Professor Gumbrecht holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and is affiliated with the Department of German Studies, and the Program in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University. He is also Professeur Associé au Département de Littérature comparée at the Université de Montréal, Directeur d'études associé at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), Professeur attaché au Collège de France, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Education and Assistant Professorships

1974: Venia Legendi (Habilitation) Allgemeine und Romanische Literaturwissenschaft Universität Konstanz

1972: Universita degli studi di Pavia

1971-1974: Universität Konstanz


1971: Ph.D. Universität Konstanz


1970-1971: Universität München

1969-1970: Universidad de Salamanca

1969: Universität Regensburg 


1967-1969: Universität München

1967: Abitur, Siebold Gymnasium Würzberg


1966: Lyceé Henri IV, Paris

1958-1967: Siebold Gymnasium Würzberg

Current research and projects

In Praise of Athletic Beauty. Departing from the hypothesis that it is aesthetic pleasure, and more specifically the pleasure derived from experiencing “epiphanies of form” which, week after week, brings millions of spectators to our stadiums and to the screen, he will try to develop a new aesthetics of sport. The forthcoming book (2004) will be introduced by a historical survey—and may be supplemented by an anthology of texts about the historical relationships between athletics and philosophical thought.



Post-World War II essay: a foundational moment in western intellectual history. At first glance (and this “first glance” has dominated historiography over the past half-century), the impression prevails that, from an intellectual point of view, the years after 1945 were much less incisive, much less of a “turn-around” than the years following World War I. There is, however, at least one intellectual “tone” (or “movement”) that seems to be uniquely related to the post-1945 era; and this is a new life-form of existentialism as a new “style of life.” A detailed description of this style of life, in its different national variations, will be the starting point for a historical reconstruction that will try to recover and re-evaluate the long-term influence (an “indirect” influence, perhaps) of the late 1940s on western intellectual history.



"Program in “Literary and Philosophical Thinking.” For several years now and in collaboration with a number of colleagues and graduate students from the Philosophy Department, the Division of Literatures, Cultures, & Languages has been developing an undergraduate program that will try to bring together, in a systematic way, classical and contemporary readings from the western philosophical and literary traditions, and, at the same time, from the instructors and students. For more information about this program, please visit its website.