A Philosophy of Walking

How walking has influenced some of the greatest thinkers in history

In A Philosophy of Walking, Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B--he proposed that this most mundane of daily chores is also one of the most profound.

As he looks at the many ways we put one foot in front of the other, Gros draws attention to other thinkers who also saw walking as something central to their practice, including Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Gandhi, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Kant and Schopenhauer. On his travels he ponders Thoreau's eager seclusion in Walden Woods and the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury. He shows us that Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write; in contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought.