Humboldt Revisited: The Impact of the German University on American Higher Education

By Gry Cathrin Brandser

Humboldt Revisited offers a fresh perspective on the contemporary discourse surrounding reform of European universities. Arguing that contemporary reform derives its basis from pre-constructed truths about the so-called ‘Humboldt-university,’ this monograph traces the historical descent of these truths to the American reception of Humboldt's ideas from the mid-19th century up until the 1960s. Drawing from a rich selection of historical sources, this volume offers an alternative to conventional explanations of the forces behind the ongoing reform of European universities. It also challenges the conventional historical narrative on the Humboldt University, providing new insight into the American reception of the German ideas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Sep 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781800735378

Gry Cathrin Brandser

Gry Cathrin Brandser is Professor at Nord University, Faculty for Social Sciences. She has previously been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, and “Gastforscherin” at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

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CHAPTER 1

Mythos Humboldt

Introduction

Mythos Humboldt refers to the conception of the modern university formulated in the early nineteenth century (1809–1910) by Wilhelm von Humboldt, following Prussia’s loss against Napoleon at Jena in 1806. The model of academic freedom attributed to Humboldt became widely copied around the world, not least in the United States.¹ This model reduced state power to the barest minimum to ensure teachers’ freedom to lecture as they believed best (Lehrfreiheit) and students’ freedom to cultivate their natural dispositions and pursue learning according to their own inclinations and wishes (Lernfreiheit). As opposed to the utilitarian and anti-university attitude² of late-Enlightenment Germany and the prevailing demand for Ausbildung (education for the benefit of society as a whole), Bildung, or self-formation, implied a strong emphasis on the capabilities and uniqueness of each individual student; thus, it stressed introspection and the careful tending, shaping, deepening, and perfecting of individuality though learning. Humboldt’s conception of a university was developed on an ideal of freedom in teaching and learning, but it was also shaped out of a deep-felt need to unite the previously segregated domains of teaching and research, by penetrating into the depths of scholarship.

Many explanations have been given for what has been regarded as a sudden change or reorientation in emphasis from the enthusiastic, enlightened belief in the potential for intellectual maturity of the common man, to ideals of complete and harmonious human development. Some accounts emphasize the deterioration of the old estate (Stände) structure, followed by a search for new forms of sociability (e.g., the proliferation of various intellectual clubs, Salons, and secret societies). Others see the reorientation as a reaction to the increasing power of the absolute state and the rapid growth of a bureaucratic intelligentsia.³ Yet others stress the fact that Kant’s ideas were increasingly attacked as socially and politically dangerous insofar as they created men that had become übergebildet und so verbildet (overeducated and thus misshapen).⁴ The rise of the Romantic movement is cited; in particular, the writings of young Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller provided inspiration and new visions of man as an organic, self-unfolding subject, expressing himself in his actions, relationships, and creations.⁵ The proponents of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy of education (i.e., valuing spontaneity, natural sentiments, authenticity) criticized and condemned the claims of universality maintained by the universities and aimed instead at providing university studies with a new and much stronger humane basis, detached from utilitarian demands. The philosophers of German idealism, although influenced by Rousseau, placed strong emphasis on the ancient Greek civilization as the model for human society. Through an education for individuation—the cultivation of each individual’s inner urges and his striving for creative and intellectual profundity—a relationship could develop where the state and the person were not in conflict but instead joined in civic responsibility. As such, both the state and the individual could expand and complement one another.

For it is only by retaining and developing one’s individuality, one’s Eigentümlichkeit, that one could contribute to others variety of situations just as others, in their Eigentümlichkeiten, contribute to one’s own.⁶

The cultivation of one’s Eigentümlichkeit, however, did require both the security of individual freedom and the opportunity for free, voluntary interaction of one’s individuality with others. Humboldt, who was inspired by the metaphysical presuppositions of Leibniz (his notion of a pre-established harmony of vital energies in the universe),⁷ insisted that Bildung demanded a space or an agora for political and social interchange and natural harmony between individuals. The condition of possibility for such an interaction was a renegotiation of, and thereby a change in the relationship between, the state and the individual. Judging from his early writings, Humboldt reacted strongly against the Prussian state’s disregard of individual growth, in favor of obtaining productive and obedient citizens. In fact, he believed it was wrong for a state to serve the goal of material well-being and moral happiness for its citizens. To avoid the dangers of uniformity and to ensure the opportunity for people to prosper and become as fully developed individuals as possible, Humboldt asserted that there should be only a minimum of interference from the absolutist state, and a maximum of freedom and variety of opportunities available for people to experience. He subsequently regarded the state as primarily responsible for providing the assurance of freedom for each individual to act for himself or herself. He regarded this as the first condition for self-formation. The second condition was to secure the free interchange of individuals by forming new social bonds.

