A Philosophy of Walking

by Frédéric Gros

You are facing a mountain, walking among great trees, and you think: they are just there. They are there, they didn’t expect me, they were always there. They were there long before me and they will still be there long after me.

Plato uses the metaphor of the lamp. To light it, you have to apply a flame from the exterior. Books are the spark. What regular reading affords is not an accumulation of insights, like a treasure trove of truths that we expand every time we read (every time we ‘take’ knowledge on board). Rather, it ignites the fuel.