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WOLFGANG BRAUNGART
pressed into their hands and then they guickly head off for beer and sausages;
or, if, one after the other, clad in little black dresses or suits (which doesnt
happen very often in their life) they are called on stage and the cameras click,
we “understand” even more. But what do we understand? (This example shows
how various rituals — of graduation, of celebration — can be across cultures:
American and British graduation ceremonies are traditionally much more
elaborate than those at German universities.)
Wilhelm Dilthey views understanding as integration into a life context, and
therefore considers it from the perspective of the subject. This is an emphatic
way of looking at understanding, and one that cannot really be used for the
“Warning, give way” traffic sign. It is, nevertheless, understandable: think, for
example, of the small child who sees this sign on his or her first trip out on
a bicycle, and receives an answer to the question: “What’s the importance of
that triangle over there?” Even semiotically understood signs are embedded
in cultural practices [Lebenswelt]. Clearly, understanding requires running
the entire gamut: from high historical/cultural generality and commitment,
on the one hand, to lofty subjectivity of understanding on the other, which is
hardly more divisible on a communicative level.
Time and again, Dilthey now brings into play a term which is much trickier
to define precisely than the term “meaning,” and which is therefore hardly
used in the aesthetic debate: significance. Dilthey summarizes this as a “uni¬
versal value for human affectivity.” “Universal”: this opens up a whole new
can of worms. There is also a subjective universality of aesthetics, a claim to
aesthetic validity which the work of art itself posits. Nobody would say that the
celebratory and stately setting of a ceremony was amusing and entertaining.
However, you could say: J don’t know what to think of it. By saying this, the
speaker knows, and articulates, that he or she is basing this statement on pure
subjectivity, that he or she cannot “require” or “demand” this from others, in
contrast to aesthetic judgment.
Thus, the term “significance” interacts with a dimension of understand¬
ing that really is fundamental. This dimension is decisively connected with
aesthetic explicitness, clarity, the performativity of the aesthetic, and the con¬
vincing nature of its overall appearance. It can even appear in opposition to
meaning. Drawing on Hans Blumenberg, it can be said that we also create and
experience significance in contrast to the “absolutism of reality” (and precisely
in opposition to it), where all the possibilities of a deeper, metaphysical mean¬
ing are constructed for us. The ritual of a funeral is “significant” for us if the
“senselessness” of death threatens to cut off speech. Even if a person has only
read ten of Trakl’s poems, he or she would be able to sense the significance of
5 Wilhelm Dilthey: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. VI.: Die Geistige Welt: Einleitung in die Phi¬
losophie des Lebens: Zweite Hälfte. Abhandlungen zur Poetik, Ethik und Pädagogik, Leipzig/
Berlin, Teubner, 1924, 216.
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