A Philosophy of Walking

Bywalking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation tobe someone, to have a name and a history ... The freedom in walking liesin not being anyone; for the walking body has no history, it is just aneddy in the stream of immemorial life.

In A Philosophy of Walking,a bestseller in France, leading thinker Frdric Gros charts the manydifferent ways we get from A to B-the pilgrimage, the promenade, theprotest march, the nature ramble-and reveals what they say about us.

Grosdraws attention to other thinkers who also saw walking as somethingcentral to their practice. On his travels he ponders Thoreau's eagerseclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, whileNerval rambled to cure his melancholy. He shows us how Rousseau walkedin order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write.In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at thesame hour, to escape the compulsion of thought.

Brilliant and erudite, A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other.