Abstract

Context: Josef Mitterer is, among other callings, a philosopher of "traveling concepts" As a leader of various travel groups, he has collected a rich range of material for the adventure of traveling -- and has drawn conclusions from that material for his non-dualistic cognitive theory. Findings: In Mitterer's view, despite all longings for the "other," the "strange," and despite all "self-forgotten expansion of horizons," in our encounter with the new we always remain systemically bound to our constructions of age and ego. Every putatively authentic encounter is crammed with "constructivist" preconditions. Implications: Whereas in pre-modern times the voyage was understood as a "wandering between worlds," Mitterer's epistemology offers us an appropriate framework for the particularities of modern tourism -- and with them, for a modern self-understanding in face of the foreign and strange