ABSTRACT
Sixteenth-century English history, with its ceaseless wars of confession and struggles for power between the King and Parliament, provides a crucial background for the development of Lord Shaftesbury's thought, particularly his so-called "philosophy of politeness" that would later be mobilized by the Germans in articulating a concept of Bildung. The term politeness was a key concept in late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century England and was applied much like Bildung would later be to various contexts for various purposes. The concept of politeness involved social, psychological, and formal dimensions and found expression only through social interaction and exchange. The foundations of Shaftesbury's philosophy in non-empirical English tradition, one can clearly distinguish in a separation of the concept of Bildung from related ideas of rearing or training and an elevation of concept to a necessary process of inner development. Another work of Shaftesbury's, The Judgment of Hercules, which was published in German translation in 1748, shaped the German discussion of Bildung.