Humboldt’s eventual three-point reform program for the educational system demanded, in short, that the national government was to assume financial responsibility for schools and thereby allow citizens to educate themselves freely through prolonged study.⁸ Furthermore, he prescribed the founding of the University of Berlin, which would be financially independent through an endowment of former Crown lands. This would guarantee its status as a national institution; presumably, it was also a means for restoring Prussian cultural life.⁹

Humboldt proposed that the educational barriers segregating the estates and training students for special functions should be removed; in their place would be an educational egalitarianism that would create new social bonds based on ancient Greek virtues. Nobility and commoners, future scholars and future artisans were to attend the same school. The curriculum was to combine courses in such a way as to provide general education (i.e., sciences such as mathematics and history, as well as classical and modern languages). This would help cultivate each student’s unique abilities in allgemeine Menschenbildung and give them the freedom to move up the educational ladder. Only after a broad and general education could students proceed to specialized training for government employment in the service of the state.¹⁰ In addition to the university, devoted to free inquiry, the schools were to be divided into two units: an elementary school and a high school (gymnasium), where students were taught to become intellectually independent.¹¹ The aim of university education was no longer simply to acquire encyclopedic knowledge and accept received truths. Instead, it was to

congregate students in a community devoted to learning (Wissenschaft), and to vouchsafe their total freedom to interact with their peers in an environment which, saturated with learning, proffered numerous models of consummate cultivation.¹²

Four important attributes of the Humboldtian conception of the university are commonly referred to as constituting a frame on which the future universities were built:¹³ an Enlightenment notion of intellectual freedom guided by reason and detached from politics and religion; a unifying principle in education by the doctrine of reason (i.e., a separation of public and private use of reason); a neohumanist idea of individuality formed through cultivation; a conception of scientific knowledge (Wissenschaft) as distinct from common knowledge. Closely tied to scientific knowledge was the concept of truth or certainty (Wahrheit): It was something to be incessantly (unablässig) searched for yet acknowledged as not entirely discoverable.¹⁴

Table 1.1. Educational ideals typified as Humboldtian

In the following four sections, I will delve into each of these Humboldtian ideals and ascertain their distinctive character vis-à-vis Humboldt’s contemporary philosophers, yet I will also highlight some of the intrinsic ambiguities and tensions residing in them. In the concluding summary, I will return to the four ideals to present an extract of what is essential for an understanding of educational Bildung.

I. ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Wilhelm von Humboldt envisioned a university in which the unity of teaching and research, along with the freedom of teaching and learning, would provide scholarly educated and intellectually independent beings, equipped to meet the challenges faced by the utilitarian conception of knowledge that emerged with the Enlightenment. In his responses to the discussion concerning the role of the university in reforming the Prussian state, Humboldt drew heavily on the Kantian idea of academic freedom, which Kant introduced in The Conflict of the Faculties in 1798. Two notions of academic freedom were hitherto presented: First, academic freedom as an ideal attributed to each individual scholar, insofar as he is a free and responsible member of the (absolute) state. Second, academic freedom attributed to the community of scholars, as a corporate or institutionally autonomous group vis-à-vis the state.

In advocating Kant’s ideas, Humboldt regarded the state, along with the church, as a threat to the acquisition of scientific autonomy; meanwhile, he expected the state to protect the university from special interest groups. In his early work, The Limits of State Action (1791–92),¹⁵ a document containing numerous intellectual impulses, Humboldt proposed reducing state power to the barest minimum to ensure freedom for individual self-cultivation. Under the influence of the eighteenth-century revolutionary spirit of liberalism, Humboldt believed it was necessary that the state refrain from setting up educational institutions (or maintain religion or regulate morals,¹⁶ agriculture, trade, or commerce for that matter), for such public schooling would produce uniformity with a proportionate decrease in the free, spontaneous activity of individuals. More important than training good and obedient citizens was the task of providing society with enlightened, wise human beings, equipped with a diversity of experiences. Moreover, as mentioned above, Humboldt envisaged a society containing a great variety of freely chosen associations (i.e., those of family, friendship and comradeship). At first glance, his vision for the future seems tantamount to a night-watchman state, in which the main responsibility of the state is to maintain the legal freedom (i.e., through the exercise of police powers) of individuals, and to preserve the legal property rights of its citizens.¹⁷ However, Humboldt’s admiration of the ancient Greeks and his close ties to the intellectual Salons, which flourished in Göttingen and especially in Berlin during the late Enlightenment,¹⁸ may be a more obvious, yet oft neglected background for his liberalism. In fact, Humboldt himself drew an analogy between these salons and those relations so much in vogue among the ancients, and more especially the Greeks, . . . those so frequently, but unworthily, given the name of ordinary love, and sometimes, but always erroneously, that of mere friendship.¹⁹

