Philosophers on Walking

"'More songs about Buildings and Food' was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don't sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce's 1976 hit 'Car Wash' are the exception."

"Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) famously writes about life being 'nasty, brutish, and short' ( Leviathan, 1652), but it wasn't the latter for him. In fact, he lived a very long life. Back in his day, the average life expectancy was fifty. The Wiltshire man clocked up ninety-one years. Why? Perhaps because he insisted on taking a daily walk."

"Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a punctual man. It was reported that the citizens of Köningsberg would set their watches when they saw the philosopher pass by them on his daily stroll. The walking professor only missed his saunter once - when he was caught up in reading a book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). That Genevan-born philosopher was also keen on having a daily stroll. Indeed, Rousseau's last book was The Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1782) - in which he stressed that "I can only think while I walk" ('First Promenade'). This was not a new theme for him, but a recuring one. For in his unusually frank autobiography Les Confessions (1769) he wrote many things that shocked his readers (and which are unprintable here); but he also confessed "Walking has something in it which animates and heightens my ideas" (Book II)."

Creative works and thinkers sometimes focus on everyday subjects outside their usual themes. The 1978 Talking Heads album 'More songs about Buildings and Food' highlighted non-romantic topics such as workplaces. Several philosophers wrote about nontraditional subjects including buildings, food, tomato juice, and the weather. Thomas Hobbes lived to ninety-one and may have benefited from daily walks. Immanuel Kant kept a punctual daily stroll that townspeople used to set their watches. Jean-Jacques Rousseau asserted that walking stimulated his thought and described walking as animating and heightening his ideas.

Read at Philosophynow