On Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Education Ideal -- Johannes A. Niederhauser

Enrolment for my new course on German Idealism 2022 is now open! Live group seminars start June 18th, 2022. Join us on a journey through the thought cathedrals of Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin, Schelling, and Hegel. In this lecture I discuss Wilhelm von Humboldt’s “Bildungsideal“, his ideal of self-formation and education. Humboldt envisioned that the university would be the place for the self to actualise the truth of the cosmos. The university as a place for otium, for theoria, was not intended to be an institution of passing on dogmas. Rather, the university was to be a place for self-initiated learning, exploration of one’s inner self, which would, Humboldt was convinced, inevitably lead to greater freedom and the fulfillment of cosmological law. The university was a near sacred place allowing individuals to become themselves and thus the university was envisioned as a bulwark against increasing bureaucratization Humboldt warned against as a malady of modern times.