The Core of Learning: N.F.S. Grundtvig’’s Philosophical Writings

The ground-breaking 6-volume series of Grundtvig’s works translated into English has already seen the publication of Grundtvig’s educational ideas in The School for Life (2011), his hymns, songs, and poems in Living Wellsprings (2015), his theology in Human Comes First (2018) and his political views in The Common Good, all published by Aarhus University Press. In volume 5 Grundtvig’s central concern is History, from which we derive the Experience of our forefathers to support the advance of Learning. His influences are Christianity and classical learning, German rationalism and romanticism, English liberalism and Scottish empiricism. In contrast to systematic philosophers of the time, Grundtvig’s medium is most often the essay, as published in his self-penned journal, Danne-Virke (1816-19). It is here that he first presents his theories regarding cosmology, aesthetics, language, Danishness and ’the people’s spirit’.