ABSTRACT
What does it mean to be on a “philosopher’s walk”? Walking can be used to explore the relation between forms of consciousness and our bodily capacities for responding to and acting in the environment, including sensory perception, memory, and imagination. For a number of philosophers and imaginative writers (Rousseau, S. T. Coleridge, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf), walking was an indispensable aid to thinking and writing. Using contemporary writers on walking (Solnit, Self), I examine the relation between walking, thinking, and bodily experience. A walk through my town of Kamloops (British Columbia) shows how walking can be a privileged mode of exploring the physical and social environment.
