It is a sunny spring Sunday and – joy! – I am off to Paris to go for a walk. Not any old walk, but a stroll with a guy who truly knows about strolling: Frédéric Gros, a professor of strolling. A philosopher of walking.
Strictly speaking, he is actually a professor of philosophy who writes about walking, but this is nitpicking. What do I care? I really like strolling. Absolutely nothing offers me better pleasure than strolling uphill, for hours, in purchase to rest under some flimsy piece of nylon material and then do it all yet again the next day.
This distinct stroll is not up a mountain, it really is in the Bois de Vincennes, Paris’s largest green room, but nonetheless. I am looking forward to a lungful of fresh air and the sort of insightful aperçus that potentially are offered only to a Frenchman with a secure academic position and a command of one of the much more expressive Latinate languages.
Strolling is not sport, he says, in the very first line of his guide, A Philosophy of Walking. Sport is a discipline, “an ethic, a labour”. It is a efficiency. Strolling, on the other hand, “is the greatest way to go much more gradually than any other approach that has ever been discovered”. If you want to go quicker, he says, will not walk. Do one thing else: drive, slide, fly.
I am hunting forward to going far more gradually. However I am worried about my footwear. I am wearing Nike trainers. Are they as well sporting? Gros would seem as if he may be much more of a leather brogues type of man. He can make a jibe at individuals who try to commodify walking and promote it back to us as “trekking”. Who insist on “outstanding socks”. And specific trousers with too numerous pockets.
My trousers have the usual quantity of pockets. And reading his guide has made me prolonged to be in a wild area with nothing at all to do but stroll. I want to go over the observations from his book: that walking is an escape from the notion of identity that there is a variety of serenity that comes with basically following a path that walking is a type of pure living.
This is the plan, even though the first indication that issues might not go exactly as I imagine comes as I wait in line for the Eurostar. Ping! An electronic mail lands in my inbox: “Carole, could you send me some concerns you will inquire prior to we meet? If I could prepare some, I would be much less stressed.”
Stressed? This does not seem right. Gros’s book, a surprise bestseller in France, talks of walking as a kind of “existence scoured bare” as a way of “experiencing the true”. Its pages are filled with calm reflections on the joys of moving gradually. He just doesn’t sound as if he should be the stressy type.
“It is the English,” he says when I last but not least meet him in a cafe opposite the Bois de Vincennes. He has a sheaf of printed out pages – answers to concerns I sent him earlier, a glass of rosé on the go (“I am nervous. Coffee will not support”) and an amused PhD student who he’s brought along for what he calls “translation aid”, however I suspect “moral help” may possibly be closer to the mark.
Do not be stressed, I tell him. I loved the book. It’s an examination of the philosophy of various thinkers for whom strolling was central to their function – Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Kant, Rousseau, Thoreau (they are all males it really is unclear if women never stroll or do not believe) – and Gros’s own ideas on the topic. It really is a passionate affirmation of the straightforward life, and joy in easy items. And it truly is beautifully written: clear, simple, exact the opposite of most academic creating. But, when I say this to Gros, he waves his hand. “I think it is almost certainly the translation. I do not consider it was so well written in French.” And he requires a nervous swig of his rosé.
Why are you nervous, I request. You must have carried out interviews before. “They have been in French,” he says. “And also… Um… I’m not so certain I am intriguing.”
It looks Gros has not acquired to grips with enjoying the sort of media-academic demi-god that these circumstances require. He’s one particular of the world’s top authorities on Foucault, and later on Arianna, his PhD pupil, lets slip that he grew to become a complete professor at thirty, which is practically unheard of, specially in the arts. And he has the sort of seems – tall, dark, Gallic – that could simply lend themselves to playing the older adore interest in a Television health care drama. But there he is, nervously glugging his wine and seeking across the table at me in a state of mild terror.
The cafe is noisy, and we choose to head out on our stroll. I am desperate to deflect him from his pages of very carefully prepared answers, and I figure interviewing him on the hoof may be the very best way. But the Bois is active. The Sunday strollers are out in force.
“This is the issue with strolling in the city,” says Gros. There are clouds of midges and gaggles of youngsters and we finish up circling a small patch of scrubby ground with overflowing litter bins. “I like to stroll for many hrs,” he says. “But in Paris…” We finish up retreating to a bench.
As a philosopher, his interest is in “ordinary issues”, he says. In Britain, academic philosophy is, largely, analytical philosophy. It is concerned with logic, with language. Whereas in France, he belongs to “a new generation that is concerned with the… quotidien. The daily.”
And you see the philosophy of walking as part of the philosophy of the everyday?
“Yes. It is nonetheless looking at the concerns of eternity, solitude, time and space… But on the basis of expertise. On the basis of quite simple, quite ordinary factors.”
