Product description

New experiences lead us to the threshold of a different life. But do we dare to take the next step? Riding a bike for the first time without training wheels. Eating an oyster. Losing a job. Every new experience could shake us up and change our lives. The first kiss can open us to love—or ruin it. In his fascinating book, Fritz Breithaupt shows that the contours of our lives are fundamentally determined by experiences: those we have for the first time, those we repeat, and those we imagine.

The first time opens doors—or closes them. Through repetition, we can compare, enjoy, judge, and revise. We develop standards. This allows us to filter. However, a fixation on repetition, whether in our own lives or in politics, can also lead to an avoidance of the new. Ultimately, imagined experiences are the secret guiding stars of our navigation. For even the unlived life insists on its validity. Breithaupt draws on a wealth of findings from psychology and philosophy, incorporates new scientific insights from his own laboratory, and scours archives in search of records of a sexual and aesthetic nature. Our multifaceted modes of experience reveal what distinguishes us from intelligent machines: We humans are beings of experience.

biography

Fritz Breithaupt, born in 1967, teaches German and comparative literature at Indiana University in Bloomington (USA). He is the founding director of an EU Center of Excellence at Indiana University and a columnist for ZEIT Campus.