Reflexive self-distancing as a way out. Memories of the first “self-determined” intellectual learning process

The text relates the detached relationship the author had as a child and young man to the religious practices of his family of small farmers, lay preachers and small government employees in central Germany. The author describes in particular the central importance for his own intellectual development of the German Lutheran theologian Rudolf Karl Bultmann, a major figure of early-20th-century biblical studies. Through his intense occupation with Bultmann’s ideas, the author as a young man freed himself from the grip of family piety and developed a sceptical attitude towards intellectual mainstreams and overly rigid professional settings which remained a formative characteristic of his practice as a researcher. He sees in his trajectory dramatic social ascent entailing loss of social “home”, a result of ‘reflexive modernisation’ – which he sees as a very theoretical term for self-organised learning. Despite harbouring scepticism regarding certain late modern concepts of individualization, the author remains attached to the idea of a Community of politically committed researchers who remain interested in the civil shaping of world society (and may occasionally achieve success).