The effectiveness of all such relations as instruments of cultivation entirely depends on the extent to which the members can succeed in combining their personal independence with the intimacy of the associations for whilst, without this intimacy, one cannot sufficiently possess, as it were, the nature of the others, independence is no less essential, in order that each, in being possessed, may be transformed in his own unique way. On the one hand, individual energy is essential to both parties and, on the other hand, a difference between them, neither so great as to prevent one from comprehending the other, nor so small as to exclude admiration for what the other possesses, and the desire to assimilate it into one’s own character.²⁰

Twenty years later, as Privy Councillor and Director of the section for Culture and Education (Kultusministerium) within the Prussian Ministry of Interior, Humboldt’s attitude changed toward the functions of the state in relation to the private life of its citizenry. Nevertheless, it may be argued that in his effort to institutionally promote Bildung, he upheld his earlier opinions on the importance of bringing the variety of human sensibilities—our sensuousness or Sinnlichkeit (that is to say, urges, natural drives, energies, and sensual desires)—into creative tension with Vernunft. Thus, one could argue that his theory of Bildung (i.e., stressing the necessary multiplicity of human stimuli) actually became integrated into the Prussian educational system, even though he paradoxically aspired to return control to the state.²¹

In his construction of an educational system, many scholars have been concerned with how Humboldt managed to reconcile his neohumanist idea of Bildung with educational reforms. Some argue that Humboldt succeeded in his primary goal of ensuring freedom for the individual, but that he failed to create a Leibnizian program that satisfied his second condition, namely, to create intermediate institutions that could establish a harmonious bond of interchange between individuals.²² However, the appearance of a new concept, the nation,²³ which made its entrance at the time of the reform, became a useful, mediating concept between the individual and the state. The concept provided Humboldt with a theoretical solution as well as a political justification for implementing his ideas.²⁴ By returning the schools to the state and creating an egalitarian system of education suited to the individual rather than the citizen, and by providing a broad and varied education in an atmosphere of freedom, Humboldt apparently hoped to foster the social bonds necessary for Bildung. By assuming that the nation was responsible for education and absolute freedom would prevail within the educational institutions, "the nation would develop an associational life in and around the educational system that would foster the interchange requisite to Bildung."²⁵ Thus, he declared:

The . . . principle that the state should not intervene in the particulars of school affairs is in itself certainly the only true and correct one.²⁶

Even though Humboldt strongly opposed state and religious intervention in education, and never regarded Bildung as an instrument for the state, the aim of education ultimately came to be perceived as cultivating obedient servants,²⁷ since education was seen as providing a solid basis for creating a consolidated nation of moral men and good citizens. Humboldt assumed that state purposes were best met by allowing individuals to freely develop and interact, and thereby indirectly become harmonious, responsible, and thus contributing citizens.²⁸ By leaving the fiscal responsibility to the state, free interchange and new social bonds would emerge naturally. However, later critics have persistently argued that the institutionalization of education meant that the political imperative embedded in his early conception of Bildung was betrayed.

Kant and Humboldt on the Public Use of Reason

The question of academic freedom and the relationship between the university and the state was addressed prior to Humboldt, in Kant’s aggregate of essays entitled The Conflict of the Faculties. Here Kant sought to reconsider a dilemma he addressed in his famous essay Was ist Aufklärung²⁹ from 1784; namely, the role of the university as an autonomous arena for critical reflection, which he calls the public use of reason.³⁰ In this text, enlightenment is depicted as an attitude or obligation—Aude Sapere: Dare to know—using reason freely and courageously to raise questions of importance for one’s own time. As reflected in his political writings,³¹ Kant was concerned with the possibility of a free debate (Publizistik), in which men of letters could help set the terms of public debate, and frame issues in a new and universal way. Thus, Kant imagined that what had previously seemed only private now could be seen as the shared concern that continued to drive public controversies and actions.³² Judging from his statement that Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage (selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit) or the self-caused state of never coming to maturity—of remaining under the tutelage of some higher authority—the intellectual and moral maturation of individuals was to be a long-term concern for any community.

