RT Article
T1 "To Love the Rest of His Thoughts as Myself" - Translating Mendelssohn's Singular Bildung
JF Naharaim
VO 15
IS 2
SP 201
OP 220
A1 Kremnitzer, Yuval
LA English
PB De Gruyter
YR 2021
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1789627540
AB The conceptual history of Bildung, the German term for self-formation, encapsulates the ethical revolution of modern German thought, associated with the Kantian moment and its aftermath. Reshaped in modernity to respond to a post-Kantian, critical sensibility, the modern term emphasizes the reflexive, active process of self-formation, in contrast with the medieval theological sensibility which emphasized the receptive imprint of the image of God. In this article, I unpack Moses Mendelsohn's idiosyncratic notion of Bildung. I show that what is unique, indeed, singular in Mendelssohn's notion of Bildung is the way it merges the traditional, theological notion with the modern one. For Mendelssohn, to imitate God is to come to value one’s contingent being. The imitation of the ideal, the most perfect, is tantamount to embracing the perfectible, and the process of perfection or self-actualization. Jacobi, Mendelssohn, Bildung, Contingency, Pantheism affair, Moral Perfectionism.
K1 Bildung
K1 Mendelssohn
K1 Moral Perfectionism
K1 Pantheism affair
K1 Contingency
DO 10.1515/naha-2021-0014