[3] Gumbrecht's writing on philosophy and modern thought extends from the Middle Ages to today and incorporates an array of disciplines and styles, at times combining historical and philosophical inquiry with elements of memoir.

Much of Gumbrecht's scholarship has focused on national literatures in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, and he is known for his work on the Western philosophical tradition, the materiality of presence, shifting views of the Enlightenment, forms of aesthetic experience, and the joys of watching sports.

He specialized in Romance Philology and German Literature, but also studied philosophy and sociology during his university years, which took him to Munich, Regensburg, Salamanca, Pavia, and Konstanz.

[10] Gumbrecht's first work to locate a temporal mood was In 1926: Living at the Edge of Time (1997), which associates excitement and anticipation with the emergence of new and faster-paced activities, forms of entertainment, and ways of thinking.

Events described range from boxing matches to bar conversations, and Gumbrecht profiles artistic greats and public figures alongside workers, farmers, and engineers to depict the emergence of new sensibilities that transcended boundaries of class, race, gender, or nation.

"[12] The mood of latency has implications for cultural identity today in the form of a widely felt sense of inertia and a changed relationship to time: the argument is that from the vantage point of the postwar years, the future came to be viewed as a threat.

He argues that the function of literature is to "make present," and treats aesthetic experiences as concrete encounters that affect a reader or viewer's physical environment or body.

He writes, "'Reading for Stimmung' always means paying attention to the textual dimension of the forms that envelop us and our bodies as a physical reality—something that can catalyze inner feelings without matters of representation necessarily being involved.

"[20] Gumbrecht links the practice of interpretation as the search for meaning or "sense-making" with a form of understanding that is unique to the social and historical context, as well as the material and bodily experience, of the reader.

In Production of Presence (2003), Gumbrecht criticizes the status of literary study in university settings, arguing that the humanities overemphasize the importance of interpretation, or "the reconstruction and attribution of meaning.

Gumbrecht traces the emphasis on meaning and interpretation back to Early Modernity, drawing from Martin Heidegger's concept of "Being" and commenting on the work of many other scholars, including Jacques Derrida's writing on overcoming metaphysics.

Gumbrecht's project is to provide a new mode for exploring and understanding the aesthetic experience of sports spectatorship, or what precisely makes certain athletic moves and plays "beautiful."

"[30] While Gumbrecht does not present one form as superior to the other, he notes the contemporary tendency to attach social anxiety to the frenzy of crowds, linking this to "the nightmare of Fascism still haunting the West.

"[31] Gumbrecht acknowledges the occurrence of fights and hooliganism at sporting events, but focuses instead on the sense of communion that watching athletics can produce—for example, through acts of cheering, chanting, or even doing "the Wave."

The energy of the crowd, in combination with the other aesthetic and emotional responses evoked by watching athletic aptitude, leads to the range of "fascinations" Gumbrecht incorporates into his method for describing and expressing appreciation for sport.