Kant insisted that the capacity of each individual to freely think for himself (Mündigheit) was dependent upon free public debate. This meant that the quest for knowledge could rely neither upon instruction and passive learning of received truths, nor upon secretive, specialized knowledge. Rather, it was an active process of critical questioning. Academic freedom was thus framed as the individuals’ obligation to lead a life devoted to critical thinking.³³ This also meant that issues central to public order and cultural life could be subjected to critical questioning, and analyzed as different (i.e., historically contingent) perspectives by various groups, in their own struggle for power or benefits.³⁴

Due to the years of religious and cultural conflict following the introduction of his rationalistic system, Kant, once again, in 1798, drew attention to the question of Aufklärung and the way in which his freedom to think under the influence of pragmatic social and political forces, had inverted into (what he saw as) the cultural project of Enlightenment.³⁵ He alerted his audience to the appropriateness of seeing the university as a divided institution; along with the public sphere itself, the university was rife with a series of natural and necessary conflicts. On the one hand, the university was like a factory (fabrikenmässig) with its specialized sub-industries (professional and humanistic faculties) producing lettered individuals and teachers. On the other hand, he admitted that what the government perceived as valuable in the university’s function does not always coincide with what the academics or the public view as important. In fact, the government that used the professional faculties to influence its citizens, could not, in Kant’s view, claim to really know the truth of what the educated communities were asked to deliver. Thus, Kant repeated his initial point that it was only academic freedom, or the independent, free action of reason—critique—which could secure true rational insight.

It is absolutely essential that the learned community at the university also contain a faculty that is independent of the government’s command with regards to its teachings; one that, having no commands to give, is free to evaluate everything, and concerns itself with the interests of the sciences, that is, with truth: one in which reason is authorized to speak out publicly. For without a faculty of this kind, the truth would not come to light (and this would be to the government’s own detriment); but reason is by its nature free and admits of no command to hold something as true (no imperative Believe but only a free I believe).³⁶

Nevertheless, this recognition indicates that Kant had arrived at a more pluralistic model of the public sphere. He recognized it as multileveled with deep tensions, and thus he questioned the possibility that it could be an open forum for critical scholars. Departing from his previous stance, he now argued, in The Conflict of the Faculties, that the public arena had partly been created by the aims and self-interests of modern governments, given that they sought to influence the public.³⁷ However, as I will show in the next section, Kant did apparently find a solution for how to spread authority between institutional faculties: to secure free reasoning, while still guaranteeing the professional scholars’ obedience to pragmatically set goals.

Humboldt was keen to give the Kantian idea of reason—the inner (innere) quest for knowledge and truth—an outward (äussere) institutional form. For him, the true function of the state was to provide the freedom for higher educational institutions to engage in the unceasing process of inquiry.³⁸ This could be achieved by offering scholars the opportunity to develop their own scholarly and creative abilities, without any disturbance or intrusion from political, ecclesiastical or economic interests. He insisted that the state must acknowledge higher intellectual institutions—the universities—as being different from lower institutions, since the former do not rely on closed and settled bodies of knowledge, but are, nothing other than man’s intellectual life which external opportunities and deeper motivation have led towards scientific and scholarly research.³⁹ In other words, the ongoing pursuit of truth had to be exercised in Einsamkeit und Freiheit, where solitude would ensure the conditions for undistracted concentration and contemplation, and freedom would provide a space in which individuals could realize their potential and capacities in intellectual collaboration with others. Humboldt’s ideal of academic freedom, cultivated though individual Bildung, was thus never intended as the privilege of a minor elite,⁴⁰ although some, in posterity, have perceived it thus. Rather, it was to function as the guarantee for a life devoted to free, critical inquiry.⁴¹ However, Humboldt assumed that acquiring the occupational status of academic entailed a civic or social responsibility, just as in ancient Greek times; this relative freedom should be conscientiously used for the good of society. Nevertheless, since the individual scholar was the model for such an authoritative norm of freedom, there was an obvious risk of failure, for freedom gives ample occasion for authorities (i.e., the state) to lay down laws. Such was the case in France, as Humboldt experienced himself while visiting the country after the Revolution.

