Bildung: Roots, Functions and Significations

The concept of Bildung is one of the key concepts that has been influential for more than three centuries in the Western intellectual and cultural space, and in particular in Germany. This concept has multiple and varied implications both philologically and in its application in various fields. In this article, to examine the meaning of this term and then its impact on different epistemic and cultural fields, we have to begin with the lexical etymology of this term and its advent in the Middle Ages and its propagation in the eighteenth century. In the third step, a history of its application in the German intellectual and cultural space will be presented so that it can be used to analyze the various functions of the term. In the fourth step, the conceptual network of the implications, symmetries, and contradictions of this term with other related terms (such as Kultur, Zivilisation, Erziehung, Humanität, and even terms such as Geist and Wissenschaft) will be drawn up. It is only on this basis that in the fifth step, a kind of category of different meanings of the term Bildung was obtained; and in the sixth step, in addition to the philosophical and theoretical meanings, functions of this term in the ordinary literature will be analyzed. In the seventh and last step of the article, while referring to the inner conflict and the blockade in the concept of Bildung, some critical points of this concept, especially for us and our world, will be mentioned.