Foreign Rights

Dietrich Schwanitz

All You Need to Know

To the reader

Who hasn’t felt frustrated when a subject taught in school was void of liveliness, just a pile of uninteresting facts that are totally disconnected from life as we know and live it?

Anyone whose school memories are clouded by those feelings rub their eyes in amazement when, a long time after they have left school, they discover our culture’s wealth. Why didn’t it occur to them earlier that by studying history you can begin to comprehend our own society, and feel how that intellectual whiff of menthol makes us aware of how unlikely the emergence of our society actually is? Why didn’t they realize that great literature is not some kind of boring educational material but actually a form of magic that allows us to participate in experiences right as we observe them? Who hasn’t felt what happens when a thought we used to shrug off with indifference all of a sudden appears to shine like an exploding star? ...

This handbook is written for them. I scanned our cultural knowledge with the following view: How does it contribute to our self-knowledge? Why did modern society, the state, the sciences, democracy, administration develop in <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place> and not elsewhere? Why is it important to consider Don Quixote, Hamlet, Faust, Robinson, Falstaff, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde one’s own good acquaintances? What did Heidegger have to say that we did not know before? Where was the unconscious before Freud came along? ...

I have the feeling that it is high time for a book like this one. And I actually think readers have a right to it. I can relate well to people who sought insight and who were thrown a bunch of formulas because I was once in that position. That is why I have written a book I really could have used then--a book containing the entire set of marching gear called education.

Dietrich Schwanitz in All You Need to Know