Replanting the Idea of Reason

The dilemma was as follows: How was it possible to institutionalize and at the same time safeguard the use of free, autonomous reason? In Kant’s view, the university and each of its faculties contained a portion of a larger, progressive freedom to think. The lower faculty provided the university with protection from potential abuse of power by the state; it was obliged to ask fundamental questions and, if necessary, interfere with the higher faculties on the basis of reason alone. Hence, it was the lower faculty—philosophy—which, in Kant’s view, incarnated the pure principle that animates the University and differentiates it from either a technical training school (guild) or a specialized academy.⁴² Knowledge was generated through a conflict or dialectical movement between the established tradition (higher, professional faculties) and the free, rational inquiry (lower, philosophical faculty). Kant assumed that the conflict was necessary because it contributed to historical progress and guaranteed a universally grounded rationality. Thus, the state must protect the university by ensuring its autonomy, and critical philosophy must protect the university from abuse of power on the part of the state, in limiting the rule of established interest in the higher faculties.⁴³

Humboldt assumed, as did Kant, that the pursuit of knowledge constituted a perpetual search, yet, contrary to Kant, he realized that this search could come to a halt and thus be reduced to a mechanical pile-up of unconnected facts, with the subsequent loss of the cause of learning.⁴⁴ To prevent science and scholarship from becoming just a mechanical procedure or empty shell,⁴⁵ Humboldt suggested an inward replanting (geplantzen)⁴⁶ of the idea of reason:

Only science and scholarship which comes from the inner depths of the mind [aus dem Innere stammt] and which are cultivated only at those depths [in’s Innere gepflantz werden kann] can contribute to the transformation of character. The state gains as little as mankind from mere facts and discussion [Reden]. They are both more concerned with character and conduct [Handeln].⁴⁷

The problem for Humboldt, it appears, was not only that of avoiding one-sidedness and promoting intellectual diversity, but in reconciling the unifying principle (reason) with his deep-seated conviction of life’s multiplicity and diversity. I will return to this problem in the next section when discussing Humboldt’s reflections on the role of aesthetics, particularly his effort to reconcile philosophy and art in order to solve the methodological problem of preserving research: The free and permanent application of reason for the humanization or long-term moral good of society at large.

Theoretical Inconsistencies or Humboldt’s Betrayal

As stated earlier, the frequently asked question is whether or not Humboldt’s political reform of education was compatible with his initial vision, which advocated private individual education (Bildung), free of interference from the state. There appears to be a thought-provoking inconsistency between the Leibnizian Humboldt of character Bildung and the practical politician Humboldt of training for a profession in the new state (Ausbildung). This tension has generated a diverse set of explanations by historians and social scientists. For instance, David Sorkin (1983) argues that Humboldt made the state responsible for the preservation of academic freedom, because he assumed that the state was not an educational but a legal institution.⁴⁸ The freedom of the individual should be the first condition for self-formation, since education was the only way of extending politics into private life, thus providing necessary public debate as well as ensuring loyal citizens and a harmonious state. Carla Thomas (1973) argues similarly that the dissemination of simple educational principles (e.g., to nurture strength in individuals by ensuring they have a variety of stimuli) was the best way to control the role of the state vis-à-vis the life of private citizens. Others argue that Bildung served to reinforce and spread into the modern world the ancient assumption that the learned few form a kind of aristocracy of intellect, and that men of letters are the embodiment of a divine ideal.⁴⁹

Humboldt’s ideas, to some extent, are modeled on the same notion of harmony that presumably existed in the ancient Greek city states, where person and citizen were one and the same, and where the state (polis) was minimal, governing only a few areas of life. Humboldt recognized that the modern state had to be restricted to a negative function, providing the conditions for freedom and individual development; its tendency is that it suppresses man’s energies and thwarts man’s personal growth in favor of obtaining a productive and obedient citizen.⁵⁰ Though it seems paradoxical, Humboldt’s theory of Bildung is considered the educational doctrine that eventually legitimized the alliance of the intelligentsia and the liberal state, by means of the university.⁵¹ According to Bill Readings (1996), it is Humboldt’s ideas that linked the university to the destiny of the nation-state by producing a liberal, reasoning subject. Others, such as Konrad Jarausch (1978), argue that establishing an educational and scientific system was an ingenious way to demonstrate Prussian leadership at the time, and it was an effective means to create the liberal bureaucracy needed to sustain further political reform. Placed in a larger political setting, Steven Fuller (2000) argues that Humboldt, when faced with the inadequacy of the old feudal-clerical order’s response to Napoleon, came up with the idea of co-opting the intellectuals by declaring the university the natural home of Enlightenment. Sorkin (1983) argues similarly that since Prussia was then at the mercy of Napoleon, new weapons had to be forged to continue the struggle. In his view, Humboldt thus called for substituting moral power for physical power, so that the university could serve a political goal. A commitment to science and scholarship could, in other words, win back for Prussia some of her lost prestige. Whichever of the above views is most likely the case, there is little doubt that many of the idealist philosophers, who in fact became the late nineteenth-century professoriate, believed the German universities had managed to encapsulate the true spirit of Enlightenment.⁵² Although this view may have its substantial supporting arguments, one of the most prominent critics of the German university, Fritz Ringer (1969), has persuasively argued that the spiritual mission of the German university, which was seen as offering the foundation for a modern national state, degenerated into a mandarin culture—a national elite—that gradually retreated into an inner cultural world, indifferent and detached from their political responsibilities. Whether or not the aim of Bildung was to form individuality (as part of a larger Geist), or to construct the liberal subject through the acquisition of cultural knowledge, it nevertheless is assumed to have had the long-term effect of bestowing a cultural tradition of political indifference.⁵³ Later perceptions (particularly after World War II) of an anti-political attitude among German professors were generally explained as the result of a Romantic disdain for politics, and a pietistic view of the political world as the world of the profane. Whereas some have paid tribute to Germany as the culture of the inward man and saw it as a noble, patient, deep, pious and solid country,⁵⁴ others have noticed a remarkable lack of indignation by ordinary German citizens at the so-frequent interference with the freedom of the person.⁵⁵

