Forming Humanity
Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition
Review Quotes
CHOICE
"In this scrupulous excavation of the traditions of modern Western philosophy, Herdt brings into the light an often-ignored aspect of modern normative theories, namely, the deep-rooted ties between Christian moral theology and the Bildung tradition. . . . Herdt's original contribution is likely to push debates in new directions. Forming Humanity is a splendid resource for those working in 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy, Christian theology, ethics, literature, and education. . . . Summing Up: Essential."
Timothy Stoll | Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"In this splendid book, Jennifer Herdt has thus provided a valuable service in tracing the ways in which the concept of Bildung figures in the work of some of the most prominent thinkers of the period. With verve and impressive erudition, Herdt details how the notion of Bildung originated in the German pietist movement in the seventeenth century, and blossomed into a more (though perhaps not entirely) humanistic ideal in the subsequent work of Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schiller, Goethe, and Hegel."
Sun News Tuscon
"As to the whole of the book, I think it is brilliant, I think it is necessary, I think that it cannot be highly enough recommended. And I sincerely hope that the modern world assumes the task of Bildung for the realization of its higher humanity."
Gerald McKenny, author of Biotechnology, Human Nature and Christian Ethics
“Forming Humanity is an exceptionally nuanced and persuasive account of Christian moral formation in this ostensibly secularizing tradition. By presenting the Bildung tradition as a highly complex engagement with Christianity, the author has made a major contribution to our understanding of it. She has eloquently refuted the secularization thesis and has also demonstrated the variety of ways in which Christianity is both contested and continued, transmuted and transformed in the authors she treats. It is an original and persuasive scholarly account that successfully continues the author’s previous work on divine and human agency while uniting it with an ethics of mutual recognition. This constellation of topics, and the author’s particular version of it, are on the forefront of the best work in Christian ethics today.”
Charles Mathewes, Carolyn M. Barbour Professor of Religious Studies, University of Virginia
“Herdt’s latest book explores the German Romantics as offering an entirely distinct way of thinking about morality and religious belief in the modern age. Unlike many other forms of ‘modernity critique,’ this project begins not from premises fundamentally antedating modernity but from principles enunciated from within self-consciously modern perspectives. It will alter the way we think about ethical and religious life today, not least by offering one history for many of our more free-floating worries about our condition, and our strategies about the challenges that confront us. In a moment when antimodernism seems theoretically bankrupt but practically pervasive, while questions of modernity are more urgent than ever before, Herdt’s book offers a critical path into the future, beyond nostalgia and resentment.”
Luke Bretherton, Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University
“With exemplary scholarship, depth, and clarity Herdt provides a compelling and rich analysis of the Bildung tradition and the interactions of theology, philosophy, and literature that shaped it. And through her constructive intellectual history, Herdt interrogates and opens out theological and historical frameworks for thinking through a central conceptual crisis of our own day: how to imagine and cultivate a sense of shared humanity when the very notion of humanity as a universal moral and political community is at once deeply problematic and urgently needed.”
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History: European History | History of Ideas
Philosophy: Ethics
Religion: Christianity | Philosophy of Religion, Theology, and Ethics
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