Frédéric Gros: why going for a walk is the best way to free your mind
"Walking is the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found." (Gros)
Aristotle was called the peripatetic philosopher for the way he would expound his philosophy whilst walking about in the Lyceum of ancient Athens. He defined the best limiting principle for a polis as a self-sufficiency ‘that can be taken in at one view’ (Politics 1981 VII.v). A city of human proportions and dimensions is a city you can take in on foot in the one view.
I've written on Aristotle. I've written on Kant. Kant took the same stroll at the same time every day. It came to be known as 'The Philosopher's Walk'. Immanuel Kant took afternoon walks the same time every day. The neighbours were said to set their clocks by him. The only time he missed came as a result of being so absorbed and overcome reading Rousseau's “Émile (ou De l’éducation).” From which:
“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.” (Rousseau).
Rousseau, author of the Reveries of a Solitary Walker, is one of my favourite philosophers.
I have never driven a car and have fallen off every bike I’ve ever been on. I can't swim, either. I only passed my Learners’ swimming certificate on my fourth attempt. But I can walk for miles and miles for days. I’m a walker!!! So Frederic Gros’ book A Philosophy of Walking is the book for me. It turns out that some of the finest thinkers in history were also enthusiastic walkers! Simply written, with a focus on the everyday, Gros brings philosophy down to earth. He uses philosophy to show how walking can bring about a sense of peace.
Walkers of the world unite, there's a world to win. Or, rather, a world to walk. A world in dreams and visions and ideas, we map the world as we go.
Strictly speaking, Frederic Gros is a professor of philosophy who writes about walking. Walking is not sport, he says, in the first line of his book, A Philosophy of Walking. Sport is a discipline, "an ethic, a labour". It is a performance. Walking, on the other hand, "is the best way to go more slowly than any other method that has ever been found". If you want to go faster, he says, don't walk. Do something else: drive, slide, fly.
And reading his book has made me long to be in a wild place with nothing to do but walk. I want to discuss the observations from his book: that walking is an escape from the idea of identity; that there is a kind of serenity that comes with simply following a path; that walking is a form of pure living.
Gros' book talks of walking as a form of "life scoured bare"; as a way of "experiencing the real". Its pages are filled with calm reflections on the joys of moving slowly.
The book is an examination of the philosophy of various thinkers for whom walking was central to their work – Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Kant, Rousseau, Thoreau. It's a passionate affirmation of the simple life, and joy in simple things. And it's beautifully written: clear, simple, precise; the opposite of most academic writing.
As far as Gros is concerned, the best sort of walk is one that sets the mind free to its reveries, although a quotation he offers from Montaigne puts it better: “My thoughts sleep if I sit still; my fancy does not go so well by itself as when my legs move it.” I'd offer a comparable quote from Kierkegaard here, too:
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.” (Søren Kierkegaard).
These insights caps a book whose best moments come when the author is outlining the importance of walking on a handful of thinkers: Nietzsche, Rousseau and Wordsworth were all capable of honing their lines, or refining their sentiments, as they undertook long walks. Walking takes a writer away from his or her books, and a bigger picture emerges: “The moment your nose is buried in dates, in facts, everything falls back on your own clenched peculiarity. Whereas the need is to construct fictions, myths, general destinies.”
As a philosopher, his interest is in "ordinary things", he says. In Britain, academic philosophy is, largely, analytical philosophy. It's concerned with logic, with language. Whereas in France, he belongs to "a new generation that is concerned with the…quotidien. The everyday."
And you see the philosophy of walking as part of the philosophy of the everyday?
"Yes. It is still looking at the questions of eternity, solitude, time and space… But on the basis of experience. On the basis of very simple, very ordinary things."
He'd always enjoyed walking but it was only when he started his philosophical studies that Gros started noticing how many great philosophers were also great walkers. "That is, it was not just that walking was a distraction from their work. It was that walking was really their element. It was the condition of their work."
Each philosopher leads to a reflection on different subjects. So Rimbaud is the starting point for Gros's thoughts on escape. Nerval on melancholy. Rousseau, who claimed to be unable to work, or even think, when not walking, on the idea of being in a state of nature. And, Thoreau, the author of the first philosophical treatise on walking, whose writing Gros quotes on simplicity and frugality and wilderness and the difference between profit and benefit.
Walking is of no profit, it is only benefit, he says. Though the best quote of his is about when considering any course of action, one should ask: could someone do it in my place? And if the answer is yes, give it up.
"Yes. You can be replaced at your work, but not for your walk. Living, in the deepest sense, is something that no one else can do for us." Walking, says Gros, is "exploring the mystery of presence. Presence to the world, to others and to yourself... You discover when you walk that it emancipates you from space and time, from…vitesse."
"It emancipates you from speediness. And Rousseau says in his Confessions, when you walk all is possible. Your future is as open as the sky in front of you. And if you walk several hours, you can escape your identity. There is a moment when you walk several hours that you are only a body walking. Only that. You are nobody. You have no history. You have no identity. You have no past. You have no future. You are only a body walking."
I love walking and all it entails. Walking induces a contemplative state of being. I love the exhausted satisfaction that comes at the end of the walk. The re-energized tiredness. I love the movement. I love walking in town and cities as well as the countryside. It is being in movement, or being in beauty. Gros puts it this way: "The sedimentation of the presence of the landscape in your body." I would add the townscape. There is a beauty to the urban environment just as there is in the natural environment. Romantics who forget that can seduce us into the cul-de-sac of decadence.
Is there a school of philosophy that thinks that walking is not a fit subject to study?
"Yes! Yes," answers Gros, "I do not think my colleagues would consider this a serious academic book. It is too transparent.
"And I tried to evoke some very serious philosophers such as Nietzsche … There is an energy in Nietzsche's works and this helped me. You have the same energy in the act of walking. You need energy when you have to walk for several hours."
In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche wrote: “Sit as little as possible; do not believe any idea that was not born in the open air and of free movement – in which the muscles do not also revel.”
Gros is asked whether there had been points in his life where he had found walking helpful to his mental state?
"Absolutely. There is an element of repetition in the act of walking where you can forget. And there is a tiredness. A peacefulness. I think that when you are really alone you have a fragility. The feelings are more intense. You have more of the feeling of the eternity of things. There are moments of vibration between your own body and the landscape."
Now the Earth is vibrating.
One of the things that comes across most strongly in the book is a sense of escape. The freedom of leaving things behind. It sounds as if an academic philosophy department is a place to get away from. Is that true?
"Yes! I'm not sure you have to write this. But I have a serious problem with academics. I think that I have imposter syndrome. I feel myself an imposter in philosophy. I think this book about walking is the first way to discover it. I'm writing another book about disobeying. I think there is a link between walking and disobedience. I am writing about disobedience and preparing myself to disobey."
Disobey what? "Academia."
To leave it? "If I have the courage, yes."
He spent two days walking, alone, carrying absolutely nothing. "It was this feeling of lightness. This fragility. There is nothing between you and nature."
There is a quote from Thoreau in the book, where he says that it is not the tyranny of public opinion that traps us. Instead, we are shackled by our own judgments of ourselves. Does Gros believe that?
"I do."
"Yes, the problem for me is that the books I have written have allowed me to learn to know, but the problem is what they have masked. You see. I know that the books I have written allow me to learn lots of things. But they have masked the problems."
You mean that they have masked your real thoughts or feelings? Or they have masked you from living life. "Yes. From living. From living life."
Summing up: Disobey. Go for a walk. Dream. Think. Be.