Bildung as guiding principle

The name of Wilhelm Meister, the protagonist in Goethe’s novel bearing the same title, is usually invoked when academics talk about Bildung. Meister learns that the only way for him to find out who he is, is by acquiring different cultures. He can only do so in opposition and in togetherness with other people: “It takes all people together to make up humankind and all forces together to make up the world.” All aspects of human nature have the same value: “Every disposition is important and must be developed. One promotes only beauty, another only usefulness, and only together do they make up a human being.”

Von Humboldt

In the late 18th century, German intellectuals such as Von Humboldt (1767-1835) and Novalis (1772-1801), each in their own way, introduced the idea of Bildung as their view of how people achieve self-realization, autonomy and freedom. It is not individualism but individuality that matters here. It is only together with other people that human beings can achieve such self-realization, autonomy and feelings of freedom. Novalis (small picture) argues that human beings only learn to understand themselves when they grasp that they are part of a society and the result of a historical development. And so they need to be acquainted with all sciences, and as much art and culture and as many other people as possible. Bildung means to open up and test your horizons by confronting them with other points of view. This makes us understand that the acquisition of knowledge is driven by liberty, equality and solidarity.

Guiding principle

The idea of Bildung has always been a guiding principle for teaching in Tilburg. Cobbenhagen was the first to point out the overriding importance of education (Bildung) in addition to training: “[The idea that] increasing knowledge would naturally produce better people [is the] error that has caused education to be detached from upbringing and the acquisition of knowledge to be detached from the formation of character. The idea that innocence had first been lost with the tree of knowledge had been forgotten or was considered a fairytale.” In the Tilburg educational vision and profile, which were introduced on the occasion of Tilburg University’s 90th anniversary in 2017, Bildung was mentioned once again as an important element in the university programs. “The formation of character should go hand in hand with cultural education in a wide sense in order to build complete and harmonious human beings,” Cobbenhagen proclaimed. Instead of knowledge, skills and sales, we are back to knowledge, skills and character. And this is what distinguishes the Tilburg tradition.