The following text was originally published in Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education (Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol. XXIII, no. 3/4, 1993, p. 639-648. ©UNESCO: International Bureau of Education, 2000 This document may be reproduced free of charge as long as acknowledgment is made of the source.

GEORG HEGEL
(1770—1831)
Jürgen-Eckhardt Pleines
1

As is usual in the German language, the concept of Bildung (shaping or education in the broadest sense) is used by Hegel in a variety of different ways and applied equally to the study of nature, society and culture with their different developments and forms. It accordingly extends from the organic natural drive (nisus formativus, inward form) to the processes by which ethical and mental maturity is acquired and on to the highest spiritual manifestations of religion, art and science in which the mind of an individual, a people or the whole of mankind may be represented. The specific pedagogical or educational significance of the German word plays only a subordinate role. In this article, the pedagogical content of Hegel’s work will be approached primarily from the theoretical perspective of education in its broadest sense. This is not an arbitrary decision that might be prejudicial to the existing body of texts and to their objectively correct interpretation. On the contrary, this viewpoint is the only way of arriving at a correct assessment of the possible significance of typically Hegelian reflection on what is commonly referred to today as ‘educational action’, with a view to applying those ideas in a derived form under the present circumstances. In contrast, for example, with Kant, Hegel himself assigned a particularly high importance to this broad concept of education as a source of proof in his ‘Phenomenology of the Mind’ and in his lectures on ‘The Philosophy of Justice’. He did so for historical reasons and also for reasons pertaining to developmental logic. These