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Five philosophers on the joys of walking

René Descartes argued that each of us is, fundamentally, a thinking thing. Thought is our defining activity, setting us aside from animals, trees, rocks. I suspect this has helped market philosophy as the life of the mind, conjuring up philosophers lost in reverie, snuggled in armchairs. But human beings do not, in fact, live purely in the mind. Other philosophers have recognised this, and connected our inner lives with an everyday, bodily process: walking. The act of putting one foot in front of another creates rhythm, movement, and can elevate the spirit. From teaching to reflecting, here are some suggestions for your next stroll.

1. Aristotle: Walk and talk.

Aristotle was named a peripatetic, one who paces, for his habit of strolling up and down whilst teaching. For Aristotle, walking facilitates talking – and, presumably, thinking. Although Aristotle’s walking was famous, he was not the first philosopher to have the habit. Socrates was delighted at how students trailed after their teacher, as reported in Plato’s Protagoras: “I saw how beautifully they took care never to get in Protagoras’ way. When he turned around with his flanking groups, the audience to the rear would split into two in a very orderly way and then circle around to either side and form up again behind him. It was quite lovely.” Comedy writers of the time also made fun of Plato for tiring out his legs whilst working out “wise plans.”

2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Examine everything in your own time.

For Rousseau, the great benefit of walking is that you can move at your own time, doing as much or as little as you choose. You can see the country you’re travelling through, turn off to the right or left if you fancy, examine anything which interests you. In Emile, he writes: “To travel on foot is to travel in the fashion of Thales, Plato, and Pythagoras. I find it hard to understand how a philosopher can bring himself to travel in any other way; how he can tear himself from the study of the wealth which lies before his eyes and beneath his feet.” He adds that those who ride in well-padded carriages are always “gloomy, fault-finding, or sick,” whilst walkers are “always merry, light-hearted, and delighted with everything.”

3. Henry Thoreau: Allow nature to work on you.

Thoreau argues that humans are a part of nature, and walking through nature can allow us to grow spiritually. He argues that being in the wild can act on us, that mountain air can feed our spirits. In his article, “Walking,” he advises us to focus: “I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit… What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?” To feel the benefits of walking through nature, we must allow it to enter us, to soak it up.

4. George Santayana: Reflect on the privilege of movement.

Santayana points out that plants cannot move, whilst animals can. In “The Philosophy of Travel”, he wonders if this privilege of “locomotion” is the “key to intelligence”, writing: “The roots of vegetables (which Aristotle says are their mouths) attach them fatally to the ground, and they are condemned like leeches to suck up whatever sustenance may flow to them at the particular spot where they happen to be stuck. Close by, perhaps, there may be a richer soil or a more sheltered or sunnier nook but they cannot migrate, nor have even the eyes or imagination by which to picture the enviable neighbouring lot.” Moving around allows animals to experience more of the world, to imagine how it might be elsewhere.

5. Frédéric Gros: Hear the silence. 

Gros has done more than any other philosopher to advance the philosophy of walking, although according to this amusing interview he does not walk enough. He maintains we should walk alone, preferably through nature. Once you’ve left populated streets, roads, and public spaces behind, you leave their noises behind. No more speed, jostling, clamour, clattering footsteps, white noise murmurs, snatches of words, rumbling engines. As he notes in “A Philosophy of Walking,” gradually, you retrieve silence: “All is calm, expectant and at rest. You are out of the world’s chatter, its corridor echoes, its muttering. Walking: it hits you at first like an immense breathing in the ears. You feel the silence as if it were a great fresh wind blowing away clouds.” The silence gathered by walking is refreshing, restorative.

Throughout the ages, and for different reasons, we have been encouraged (sometimes urged!) to step outside and explore the world by foot. Whether to clear our heads, to gain new perspective, or simply to absorb the wonders of nature, perhaps there is something for everyone to gain by slipping on a pair of shoes and venturing forth into the great beyond.

Featured image credit: Dmitry Schemelev on Unsplash.

Recent Comments

  1. Forest Hansen

    Surely some other animals think. If you’ve ever had a dog or cat as pet, you know that. What distinguishes human beings is the complexity of their (our) thought and its greater use in our actions, giving us a range of choices that makes “lower” animals seem like robots in comparison.

  2. Hugh Pawsey

    Your article reminds me that there are books by George Borrow that I’ve never got round to reading. Almost contemporary with Thoreau but significantly more peripatetic. Are reputations built on a few good quotations?

  3. IvorFaulkner

    Ambulando solvitur
    = Walking solves it

  4. Pushkar Bisht

    I am a philosopher. I know the value of philosophy. Philosophy is for our mind. It gives more logics to mind. It changes things in our life. I love Thoreau. His message is beautiful. We should always remain close to nature. Nature gives us everything. To a genius, every part is whole universe. He has no individual but universal thought. He belongs to the world.

  5. Pushkar Bisht

    When our mind is not free and forced to think what we don’t want to think, it is the slavery of mind that prevents the huge growth of it. Emptying the mind is the beginning of peace and when it preaches on the branch of peace after the acceptance of new born thoughts, high concentration originates which leads to contemplation, self examination and introspection. Mind develops habits, vision, sensuality and sound. It controls the life. It puts the fence before our insight. Mind is nothing but a formation of some thoughts. To think beyond is the real challenge for mind, mind will never allow that is not formed in its territory. It makes excuses and stop being responsible for new higher things. It makes a protest and when it does not win over the protest, it succumbs. It accepts defeat and surrenders, becomes a slave to false ideology that has been formed by millions.

  6. Maria Ribeiro

    When I have a problem or am anguished, I walk. After about half an hour of walking the rhythm of it sort of seeps into my mind and imposes some order in my thoughts. Things become clearer. A sense of joy and wonder fills me.

  7. Vicente del Rio

    We should add to this discussion Walter Benjamin’s concept of the flaneur, as walking through the streets, with no goal other than to live/experiment all your perceptions of the human condition.

  8. Jo naden

    Walking: a mapping of thoughts

  9. Italo Giardina

    There is walking, and then there is walking, by token to type relationship. The type of walking is as important for transcendence of self as its token functional equivalent. A situated self has a plethora of social connotations that include a walking style. It pertains to a sort of person with kinds of reasons. Walking as a qualitative state links the sensorial moving image to a universe of discourse on the boundary of that space/time, leaving the empty space as contingent qualia.

  10. […] across this little overview of five philosophers on the joys of walking. A nice little read (although it didn’t really […]

  11. Guy Young

    Hello,

    Thanks for a lovely blog post. I will definitely be reading your book soon!

    I came across your blog because I’ve had trouble finding evidence to support the idea that the Peripatetic School was so named because Aristotle walked as he thought. Can I ask, is this a sort of legend? Looking at Carlo Natali’s biography of Aristotle, it seems that the peripatos at the Lyceum was a common feature of gardens and not particular to Aristotle, and that it’s difficult to interpret what it actually was for.

    I’d love to know how the idea of Aristotle-as-walker has persisted. Is there a particular source that you have in mind?

    Thanks so much!

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