walking, photography, philosophy

These local conceptions of being humanly and historically grounded stands in contrast to those of scientism, which is based on the concepts of physical science. This is the idea that natural science and only science describes the world as it is in itself, independent of human perspective.

quartz, Waitpinga

Walking, therefore, is a way to  bring philosophy back to life and back to the context of the messy, everyday reality of human life lived with others, back to the fact that we are living creatures, animals, whose nature shapes our ways of going on in the everyday world.  

It has taken me some time to realize that walking brings philosophy back to the terrain of photography (the realm of sensory perception, memory, and imagination) and then to the idea of philosophy exploring the relation between walking, thinking, and bodily experience.

bark+leaves, Waitpinga

The latter is important because modern technologies — the computer, television, phone screens — create an artificial medium. In this digital environment, physical presence does not count.  We lose this very sense of presence of our own bodies. We recover this sense through walking as it involves a certain fatigue, a certain humility, an effort and endurance.  

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