II. THE UNITY OF KNOWLEDGE

Kant founded the modern university on the principle of reason. Reason was what gave the university its universality in the modern sense. Whereas the medieval university had no unifying principle but was divided according to the Aristotelian principle of the nature of the matter to be studied, the modern university was organized as an architectonic unity according to the idea and ruling principle (arché) of reason. The framework was designed by Kant, who stated that, in accordance with reason’s legislative prescriptions, our diverse modes of knowledge must not be permitted to be a mere rhapsody, but must form a system.⁵⁶ Kant designed the university’s purpose on the basis of reason, enabling philosophical reasoning to judge as if by eternal and unalterable decrees.⁵⁷ As mentioned in the previous section, the university was construed as an arena for dialectical reasoning or perpetual conflict between the three higher professional faculties (theology, medicine and law) serving government purposes, and the lower, theoretical faculty (philosophy), which served truth. Each of the higher faculties, with their own particular content, relied on their own source of authoritative written texts and prescribed their teachings through particular statutes: Theology depended on the authority of the Bible, medicine on the ordinances and decrees of the medical profession, while law acquires its authority from the civil code. In contrast, the lower faculty of philosophy was free to judge anything relevant to the interest of science.⁵⁸ One of the functions of philosophy was thus to determine the scope of the various sciences; it could critique the higher faculties, but was itself free, self-critical, and autonomous.

Kant provided an outline of the distinctive character of each of the higher faculties, and thereby presented what appear to be jurisdictional limits on what each could do. Although each discipline developed itself though self-critical questioning, a line was drawn to separate the professional higher faculties from the free play of reason. Only the lower faculty freely searched for truth, for insight into the meaning of acquired experience, or for guidance furnished through a concept of nature. It was thus restricted to a search for what was essential, and to constantly ask fundamental questions based on reason. Since the ordering of the sciences was a philosophical task, it had to proceed in accordance with the method of philosophy and follow the laws of logical reasoning. The conception of scientific knowledge (Wissenschaft) rested on a distinct principle, which was intrinsically necessary and certain. For Kant, the reduction of multiplicity to a systematic unity distinguished scientific knowledge from common knowledge, as the foundation of this system was reason itself. This enabled the scientist to discover identity in differences and thereby to create a classificatory system (i.e., reduce multiplicity to a small number of laws).

Humboldt, influenced by Kant, was critical of the scientism of Enlightenment critique and skeptical about the practicality of Kant’s work, along with many of Humboldt’s contemporaries. In defending the basic force of human inclinations and feelings⁵⁹ against the repressive conformity of Enlightenment mechanism, Humboldt thus came to play an important role in what often is perceived as the paradigm shift marking the beginning of the modern human sciences, later referred to as Geisteswissenschaften.

