From Bildung to Learning Society
Philosophical Foundations and Mutations of a Modern Ideal
A research combining history of philosophy and political philosophy following a plan in four axes
History and typology
Historical reconstruction of the texts formed around the concept of Bildung in classical German philosophy through an original typology of the contrasting positions of the main authors.
Corpus
Establishing a corpus of scientific and political texts and discourses on the Learning Society in order compare the paradigm of LS to the modern philosophy of Bildung, their homologies and mutations
Critical transformations
Identification and analysis of the most significant critical transformations of the Bildung concept by Marx, Mill, Nietzsche and Dewey in order to outline their main theoretical divergences.
Critiques and reconstruction
Testing the concrete relevance of this systematic comparison and of the heuristic potential of the Bildung philosophy in the context of the current mutations of the Idea of University
Our Team
Our multidisciplinary project brings together researchers from various horizons including philosophy, political sciences, and education.
Quentin Landenne
Principal investigator
Quentin is a doctor of philosophy and a law graduate. As an FNRS research associate and a professor at UCLouvain – Saint-Louis (Brussels), he currently works on reconstructing the systematic function of the Bildung concept, and confronting it with the contemporary Learning Society.
Matthieu Frémont
PhD Student
An agrégé in philosophy, Matthieu holds a Master’s degree in history of philosophy. Focusing on German philosophy, his research aims to show how, in Hegel, Bildung constitutes an autonomous semiotic field disguising the meaning of other spiritual contents treated elsewhere in his system.
Susanna Zellini
Postdoc researcher
Susanna holds a doctorate in German philosophy and literature. After managin a research project on « academic freedom » for the EC and the ERC, she now focuses on the historical mutations of this very notion in the debate on the idea of education in Europe, and on its fundamental values.
Eric-John Russell
Postdoc researcher
A former Marie Skłodowska Curie postdoc fellow at the University of Potsdam, Eric-John studied philosophy in New York, Frankfurt, and London. He now develops a critical theory of opinion based on the works of Hegel, Adorno, and Debord.
Anne-Sophie De Clercq
Administrative coordinator
Anne-Sophie holds degrees in French and Romance languages, multilingual negotiation, phonetics, and translation. She makes sure the team can focus on what they do best taking in charge the administrative tasks related to the ERC project.
What’s next?
Here is what we are currently working on…
Papers
We are writing
Events
A conference will be held in Nantes in October, more to come!
Miscellaneous
Our YouTube channel is still in the making. It will host around 20 seminars recordings.
