With time as his central theme, Rüdiger Safranski expounds on the human condition, encouraging us to reclaim the experience of time in all its infinite variety.
Beyond all the deceptive clocks and watches that give us the illusion of an objective time measurement, our personal experience of time is an altogether different matter: strictly structured in music, boundless and easy when we are at leisure, pursuing sports and hobbies. When we’re bored or burdened with worries, time seems to crawl; when we’re rapt in contemplation, engrossed in a task, lost in love or free at play it seems to fly — or stand still.
Different again is our perception of time when we are caught up in the maelstrom of social interaction, in the ever accelerating world of business and the media, or communicating across the world in the blink of an eye. Then all at once there comes a day when the passing of time is all we can think about.
Presenting an in-depth, multi-facetted delineation of the complexities of our varying perceptions of time, Safranski encourages us to treat this priceless commodity with care — to make the best of it rather than living at its mercy.