Humboldt knew of Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s proposals to reorganize the universities on philosophically Kantian grounds,⁶⁰ allowing for free inquiry and critique (Lehrfreiheit). He was also acquainted with Fredrich Schleiermacher, who reacted strongly against turning university studies into vocational schools,⁶¹ and he expressed admiration for Fredrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s lectures on university studies delivered in Jena in 1802.⁶² According to the views of these thinkers, utilitarian reformers had disregarded the fact that the professional qualifications and civic responsibilities imparted by university studies were only byproducts of a much larger and more universal objective: humanization or an intellectual coming to terms with basic material contents, on a philosophical basis of justification.⁶³ Although their conceptions of the university vary, Fichte, Schleiermacher, and Humboldt all believed that a unifying coherence existed, underlying unity or transcendental order behind empirical objects and actual appearances. It was not enough for scholars merely to collect facts and perform critical investigations, since this unity could not be discovered through reason alone. Education should be sought through in-depth scholarship and thus involve an active pursuit and a more profound intellectual orientation toward the larger pursuit of truth. Moreover, university studies should involve a culture, association or society of scholars similar to Plato’s Academy, where the instructors and students collaborate on equal terms, in their quest for Wissenschaft, yet with the humble recognition that they are dealing with ultimately inexhaustible tasks and are engaged in an unceasing process of inquiry.⁶⁴ As hinted in the previous section, Humboldt opted for replanting the Kantian idea of reason into the depths of the mind. The principle of reason should not govern the university, as Kant proclaimed, but should rather become the achievement of elevation as well as interiorization of the idea of reason.⁶⁵ The purpose of knowledge was more than deduction from the universal principle; it was idealization, where ultimately the principle and the ideal should be fused into a coherent idea.⁶⁶ In order to arrive at a deep understanding of the unifying form—the unity in diversity—Humboldt suggests a lively and spirited exertion of the intellect in three directions (dreifaches streben des Geistes):

[F]irst, all understanding in the wider sense must be sought by the application of a fundamental principle to explanations of natural events which penetrate from mechanical to dynamic, organic and ultimately psychological levels: all efforts should be directed at an ideal; and ultimately, the principle and the ideals should be fused into a coherent idea [in Eine Idee zu verknüpfen].⁶⁷

Humboldt insisted that the tendency toward depth and breadth should be expressed in its most pronounced form in philosophy and art.⁶⁸ However, these domains needed to be appropriated into other fields and adequately adjusted without being reduced to procedures or formal rules. And it was this appropriation of art and philosophy that eventually sprouted or expressed itself in new academic disciplines, such as history and linguistics.

Quite apart from their [philosophy and art’s] inherent tendency to decay [entarten], little is to be expected of them if their essential spirit if not appropriately expressed in other branches of knowledge and categories of research, or if it is applied there only in a logically or mathematically formalized manner.⁶⁹

Throughout several of Humboldt’s writings where these ideas were applied, in particular, his 1821 essay On the Historians Task and his later comparative works on languages,⁷⁰ Humboldt gave rise to a number of historically informed new disciplines. He is thereby attributed a prominent role in providing the theoretical foundations for the development of the modern human sciences and is considered a forerunner for what later became known as historicism.⁷¹ What is more, Humboldt’s efforts to turn (comparative) language studies into a definite linguistic science (Sprachwissenschaft) exercised great impact on thought concerning language and human development, even unto the present day.⁷² And as we shall see, Humboldt’s effort to facilitate new ways of perceiving reality and of representing these perceptions was not necessarily a reaction to Enlightenment mechanism but may have been a consequence of his more profound, yet core assumption about man’s essential rootedness in material nature.

Enlightenment Vitalism

The majority of literature on Humboldt asserts that he aspired to create countersciences, that is, alternatives to the natural scientific reasoning and to the explanations that dominated higher education at the time. Yet some studies argue that Humboldt consciously constructed his concepts of historical and linguistic science upon the existing model of science formulated by Enlightenment thinkers. With the notable exception of the historian Peter Hanss Reill,⁷³ few commentators in fact have looked at the connection between Humboldt’s works and the regnant sciences of the time. Reill emphasizes, for instance, that many counterdiscourses existed within the general contours of scientific thought during the Enlightenment (i.e., Newtonian mechanics), and that Humboldt’s effort to construct a science of history was made possible by translating one of these major alternative scientific visions, Enlightenment vitalism, into the disciplines of history and later linguistics.⁷⁴ It is this particular influence, I suggest, that makes Humboldt different from the other educational idealists and that also provided him with a scientific justification for his quest for individual Bildung. Before delving further into some of the dynamics of his ideas on Bildung, it is perhaps necessary to look more closely at how this new scientific vision provided many of the philosophical underpinnings for Humboldt’s reforms. This influence might tell us something about the underlying assumptions guiding Humboldt’s writings,⁷⁵ as well as help explain the logic behind his effort to develop an accompanying epistemology for the new sciences. The idea of Bildung may, in fact, be the result—as well as a reflection—of a tension residing within late-Enlightenment thought, especially concerning the role of nature or dynamic living matter.⁷⁶

