Revitalizing Bildung through Ubuntu: Turning Bildung Outwards

Persistent URL of this record https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4093283

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Filosofie (BA)

Postma, Zep (2024)

Revitalizing Bildung through Ubuntu: Turning Bildung Outwards

Bachelor thesis | Filosofie (BA)

Bildung as an educational paradigm is wildly influential. However, it does not exist without critiques. Bildung is an ideal that is founded on a very specific kind of German outlook, that proposes a staunch look towards the sciences, humanities and the arts. It promotes the study of them as the highest ideal that will constitute a good moral person. A problem that comes with this stance, however, is the underlying tendency to study this historicised account of the world and to do that whilst not being in the world. What this paper sets out to do, is question these methodological pathologies of Bildung, after which the intercultural angle, allows Ubuntu to be used to revitalise Bildung. This revitalisation is done through the centrality of Ramose’s be-ing becoming, and the proverb Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu. These two notions allow Bildung to move beyond its pietist chains, and show how the methodological underpinning of Bildung can be reinterpreted as being outwards and in the world.