This chapter examines the philosophical faculty’s rise in the German university, tracing its development from a subordinate preparatory faculty to a distinct intellectual force. Beginning with the medieval foundations of German universities, it explores the arts faculty’s marginalized yet indispensable role within the traditional four-faculty model and the influence of the Reformation. Particular attention is given to Melanchthon’s synthesis of Renaissance humanism and Lutheran theology, which laid early conceptual groundwork for Bildung as an educational ideal linked to civic and state service. The chapter then investigates the transformative reforms at Halle and Göttingen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At Halle, the confluence of Pietist educational reforms, the waning authority of the theological faculty, and the ascendancy of Christian Wolff’s rationalist philosophy fostered conditions for the philosophical faculty to begin asserting a more autonomous role. At Göttingen, by contrast, curricular innovations in classical studies advanced Bildung as a neo-humanist programme of self-cultivation. These reforms redefined the faculty’s purpose, while debates over education’s utility and cultural value exposed tensions between practicality and humanistic ideals. The evolution of Bildung is traced from its religious origins in Meister Eckhart’s mysticism, through its transformation by Pietist introspection, to its rearticulation within Enlightenment and neo-humanist frameworks. Shaftesbury’s philosophy of politeness—appropriated and reshaped in the German context—played a formative role in Herder’s vision of Bildung. Drawing on Fleck’s theory, the chapter analyses how Bildung was adapted by competing thought collectives, reflecting the transformation of religious and classical traditions into new forms of philosophical self-understanding.