İLHAN YILDIRIM | TR724
“A civilization that starts each day with the sound of an alarm clock has exhausted all its hopes.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Walking is an act of slowing down and rediscovering the world in the face of the speed and urgency imposed by modernity. Ever since Aristotle taught his students while strolling through a garden, philosophers have cultivated their ideas to the rhythm of their footsteps. Kant’s neighbors reportedly set their clocks according to his daily walks, while Thoreau claimed he could not preserve his health and happiness without spending four hours a day wandering forest paths. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi composed significant portions of the Risale-i Nur while walking the rugged trails between Barla and Çam Mountain, famously declaring, “I would not exchange these retreats for the Yıldız Palace.” Even a short walk with a child can restore the sense of wonder we have lost. Walking is not merely a movement of the body; it is a journey that transforms thought into action.
In recent years, numerous books have been written on the history, philosophy, and art of walking. In earlier times, people rarely reflected on walking because it was an ordinary part of everyday life. Ironically, a society that reads books about walking is often a society in which walking itself has visibly disappeared. As a result, the ancient bond between the body, the world, and the imagination is steadily weakening.
French sociologist and anthropologist David Le Breton, in his book In Praise of Walking, presents walking as an escape from the urgencies imposed by modernity, a way of savoring nature, and a path that opens the mind to reflection. Stepping outside allows individuals to distance themselves from the relentless pace of work and daily life, to disconnect temporarily from social networks, and to experience the thrill of stepping beyond the system.
For Le Breton, happiness may be as simple as enjoying a satisfying piece of bread, a sip of cool water, and the beauty of a panoramic landscape. Walking, he argues, is a way of coming to know the world.
In this brief yet profound work, Le Breton offers insights to guide the traveler whose journey transforms them into someone new. “Walking,” he writes, “is an opening to the world. It is experiencing the body. It is a detour through which one finds oneself.” His admiration for walking reflects an experience that shifts the self away from the center and allows the world to be rediscovered anew.
French philosopher Frédéric Gros makes a similar argument in A Philosophy of Walking, where he challenges modern assumptions from the outset: “Walking is not exercise. Walking is about slowing down.”
To slow down is to resist the tension and frantic pace of contemporary life. Yet in an age obsessed with productivity, why should we slow down? And what should we do once we have?
Gros suggests paying attention to the intensity of the sky’s colors and the brilliance of the surrounding landscape. Hurry dissolves the world, turning it into what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called a “liquid” reality—one in which nothing is experienced deeply or permanently.
The School of Walking
Many of history’s greatest philosophers did their thinking while walking.
In ancient Greece, Aristotle taught his students while strolling through the gardens of the Lyceum. For this reason, his philosophical tradition became known as the Peripatetic School—literally, “those who teach while walking.” In the Islamic world, thinkers such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Al-Farabi, and Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who developed and continued this Aristotelian tradition, became known as the Mashsha’i philosophers, or “the walkers.”
Today we live in an age that never stops. Modern life moves at a pace that often exceeds the natural rhythm of thought itself. It seems almost to contradict Ludwig Wittgenstein’s observation that “in the race of philosophy, the one who can run slowest wins.”
The Walking Clock
“Our feet are our first teachers of philosophy.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau
As philosophy and art evolved, the connection between walking and thinking grew ever stronger. Many philosophers and writers adopted walking as a deliberate intellectual practice, suggesting a profound relationship between movement and thought.
Anyone familiar with Immanuel Kant knows that he lived a remarkably disciplined and contemplative life. Born in Königsberg, he died in Königsberg. He lived to the age of eighty and rarely traveled far from his hometown.
Every day he walked at the same hour, along the same route, and at the same pace. His life was governed by an unwavering commitment to consistency in time, place, and action. His walks became so predictable that his neighbors reportedly set their clocks by them. When Kant emerged from his house in his gray coat, carrying his Spanish cane and heading toward the tree-lined avenue, everyone knew it was precisely 3:30 in the afternoon.
Today, that route is still known as the Philosopher’s Walk.
According to legend, Kant broke his routine only twice: once while completely absorbed in reading Rousseau’s Émile, and once when news of the French Revolution reached the city.