Enlightenment vitalism is the name given to a model designed to mediate between the two ideas competing in the early eighteenth century: Newtonian mechanism and animism.⁷⁷ Vitalism opposed the reductionism of both ideas and attempted to mediate between them. It is this mediation, Reill argues, that enabled the emerging human sciences to develop their own methods, epistemology, and pedagogical procedures. For the new science to advance, a new method was needed, one that could mediate between the two dominant strategies of discovery: simple empiricism and logical abstraction.⁷⁸ The newly developed research strategy was referred to as controlled empiricism. In short, the task of the new scientist was to combine empirical observation with scientific imagination to understand wie es eigentlich gewesen und geworden ist (how it actually was and became). Yet in addition to method, there was the problem of matter.

Whereas mechanists defined matter as an aggregate of identical yet independent parts, which constituted a unity based on reason, vitalists understood matter as a complex conjunction of related parts. In their view, everything was interrelated, joined, or zusammengesetzt (composed), implying that to reach an understanding, one must start with the conjoined rather than the simple and then proceed to the complex. This insight made interconnections, interaction and relations, or what was referred to as Verwandtschaft (family, similarities, affinities, or analogical relations), into one of the defining principles of matter. Hence the natural world was depicted as a circle of relations or symbiotically interrelated parts in which the observer was included, not an aggregation of independent elements to be observed from outside. By reintroducing the concept of active or self-activating force, which nevertheless presumably had an inner, teleological character (yet not attributed to an all-empowering drive but a will residing in matter itself), it became possible to dissolve the strict separation between matter and spirit so essential to Newtonian mechanism. Change was not thought to be continuous, but took place in a step-by-step, revolutionary manner,⁷⁹ followed by a controlled development in the newly formed shape. This change was often conveyed in the image of metamorphosis in which each step had its own unique character.

The postulation of the teleological principle tied to that of universal interaction and connection between organized bodies and the world around them reintroduced both contingency and development as central scientific explanatory concepts. In effect: nature was historicized: qualitative, directional change over time was deemed natural to organized bodies. But this progressive development was not continuous. It proceeded through a series of drastic changes, revolutions in which the outward form was changed drastically, followed by a gradual development in the newly formed shape.⁸⁰

According to Reill, the changes in scientific explanation challenged late eighteenth-century thinkers such as Humboldt to construct an epistemology capable of justifying and validating these assumptions. The crucial question was how one could grasp the depth of observed reality, decipher life, and interpret the language of nature? The solution to this puzzling question was to adopt a comparative, functional analysis and reasoning based on analogies, for only in such a way was it possible to reach a harmonic appreciation of the unity in the diversity of nature. The scientist, who now took on a key role in the process, had to investigate closely the many particular empirical phenomena, and cultivate his own creative imagination in order to sense their unity. This type of higher or deeper understanding was termed Anschauung (intuition). Its operations were based on the image of harmony or mediation: of continually moving back and forth, letting empirical elements nourish and modify each other.⁸¹ However, instead of endlessly moving from one to another, a third, implied or hidden agency (Ideen) was postulated as the ground upon which all reality rested.

It is worth noting that this way of introducing a hidden organizer was not the implantation of a metaphysical entity, at least not directly, but it reflected the dominant way of thinking about nature before the scientific revolution.⁸² This thinking did not rest upon a traditional binary system of nature and culture (humanity) but was an attempt to move beyond the dichotomy. Life was perceived of to be floating between both poles. Thus, the new investigatory model was basically an attempt to resolve the conflict between the dualistic poles by elevating ambiguity and paradox over that of unity and contradiction. It was made possible because empirical reality (matter) was perceived as constituting a variety of active and dynamic forces: energies, drives, urges and appetites, and not an aggregate of independent parts.

Harmony, the merging of opposites within an expanding middle, served as the norm and desired end of each historical or natural process, though that dynamic was continually in motion, leading to ever-changing harmonic combinations.⁸³

As attested by his writings, it is evident that Humboldt assumed there was a basic analogy between living matter and human culture.⁸⁴ They were linked together by life, which he somewhat esoterically describes as the maintenance of a ruling form of thought as a law within a mass of material through the action of a mysterious power.⁸⁵ In the physical world, this form and law were termed ‘organization’; in the moral and intellectual world it was termed ‘character.’⁸⁶ The assumption of an analogy between the laws governing the physical/organic and spiritual/moral world runs throughout Humboldt’s writings, as I have suggested, and provided the foundation from which the new human sciences