David Neberieza
The Adventure - Guided Reading Questions

**1.** What are the two meanings of our experiences in life?

2. According to Simmel, what distinguishes the adventure from other experiences?

**3a.** What are the characteristics of dreams (in other words, how does Simmel use the word dreamlike)?

3b. How far from the center of the ego can an adventure take a person? 

4a. What is the difference between an adventure and an ordinary experience? 

4b. How does the form of adventure cause or relate to its boundaries?

**4c.** What does Simmel mean by “organic” as describing an adventure?

5a. What common form do adventure and art share?

5b. How are an adventure and a work of art described being beyond life?

6a. How is one “dominated by feelings of the present” in adventure? (‘Decoding’ Simmel’s example of Casanova) 

6b. How does this paragraph relate to his previous discussion on boundaries?

7. What two conditions make it possible for something to become an adventure?

8a. How is necessity and meaning created of and around chance in the life of the gambler?

8b. What is Simmel saying about the adventure?

9. Does the adventurer worry about controlling his fate?

10a. What does Simmel mean by “third something”?

10b. Is adventure in the form synthesis, antagonism or compromise, or is it its own form?

10c. How do external and internal elements both make up an adventure?

11a. Why is perceiving life to be an adventure a more profound understanding?

11b. Based on Simmel’s conditions for an experience to an adventure, as well as his other articulations about what an adventure is, is it clear that life itself can be an adventure?

12a. How does one need to live their life in order to compare it with an adventure?

12b. Does religion (or religious moods) support Simmel’s assertion that life could be an adventure? If so, how?

**12c.** How do art, dreams, and gaming describe an adventure?

13a. How could an adventure prove to be destructive?

13b. Why would adventure be more deeply felt because of the union between activity and passivity?

14. How does ones “usual” reaction to uncertainty create a larger distinction between adventure and ordinary experience?

15a. How is fatalism for the adventurer both internal and external to it?

15b. Why would a regular person believe adventure is crazy?

16a. What gives the adventurer the touch of genius?

16b. What makes the adventurer confident even when the truth is against him?

17. What form of adventure is the most understood?

18a. How does Simmel conclude that the love affair can only be and adventure for man?

18b. Does this conclusion some from the form of adventure, or is it from other things (ex. 
difference in forms between men and women)?

19a. What element of man makes an erotic experience an adventure for him?

19b. Why can’t love returned be earned?

20a. What are the boundaries of need?

20b. What needs does a short love affair satisfy?

21a. How is the form of adventure a predetermined “fit” for eroticism?

21b. What are two aspects of the erotic and with what are the compared?

21c. How does mortal danger fit into the erotic?

22a. How does an experience change into an adventure?

**22b.** How does age effect how we experience?

22c. Why can’t age make the relation between outer and inner fate?

23a. How does one's attitude and action shift, as they grow old?

23b. What is it specifically about experience(s) that begins to disappear?

**23c.** Why is historic mood connected with age?

24a. Explain the “subjectivity of youth”.

24b. What new structure does age construct?

24c. What does Simmel conclude about adventure’s form and old age?

25a. How can life be considered hostile to adventure?

25b. How and why can adventure be compared to an unaccented word in a sentence?

26a. What does Simmel say is impossible to measure, and what does that mean?

26b. How could an experience NOT be considered an adventure?

27a. How can one understand the difference between the incomprehensible and the 
comprehensible?

27b. What lets us become adventurers?

28. What is the relationship among religion, art, and morality?

29a. When does adventure rise in one’s life?

29b. What transforms an experience into an adventure?

29c. What does adventure give a person so it is considered one of the most 
fulfilling aspects in one’s life?