Montaigne, “back to the walk… to me”

Michel de Montaigne, the great (and first) essayist,  preceded his countryman Descartes and should have inoculated philosophy against the quest for certainty ever after.  He is unjustly omitted from too many histories of philosophy. Descartes merely pretended to philosophic humility and noble epistemic ignorance, Montaigne embraced them.

“Que sais-je?” What do I know? So much more profound than Cogito, ergo sum. Montaigne’s meditations, motile and circling and habitual, so much more incisive than Descartes’s stationary solipsistic ruminations.

What did he know? Well, he knew that ever-elusive self-knowledge must be tracked daily, and that it is not the sole or the exclusively-cerebral product of the ratiocinating res cogitans. He did not have to prove mind-body duality (as distinct from metaphysical dualism) to himself, he experienced it immediately and constantly. It was implicated in his every thought and act, no matter how mundane.

So he walked.

And the mind-body complex was implicated in every thought and act of his readers, then and now.

So he wrote.

 ”My body is capable of steady but not of vehement or sudden exertion. These days I shun violent exercises which put me into a sweat; my limbs grow tired before they grow warm. I can stay on my feet a whole day, and I do not weary of walking… My walk is quick and firm.” Montaigne in Motion

Sarah Bakewell records Montaigne’s approach to walking as meditation:

When I walk alone in the beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been dwelling on extraneous incidents for some part of the time, for some other part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me.

The sweet simplicity of a good walk is ingredient to a good life. “When I dance I dance. When I sleep I sleep.” Zen masters spend a lifetime meditating their way to such  presence of mind, body, and spirit. Walkers too.

Russell’s delight

More walkers of note: Erasmus, Hobbes, Montaigne, Jefferson, Kierkegaard, Bentham, Darwin, Twain, Russell, Einstein…

Some walking quotes of note:

• “Walking is the best medicine.” Hippocrates
• “Walking is the best possible exercise.” Jefferson
• “My mind only works with my legs.” Rousseau
• “If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.” Dickens
• “Walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active.” Twain
• “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” Nietzsche
• “I delight in long free walks. These free my brain and serve my body.” Emerson
• “It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.” Hemingway
• “You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet.” Dillard
• “I used, when I was younger, to take my holidays walking. I would cover twenty-five miles a day, and when the evening came I had no need of anything to keep me from boredom, since the delight of sitting amply sufficed.” Russell

Like  Russell I’m hooked on morning rambles. “Every morning Bertie would go for an hour’s walk by himself, composing and thinking out his work for that day. He would then come back and write for the rest of the morning, smoothly, easily and without a single correction…”

I’m already clocking an hour a morning. Now, to master the rest of that routine!

Bertie lived to 98. I choose to see a connection.

The sufficient moment

In 1870 a young and previously-irresolute William James confided to his diary,

“I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier’s second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will — ‘the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts’ — need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present — until next year — that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

Within the decade, the vacillating, self-doubting, despairing young man had given way to the confident philosopher who would vigorously defend “the sentiment of rationality,” a diverting phrase that was really his own masked synonym for happiness.

When enjoying plenary freedom either in the way of motion or of thought, we are in a sort of anaesthetic state in which we might say with Walt Whitman, if we cared to say anything about ourselves at such times, “I am sufficient as I am.” This feeling of the sufficiency of the present moment, of its absoluteness,–this absence of all need to explain it, account for it, or justify it,–is what I call the Sentiment of Rationality.

Just as I am, sufficient unto the moment: it’s a condition and a state of mind an honest and ambitious person can’t reasonably hope to sustain indefinitely, but James learned and taught that it can be recaptured frequently and regularly throughout a lifetime. Different strategies serve different people. One of mine, like James, is to walk.

Free attention

The Philosopher’s Walk in Kyoto, Japan commemorates the Japanese Jamesian Kitaro Nishida.

And so does San Francisco’s Philosopher’s Way, in McLaren Park.

