Social Character Formation

Abstract This chapter is about hermeneutics and method. To understand freedom and justice as core cultural ideas and values, the history of ideas is combined with a history of mentalities that is itself open to take legal and socio-economic factors into account. The relationship between individual and society is a crucial one, especially for the quest for freedom and justice in the face of dependencies. Since freedom and justice never exist in a vacuum but have to face challenges and are always entangled with social and other forms of dependencies, this chapter and the following two chapters deal with problems for the emergence of freedom in the ancient cultures under investigation. In this chapter, social character formation and outer-directed listening orientation are in focus. With the attitude of hearing and obeying, human beings tend to feel, think, and behave as society demands of them. This undermines the ability to unfold individual and collective spaces of autonomy and freedom. However, in the course of this book, it will be shown that the attitude of hearing and obeying was not the only one. Instead, there emerged the ability to reflect upon and criticize dominant social character orientations and to find leeway to develop and unfold forms of individual and collective freedom.