He’d always appreciated strolling but it was only when he started out his philosophical scientific studies that Gros started out noticing how several excellent philosophers had been also great walkers. “That is, it was not just that strolling was a distraction from their operate. It was that walking was genuinely their element. It was the condition of their operate.”
And it was from this that he started out to feel about a guide. Each and every philosopher prospects to a reflection on various topics. So Rimbaud is the commencing stage for Gros’s thoughts on escape. Nerval on melancholy. Rousseau, who claimed to be unable to perform, or even feel, when not strolling, on the concept of becoming in a state of nature. And, my favourite, Thoreau, the writer of the very first philosophical treatise on walking, whose creating Gros quotes on simplicity and frugality and wilderness and the big difference among revenue and benefit.
Walking is of no revenue, it is only advantage, he says. Although the ideal quote of his is about when considering any course of action, 1 need to inquire: could someone do it in my place? And if the answer is yes, give it up.
“Yes. You can be replaced at your function, but not for your walk. Living, in the deepest sense, is anything that no 1 else can do for us.”
Walking, says Gros, is “exploring the mystery of presence. Presence to the world, to other people and to oneself… You find out when you walk that it emancipates you from space and time, from… vitesse.”
Speed?
“Yes, speediness. It emancipates you from speediness. And Rousseau says in his Confessions, when you stroll all is achievable. Your long term is as open as the sky in front of you. And if you stroll numerous hrs, you can escape your identity. There is a second when you stroll several hrs that you are only a entire body walking. Only that. You are no one. You have no historical past. You have no identity. You have no past. You have no potential. You are only a entire body walking.”
The 18th-century Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed to be unable to perform, or even think, when not walking. Photograph: Roger-Viollet/Rex Functions
It’s the sort of observation that, possibly, operates far better with a French accent. But I purchase it. I really like every thing about strolling. The meditative state that it induces. The puppy tiredness at the finish of the day. The simply being in elegance. Or, as Gros would have it: “The sedimentation of the presence of the landscape in your entire body.”
Is there a school of philosophy that thinks that walking is not a match subject to study? “Yes! Yes, I do not think my colleagues would think about this a serious academic guide. It is as well transparent.
“And I experimented with to evoke some really serious philosophers this kind of as Nietzsche but the concerns I wanted to ask had been not, ‘What is the soul?’ or, ‘What is the relation among physique and area?’
“My queries were, ‘Where have they walked?’ ‘How have they walked?’ ‘How a lot of hours per day have they walked?’ I tried to see if their design of walking could be a manifestation of their thought. So, for instance, you have Kant with his stroll. Every day the very same stroll. The exact same time, the same place…”
He comes across as a very uninteresting man.
“He is!”
Does that also come through in his philosophy?
“We can say that there is a discipline at the forefront of it, yes.”
Nietzsche, on the other hand, is extremely unboring. He was the first philosopher Gros found. And the one who persuaded him to examine philosophy.
What prompted you to start off reading Nietzsche? Had been you a teenager?
“Yes!”
Had been you a depressed teenager?
“Yes!”
What result did Nietzsche have?
“There is an power in Nietzsche’s functions and this assisted me. You have the same energy in the act of strolling. You need power when you have to stroll for numerous hours.”
Have there been factors in your daily life where you’ve found walking useful to your psychological state?
“Absolutely. There is an component of repetition in the act of strolling exactly where you can overlook. And there is a tiredness. A peacefulness. I feel that when you are really alone you have a fragility. The emotions are more intense. You have far more of the feeling of the eternity of things. There are moments of vibration among your own physique and the landscape.”
You’re sounding like a hippy now, Frédéric, I say.
“I am!”
Now the Earth is vibrating.
“You are proper!”
Not that this is always a negative point. I really like the bit in the book where he writes about the act of packing a rucksack and the perpetual question that you uncover your self asking. “Is it essential?” On my last hiking trip, I inform him, I weighed my T-shirts to find the lightest ones. I weighed my knickers. I sawed my toothbrush in half with a bread knife. (I admit it: this was a step as well far.) But contemplating about placing anything in a rucksack and schlepping it up a mountain on your back is really a great test for thinking about no matter whether you genuinely do really require something, is not it, I say?
“It is.”
Do you manage it? Does that lesson come via when you’re at Ikea?
“I attempt to have that same psychological perspective every day. But it is difficult. The problem is that I…”
“Neglect?”
“No, I never fail to remember. I lie. I say, ‘Oh yes, this is really necessary?’”
What? Like a sports automobile? You say, ‘Yes, it is vital. I want that Ferrari?’
“Not a sports automobile but… Other items.”
A single of the items that comes across most strongly in the guide is a sense of escape. The freedom of leaving things behind. It sounds as if an academic philosophy division is a spot to get away from. Is that true?
“Quoi?” He appears confused and then Arianna, the PhD pupil, translates and they almost fall off the bench laughing.
