Ernst Bloch’s “Atheism in Christianity” Revisited: Bildung (Education) in the Postsecular Society

• In Event: Education in a Postsecular Age

Abstract

Charles Taylor presented in his grand study “A Secular Age” secularization as an internal development of (Christian) religion. Taylor embedded the process of secularization in (mainly) European developments in social history, social policy and the history of ideas. In the center of his analysis is the question of the meaning of religion(s) in different stages of social development.
The German concept of Bildung (education) – especially against the background of its mystical and religious roots – is one approach to clarify and to supersede meanings of religion, too. Therefore it can be interpreted – especially since its re-interpretation by Humboldt and his generation – as an attempt to deal with the self-understanding of modern men in the perspective of self-realization. This means to emphasize the relevance of Bildung in the context of the liberation and emancipation of all human beings in modernity. This is the relevance of education of all and education for all. Unresolved and not discussed within this approach is very often the question of meaning/sense for a human being beyond material conditions. In the times of – as Lukacs formulated – “transcendatal homelessness” this marks a great challenge.
This could be regarded as the starting point of Ernst Bloch’s great analysis of “Atheism in Christianity” (1972) where he attempts to overcome mechanical criticisms of religion in showing the different meanings of Christian religion in the tradition and for contemporary times. The paper reconstructs his leitmotifs and figures of argumentation trying to show what this means for processes of Bildung aiming at consciousness raising in a democratic society, i.e. dealing with self-realization and social regulation today. Bloch started with a distinction between a religion aiming at defending the dominating powers and a religion interested in the liberation of all. Therefore he wanted to decipher the possibilities of emancipation within concepts of religion based on an idea of a concept of “non alienated Christianity”. Historically he went back to the roots of the “peasant war” in the 16th century when an alliance between revolution and Christianity took place.
Bildung can be a means and an end for bringing these perspectives to the fore today when it becomes aware of its own mystical traditions and tries to materialize them in a non mechanical materialist way. Therefore the most relevant theoreticians in German theory of Bildung, Heydorn, can end his “Survival through Bildung” with the sentence: “Consciousness is all.” This can be at the same time the attempt to deal with the mystical traditions in an enlightened social scientific manner.

References

Bloch E. (1972). Atheism in Christianity: the religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom (New York: Hrder & Herder).
Heydron, H. (1979). Über den Widerspruch von Bildung und Herrschaft (Frankfurt aM.: FRG Syndikat).
Sünker H. (2006). Politics, Bildung and Social Studies: Perspectives for a Democratic Society (Rotterdam: Sense).
Taylor C. (2007). A Secular Age (Oxford: Oxford UP).

Author

• Heinz Suenker, University of Wuppertal