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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 “universal 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 understanding that really is fundamental. This dimension is decisively connected with aesthetic explicitness, clarity, the performativity of the aesthetic, and the convincing 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 meaning 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 Philosophie des Lebens: Zweite Hälfte. Abhandlungen zur Poetik, Ethik und Pädagogik, Leipzig/ Berlin, Teubner, 1924, 216. + 24 +