“Yes! I’m not positive you have to create this. But I have a severe problem with academics. I think that I have imposter syndrome. I truly feel myself an imposter in philosophy. I believe this book about strolling is the 1st way to discover it. I’m creating another guide about disobeying. I think there is a link amongst walking and disobedience. I am writing about disobedience and getting ready myself to disobey.”
Disobey what?
“Academia.”
To leave it?
“If I have the courage, yes.”
Gros did not set out to become an academic. He went to Mexico City for two years and taught French. “And then I came back and I attempted to locate some interesting factors in my own life… But I didn’t know any! Absolutely nothing. It is quite embarrassing for me.”
So you imagined you’d read about the interesting lives of other folks?
“Yes. When I experimented with to write this book I wrote chapters about these elders since I think their lives are interesting. If my existence were fascinating, I feel I wouldn’t have to write. If you compose, it really is due to the fact your daily life isn’t essential.” He appears at me embarrassed. “Possibly it is diverse for you?”
Immanuel Kant took the same stroll at the identical time every single day. His route by means of the park in Königsberg, Prussia (now Russia), later on came to be known as ‘The Philosopher’s Walk’. Photograph: Alamy
I appreciate meeting individuals who are much more interesting than me, I inform him. And then I request him about the apogee of his guide, his definitive strolling experience, when he talks about how, in the mountains of the Cévennes, his favourite spot, in a time period of fine weather, he simply abandoned his rucksack. He invested two days strolling, alone, carrying completely practically nothing.
“It was this feeling of lightness. This fragility. There is nothing in between you and nature.”
Except being a bit hungry?
“A bit.”
There is a quote from Thoreau in the book, where he says that it is not the tyranny of public view that traps us. Instead, we are shackled by our personal judgments of ourselves. Do you believe that?
“I do.”
So what is the judgment that you have of by yourself that shackles you?
“This is tough. Yes, yes. No, no, no. Just 1 minute. I have a judgment. Yes…”
And he rolls his eyes and for a prolonged minute he just stares into room and thinks. Arianna and I sit and watch him.
“No, no, no, I am pondering.”
We wait for an additional lengthy minute. This is wonderful, I say. I interview lots and lots of individuals and they quite seldom ever feel just before giving an reply. I think this may be a first.
“It is a horrible query.”
“It is a horrible question. But you happen to be a philosopher, Frédéric. You are supposed to be considering about this stuff. It’s your occupation.”
“Yes, it is my work. So… Yes, the issue for me is that the books I have written have permitted me to understand to know, but the difficulty is what they have masked. You see. I know that the books I have written permit me to understand lots of items. But they have masked the troubles.”
You indicate that they have masked your real thoughts or feelings? Or they have masked you from living daily life.
“Yes. From residing. From living existence.”
So, do you think that you personally would have been much better off going for a stroll than creating a book about strolling?
“Yes… But… I had not adequate courage.”
Oh dear! Perhaps you want to go for a actually massive walk. 3 months or some thing. Is that anything you’d like to do?
“Yes. Of program. But existence is… complicated.”
Isn’t that the issue, I say – that there are almost certainly a lot of people who will read through the guide and say, ‘Oh, it truly is all really properly to speak about communing with nature, but I have received 3 little ones and a home loan and a wife.’
“Yes, and me, also.”
In reality he has two kids, now youngsters, and “they used to love to walk. I tried to teach them the joie de la marche. They walked 7, eight, 9 hours. I led them everywhere. But now… they refuse.”
They will come back to it, I say. But then I have started saying all method of comforting things to the philosopher of walking, which includes telling him that he demands to go for a walk. “Are you going somewhere great this summertime?”
“No. I do not consider. No.”
Perhaps strolling can be a state of thoughts in your head, I propose. Perhaps the concept of going for a walk can be as effective as in fact going for a stroll?
“No, no, no. I consider that the act of walking… stays essential.”
He has began to search depressed. So, you do not handle to walk significantly on a day-to-day basis? He shakes his head. Perhaps you ought to get a dog, I say. Then you have to walk even on a moist Tuesday in February.
We sit in silence for a bit.
So, Frédéric, you have written a entire guide about the straightforward daily life and joy of walking simply because your lifestyle is as well challenging to in fact go walking? Is this what occurred?
“Yes… But it is a lot more challenging than that.”
We finish the interview and go and drink wine. Gros appears done in. Arianna seems to be amused.
“You see,” he says. “I was right to be nervous! French journalists do not ask these type of questions. I… truly feel maybe I have a crise tomorrow.”
Oh dear. I hope not. Just read through your book, I tell him. Go for a stroll. Disobey.
Frédéric Gros will be speaking at the Bristol festival of ideas on Wed 14 May, 6-7pm
Frédéric Gros: If you walk for many hours, you can escape your identity
