, identity and the question
of location. In: C.A. Säfstrom (Ed), Identity. Questioning the logic of identity within
educational theory (pp. 21–45). Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Biesta, G. (2000). Om att-vara-med-andra. Pedagogikens svårighet såsom politikens
svårighet [On being with others. The difficulty of pedagogy as the difficulty of politics].
Utbildning and Demokrati 9(3), 71–89.
Biesta, G.J.J. (in press). Bildung without generality. Reflections on a future of bildung.
British Journal of Philosophy of Education.
Biesta, G.J.J. and Miedema, S. (1996). Dewey in Europe: A case-study on the interna-
tional dimensions of the turn-of-the-century educational reform. American Journal of
Education 105(1), 1–26.
Dewey, J. (1929). The public and its problems. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Feinberg, W. (1998). Common schools/uncommon identities. National unity and cultural
difference. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kant, I. (1959[1784]). Foundations of the metaphysics of morals, and what is enlight-
enment? Translated with an introduction by L.W. Beck. New York: Liberal Arts
Press.
Kant, I. (1982[1803]). Ueber Pädagogik [On education]. In I. Kant (Ed), Schriften zur
Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik (pp. 695–761). Frankfurt
am Main: Insel Verlag.
Klafki, W. (1986). Die Bedeutung der klassischen Bildungstheorien für ein zeitgemässes
Konzept von allgemeiner Bildung [The meaning of the classical theory of “Bildung” for
a contemporary concept of general education]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 32(4), 455–476.
Lyotard, J.-F. (1979). La condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir [The postmodern
condition: A report on knowledge]. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Rang, A. (1987). Over de betekenis van het element “algemeen” in het concept van alge-
mene vorming [On the meaning of the idea of the “general” in the concept of general
education]. Comenius 7(1), 49–62.
Sünker, H. (1994). Pedagogy and politics. Heydorn’s “survival through education” and its
challenge to contemporary theories of education (Bildung). In: S. Miedema, G. Biesta, B.
Boog, A. Smaling, W. Wardekker and B. Levering (Eds), The politics of human science
(pp. 113–128). Brussels: VUB Press.
Tenorth, H.-E. (Ed) (1986). Allgemeine Bildung. Analysen zur ihrer Wirklichtkeit, Versuch
über ihre Zukunft [General education. An analysis of its reality, and an attempt to reflect
on its future]. Weinheim: Juventa.
Winch, P. (1958). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.

School of Education and Lifelong Learning

University of Exeter
Exeter EX1 2L4
England