Ultimately, the experience of reading Hesse individually or coming together in communities organized by individual readers work for and within us to achieve a transformation of the values which may guide us in modern life. “
Geist [spirit or mind] is an inward realm, a vantage point from which the narrowness and insufficiency of the practical world can be transcended” argues Swales, an observation that uncovers potential for us.
1Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse, 155. The fellowship of individual and collective readers participates in the resonance of the literary text. The spiritual capital that is formed can be transposed and unfolded in the world around us—be it through writing, communion in societies of like-minded individuals, or in the objective service of humanity.
Keeping in mind what psychologist Rainer Mausfeld (2019) calls the “anthropological lie” of a
homo economicus,
2Rainer Mausfeld, Angst und Macht: Herrschaftstechniken der Angsterzeugung in kapitalistischen Demokratien (Frankfurt am Main: Westend Verlag, 2019), 98. (My translation.) the individual on a treadmill of often meaningless and purposeless action, the potential for the formation of spiritual capital among readers of Hesse’s works offers a way of living in the world, linking self and other in a relationship based on empathy. When readers of Hesse mutually experience a strong inner motivation to explore spiritual values and undertake purposeful reciprocal interaction with other readers in physical or virtual communities, we can witness spiritual capital manifesting itself individually and collectively—“the co-engagement between self and other.”
3Rima, Spiritual Capital, 255. And, as Martin Buber wrote, “it is the reality of the spirit, which constructs new worlds out of the materials of this world. And this spirit is in the last analysis a collective one.”
4Buber, “Hermann Hesse in the Service of the Spirit,” 31. The wayfarers to the East, the readers of Hesse’s texts involved in the formation of secular spiritual capital, constitute a community within society from which the spiritual vacuity of materialism can be challenged and values can be replenished with a sense of loyalty to the spirit. As this chapter and this volume have shown, Hermann Hesse remains of crucial relevance to us as his impact continues to unfold before the eyes and in the minds of a global community of readers.