WALKING AND PHILOSOPHY

For many of us, walking can be a break from thinking. It can be a time to just be, just breath, just step and enjoy the unmediated experience of being alive. I recently finished a new book called  A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros, a philosophy lecturer from Paris, which takes the opposite slant. It presents the importance of walking in the lives of several central thinkers of the Western tradition.
 

The chapters include the obvious and expected story of Thoreau and his time “sauntering” around Walden Pond and the phenomenon of the “flaneur”, the public walkers of Paris in the later 19th century. What was new to me was the passion of Nietzche, whose walking slowed and moderated his gradual descent into madness. I hadn’t realized how much of a walker the French poet, Rimbaud, had been. I loved the portrait of Kant, who only ever had one route, which he took daily, like clockwork, through his town. Other walkers - Rousseau, Snyder and more - fill out a broad landscape of different thinking walkers or walking thinkers who walked in different ways for different reasons in different times.
An excellent and highly recommended read and thanks to my brother, Joe, for the gift of this book. I look forward to walking and philosophizing with you again soon.

Yours , on the journey,                           
Ray
Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet
Thich Nhat Hahn