Social science enters the university stripped of any Bildung claim.

Evidence

There had thus developed, as in the USA, a triad consisting of the natural sciences, the humanities and the social sciences. However, in contrast to the USA, this account concealed a history of decline in the idea that science could provide education in the sense of character formation (Bildung), an idea that had been characteristic of German Idealism and Humboldt’s university reforms. Originally, mathematics and the natural sciences had also counted as character-forming sciences, since, in Alexander von Humboldt’s view, they were still related to a natural whole that was impelled and animated by inner forces. … When the social sciences crystallized in their turn as a new complex, it was never claimed that they were character-forming. If any claim to practical relevance was made for them, it was in connection with administrative affairs. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 604

Categorization

• DEFINE: Bildung here means education as character formation, the organizing ideal of German Idealism and Humboldt’s reforms.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s later lament that sociology abandoned its character-forming role, and to Habermas naturalizing Kantian conditions. — connects to: Freyer alone preserved Bildung as sociology’s constitutive task.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Freyer alone preserved Bildung as sociology’s constitutive task.