Journal | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
Journal issue | 54 | 2020
Research Article | „Bildung“ (Herder) und „Cultur“ (Adelung) im Vergleich
„Bildung“ (Herder) und „Cultur“ (Adelung) im Vergleich
Abstract
“Bildung” and “Kultur” are among the key terms of the German Enlightenment, and appear in various hierarchical forms in the late 18th century. In Adelung’s Versuch einer Geschichte der Cultur des menschlichen Geschlechts (1782), which partly draws on Herder’s Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit (1774), the term Cultur refers to a social phenomenon that subsumes “refinement” (Verfeinerung), “Enlightenment” (Aufklärung) and “abilities” (Fähigkeiten). Adelung’s concept of culture is tightly linked to his interpretation of human history, which differs both from that of the largely politically oriented universal histories of his time, and from that of the anthropologically based “philosophies of history” (Iselin, Herder, Kant). For Adelung, culture is produced by “crowds in confined spaces” and thus appears as a quantitative phenomenon, as opposed to the qualitative elements such as power (Kraft) and fermentation (Gärung) that determine the course of history in Herder’s philosophy of history of 1774. Cultur emerges from a balance that comes about when the material and non-material components of a given culture are “in the most exact proportion” to each other. The idea of the “Maximum” formulated in Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784), which is described as “a climax” that every nation reaches in its own way, appears to be developed critically as a counterpart to Adelung’s concept of balance.
Submitted: July 24, 2020 | Accepted: Aug. 28, 2020 | Published Dec. 22, 2020 | Language: de
Keywords History of Historiography • hilosophy of History • Cultural History
Copyright © 2020 Gérard Laudin. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOc/2499-1562/2020/54/011
