“Walking helps you think”

I found that long walks in the mountains stimulated my thinking. In studying the lives of various philosophers, I found that many of them liked to walk, and even those who were not themselves fans of walking, recognized that it was the personification of the process of thinking.

Descartes, for example, described his reflection as a walk in the woods. He feels that he is lost and is looking for a way… Heidegger speaks of thoughts as “paths that lead nowhere”: their goal is not to get from point “A” to point “B”, but to move .

This is the common thing that unites the philosopher and the walker: they have no other goal than to go further along the road. As Jaspers wrote, “To be a philosopher is to be on the road.”

Nevertheless, the thinker is usually represented as a being motionless and in prostration, like Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker. This image refers to a very specific perception of philosophy, according to which, being distracted from the body, we contribute to the work of thought. In other words, when the body no longer burdens the mind, it can soar freely.

I think the opposite: thought always serves to unite the body and the spirit. And walking is the best expression of this connection. Thought rests on the body and develops in harmony with it. It can even be said that while walking we think with the body. To walk is to step on one foot and then the other, and to think is to move from one idea to another.

Thinking is always a lack of rest, movement, instability, like walking – a balance between moments of disequilibrium. In both cases, we are talking about a constant search for a balance between the two positions. So there is a correspondence between the movements of the body and the movement of thought. Montaigne even said that his “mind would not move unless his legs stirred it,” and that it seemed to him that while he was sitting, his thoughts were sleeping!

Such walking is mechanical and too utilitarian: we walk to get to work or to get to the store. In addition, we dissolve in the atmosphere of the city – we do not go at our own rhythm, but at the rhythm of the crowd, our attention constantly switches to what is happening around. We do not move independently, not at our own pace.

I believe that walking generates valuable thoughts if I walk freely, of my own free will, and have no other purpose than to be alone with myself. Besides, walking in the city is a rather fussy and hectic business, while thought, although it sometimes has violent outbursts, generally moves at a slow pace. At a pace that matches the rhythm of our breathing. Walking, for example, in the mountains makes us listen more to our own breathing.

Thoughts that arise while walking are closer to reality. We are both spirit and body, and walking forces us to consider this mixed nature of ours. This is an opportunity to give our thought a concrete support, from which we tend to brush aside when we embark on abstract reasoning.

Moreover, when we walk in the mountains, there is already a dialectic in it: we go up, but our gaze and head tilt are turned down. It turns out that we admire the peaks and at the same time regularly look at our feet, and therefore at the earth, which reminds us where we came from and where we will go: “Dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Walking keeps us grounded: it is no coincidence that the Latin humilitas, “humility,” comes from humus, “earth.” Walking allows us to feel the limits of our capabilities: walking, we feel tired, we feel that we are getting old, that our bodies are not omnipotent, while traveling by car, train or plane is all an excuse to transcend the limitations of our nature.

Walking also teaches us that it is not in the nature of things to move straight towards a goal. In the mountains you have to see from a distance for a long time the peak you want to reach, but you cannot climb there in a straight line without looking at the road. You understand that the shortest path is not always the best and that detours and winding paths are sometimes the best. It is through wandering and delusion that we find ourselves.

For Rousseau, walking was also something special. First of all – a way of knowing nature and, consequently, truth (nature does not cheat) and beauty. But it also plays the role of a kind of penance, punishment. Throughout his life, Rousseau strove to communicate with people, wanted transparent and sincere relations with them, as he wrote in his Confession.

But “Walking the Lonely Dreamer” arose from a statement of defeat: he did not manage to live among people as he would like, so he sentenced himself to “leave”.

We can indeed draw parallels between the way philosophers think and how they prefer to walk. Kant, for example, every day at 17.00 went out for a walk around Koenigsberg and always followed the same path. In other words, his walks were as well planned as his philosophy – well built and structured!

Nietzsche also had certain habits when it came to walking, but he preferred the mountains. It is there that a person can test his exceptional nature for strength, there he imagines that he has already stepped on you with the steepest peaks … It is hard not to notice here the similarity with his philosophy …

But not necessarily. The “dialogues” of Socrates, recorded by Plato, largely took place during their joint walks in Athens and along the Iliss River. Aristotle also taught on the go.

In fact, all philosophy took its first steps by walking. There is a historical anecdote about Thales, who is considered the first philosopher: he used to walk looking at the sky, and one day he fell into a well in front of a laughing maid.

For those who believe that a philosopher should be stern and serious, this is a wonderful counterargument: the birth of philosophy was marked by a false step and an outburst of laughter!

^{About the Author:} Christophe Lamour is a philosopher and author of Petite Philosophie du marcheur (Milan, 2007), in which he talks about such famous walkers as Kant, Nietzsche and Rousseau, and discusses the connection between spiritual energy and physical energy.