A virtual walk engages the imagination but not the senses, and not that vital sense of the ever-fleeting “nick of time” that Thoreau toed. So, it’s no substitute for the real thing. But this is still terrific. I’m going to SF, as soon as I can. It’s been too many years since my last Giants game anyway.

Meanwhile, I’m adding Nishida and his philosophy of attention to my stable of pedestrian philosophers. His “musing” plaque in the park, if you missed it:

Thinking has its own laws. It functions of its own accord and does not follow our will. To merge with the act of thought – that is, to direct one’s attention to it – is voluntary, but I think perception is the same in this respect: we are able to see what we want to see by freely turning our attention towards it.

Increasingly I am persuaded that controlled attention may be as close to the secret of life as we’ll ever come.

“The nectar is in the journey”

That’s John McDermott‘s slogan. It’s also a walker’s.

A walker, by my definition, is one who makes a habit of setting aside at least 30-60 minutes a day for ritual perambulation.Thoughts trivial or profound may or may not be entertained during this daily transit. The point is to move, eventually to return to one’s starting place refreshed, renewed, buoyed, lightened of heart, enlightened of mind. A good walk returns us to the place we started but with an advantage, possibly with a bit more understanding and perspective and a bit less weltschmerz… like T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets.

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

Some eminent walking philosophers: Thales, Aristotle’s Peripatetics, Rousseau, Kant, Nietzsche, Emerson & Thoreau, James, Nishida… and then there are all those poets and writers: Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Whitman, Dickens, Stevens, Frost, Abbey, Berry…

Walkers typically conclude by coming home (or back to the office, hotel, camp, whatever). We don’t call our accomplishment a “run,” as ballplayers do when they come home. Nor do we think we’ve merely circled the bases. We notch each walk on our figurative (and in Thoreau‘s case literal) sticks. It’s not that we’re keeping score, exactly. We’re keeping time.

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

My Philosophy Walks project is to assemble a stable of walkers, highlight their journeys, and plug in a few of my own. I’ll meander some, but with a purpose. I do have a destination in mind, and a soundtrack beginning with Dire Straits’ Walk of Life.

It should be fun. It should. 

==

Congrats to Older Daughter, last night awarded the “Golden Bat” and named again to the All-Region team… joining Younger Daughter, last week a “Golden Glove” recipient. It’s hard to be humble when you’re golden. To the journey! And, to coming home. Don’t forget, a walk’s as good as a hit.

“A professor has two functions”

Grades reported!

I hate issuing grades, except well-earned A’s. Had more than a few of those this term, so I’m in relatively good spirits this a.m.

But, I’m also in that typical post-semester, tired-of-professing state of mind displayed by William James when he complained about his vocation,

…paid to talk talk talk. It would be an awful universe if everything could be converted into words words words.

I feel a touch of what he must have felt on retiring from Harvard in 1907:

I thank you for your congratulations on my retirement. It makes me very happy. A professor has two functions: (1) to be learned and distribute bibliographical information; (2) to communicate truth. The 1st function is the essential one, officially considered. The 2nd is the only one I care for. Hitherto I have always felt like a humbug as a professor, for I am weak in the first requirement. Now I can live for the second with a free conscience.

For a few weeks, anyway, my posts to this and other venues will be entirely in service of “communicating truth,” specifically in the form of a work-in-progress I’m calling Philosophy Walks. I’m going to resist the habitual urge to reflect overtly on whatever crosses pre- and semi-caffeinated consciousness, and stick to the business of philosophers who’ve walked and philosophy that’s emerged from walks of my own (with occasional “Happiness” and “Humanist” posts thrown in, just because my self-control is only human).

I’m guessing that might mean fewer pre-dawn posts in the days and weeks ahead. We’ll see.

Transcendentalism at home

Thinking this morning about the Transcendentalism chapter of my book-in-progress on walking and philosophy.

Good philosophy transcends mere theory and solves some of the practical problems of life, said Thoreau. Take housework. Please.

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.

Simple solution. (But what to do about that cat on my desk? Can I fling him too? Wanted to, when he woke me in the wee hours battling his counterpart on the other side of the French doors in the library.)

