THE DEATH OF DIONYSOS - ETD - Vanderbilt University

century as the new watchword of aesthetic humanism. 5 While Gadamer is deeply
suspicious of Kantian aesthetics and its influence, he undertakes to demonstrate how terms
such as Bildung exemplify the hermeneutic approach of the humanities to their truth, as
distinct from the inductive methodology of the natural sciences. Of particular interest to
us is Gadamer’s observation that, while the word Erlebnis emerged only after Goethe had
died, his life, work, and language in many ways anticipated and called out for a new word
to describe the human experience of life. Erlebnis in Gadamer’s analysis typifies a new
Kantian value placed on the great individual, whose experience reflects solely on the
unique character of his life, rather than on what is generally valid or common to all.
Gadamer stresses that, unlike the universal validity of truth in the natural sciences,
Erlebnis is characterized by the distinctly individual and personal nature of such
experience; that the unique individual attracts, as it were, those experiences suited to his
personality, while those foreign to his nature scarcely register at all. In this sense human
consciousness as Gadamer describes it includes something like a customs official who
keeps watch at the borderline of personal identity, and who diligently differentiates
between those experiences that bear the visa stamp of individual character and may enter
as qualified Erlebnisse, as opposed to those that are too foreign to be admitted at all.
For us this means that we will have to look beyond the word Erfahrung and its
knowledge in order to demarcate the full range and limits of Wilhelm Meister’s
experience. We will be attentive to note those experiences to which he is receptive, as
well as those he either rejects or scarcely perceives. Far more important for the purpose of
this thesis will be an inquiry into the reasons why certain experiences are favored, while
others are turned away at the port of entry into his mind. What makes Wilhelm Meister so
interesting is the fact that the customs official of his consciousness is not yet fully trained;
it still finds every newcomer very interesting and agreeable and welcomes him to the
5 See Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode:Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik, 6 th ed.
(Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1990), pp. 61-87.
xiv