As Wild as Possible: Modal Sauntering in Henry David Thoreau’s Thought

The paper examines how the concept of the possible and the “peripatetic” style of thinking intertwine in Henry David Thoreau’s thought. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of perception, it describes the embodied self engaged in walking, focusing on the reciprocity between the walker’s moving body and the pace of thoughts. It argues that walking becomes a principal means of accessing the modal multidimensionality of lived existence by aligning the embodied mind with the surrounding world. The paper then studies Thoreau’s views on walking as a strategy for opening oneself to the “wide” modalities of nature, proposing that sauntering is a mode of modal exploration that discloses the qualitative nature of the possible.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The paper examines the interplay between the concept of the possible and the “peripatetic” style of thinking in Henry David Thoreau’s thought. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of perception, it first sketches an account of the embodied self engaged in walking, paying particular attention to the reciprocity between the walker’s moving body and the pace of thoughts. It argues that in developing a rhythmic and self-conscious alignment of the embodied mind with the surrounding world, walking becomes a principal means of accessing and engaging the modal multidimensionality of our lived existence. In the subsequent sections the paper moves on to study Thoreau’s views on the art of walking as a strategy of opening oneself to the “wide” modalities of the natural world. It argues that walking, from a Thoreauvian perspective, operates as a mode and technique of modal exploration. The idea of sauntering that Thoreau delineates is modally charged and thus capable of disclosing the qualitative nature of the possible and its varied ways of affecting the real.