Another practical problem a walker must solve, especially this time of year, is yardwork – not how to do it, but how to hold it safely at bay, away from our sacred hours of perambulation. Henry’s friend Emerson:

I delight in long free walks. These free my brain and serve my body. . . . But these stoopings and scrapings and figurings in a few square yards of garden are dispiriting, driveling, and I seem to have eaten lotus, to be robbed of all energy, and I have a sort of catalepsy, or unwillingness to move, and have grown peevish and poor-spirited.

Precisely. But it’s a simple solution again: toss that rake and shovel, slide away from the barrow, step over the mulch-pile, stride swiftly and repeat. Don’t look back.

The days are gods.

Circles rippling outward

Another reason to read, write, & walk: to expand the circles of our imaginative attachment to the world. “The eye is the first circle,” observed Emerson. “The horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary picture is repeated without end.” 

Emerson understands education as a process of enlargement, in which we move from the center of our being, off into progressively more expansive ways of life… such rippling outward happens every day, too, as when a child leaves her family and goes out into the painful, promising world of school. Then the child’s circle of knowing has to expand to meet the new circumstances, or she’ll suffer for it. Mark Edmundson

Spent most of the morning yesterday discussing the “rippling outward” Older Daughter will soon commence, as she and we go deeper into the college selection process. The good news, our counselor advised, is that there are so many good schools out there. Her “transition” promises to be an exciting growth opportunity, no matter who she chooses or who chooses her.

Same goes for the commencement of a brand-new school year for me. Convocation is on Friday, followed by the first departmental staff meeting. (The growth opportunity there, if anyone asks me, lies in shrinkage: less is more.)

And then, classes begin anew. We’ve again come full circle.

Round and round we go. Maybe this is the circuit when we’ll really know our place better at the end, which of course is always also the next beginning. Walk on.

Against the grain

One good Birkerts quote leads to another. Here he describes how useful and enlightening it can be to reverse a familiar walk. Turn around. Go the other way. See how things look from the other perspective.

…going against the grain of my usual track, seeing every single thing from the other side, was suddenly welcome… the waft of that elusive something added to the usual air. Habit and repetition. It’s not as if I don’t know this other walk intimately too– not as if I haven’t taken it  hundreds of times over what are now becoming these years of walking. How is it I haven’t written more on this topic? It’s been a big part of the day’s business for years. I don’t remember when I started.The Other Walk

I started in college. I’m still circling, still trying to enclose something amorphous but important. Or maybe it’s just become important to me that I keep circling, to occupy myself with something rather than nothing. I like to think of myself as sleuthing a mystery, following a trail to some unforeseen revelation. Or to nothing at all. But I’ll keep tracking ’til I can’t, and like Sven I’ll turn around when the trail goes cold.

It’s nice to know I’m not the only one out there. But Sven’s in Minnesota, I think. We probably won’t cross paths, except in words. Good reason to read, indeed.

A walk in the park

Had a productive day at the desk yesterday, knocking out syllabi, laying summer to rest, and (the real kicker) not minding. So glad I’m still capable of enjoying the tedious process of plotting a semester’s daily grind. Might as well, those who don’t enjoy it are called “burnouts.”

But credit where due, that was preceded by an uplifting walk-&-ride at Centennial Park. Since the girls started back to school I’ve been driving right by it all week, yesterday I decided to stop. Why do I forget how much fun it is just being there? When I taught at Vandy years ago, across the street, I brought Intro classes over to talk about the Greeks in Zeus’s & Athena’s shadows. Perfect backdrop for the kind of imaginative flight of mind I’m always trying to walk into.

So after circling this icon I hopped on the bike and pedaled up to this spot, where they really should have located our Parthenon in the first place.

That’s a dogpark beyond the fence, behind a plaque commemorating the dogwoods that were planted here in April 1917. Another good backdrop.

I don’t disagree with Proust’s sidewalk wisdom about our greater need for new eyes, than new landscapes. But yesterday’s walk-&-bike reminded me not to overlook the good old landscapes right under my nose.