Gary Hayden, Walking with Plato
Walking with Plato is a baffling book. I suspect that I'm not the only person who felt tricked into reading the thing, found it utterly deficient, and yet enjoyed it immensely.
Basically, the conceit is that we should all be so fortunate as to walk from the northern tip of Great Britain to the southern tip, from John o'Groats to Land's End. One reason that undertaking this task would make one so fortunate is that it'd present a rare chance to philosophize, over an extended period, with the landscape answering the mind and the world wide enough to build within it a home for the best of our collective thinking, and whatnot. Another, perhaps more obvious, is the chance to walk through historic England and Scotland, plus the contemporary version of same, hence making the walk both educational and forward-looking.
But goddamn Gary Hayden doesn't give us a single of those potential books, in Walking with Plato: A Philosophical Hike Through the British Isles.
He's no …
Basically, the conceit is that we should all be so fortunate as to walk from the northern tip of Great Britain to the southern tip, from John o'Groats to Land's End. One reason that undertaking this task would make one so fortunate is that it'd present a rare chance to philosophize, over an extended period, with the landscape answering the mind and the world wide enough to build within it a home for the best of our collective thinking, and whatnot. Another, perhaps more obvious, is the chance to walk through historic England and Scotland, plus the contemporary version of same, hence making the walk both educational and forward-looking.
But goddamn Gary Hayden doesn't give us a single of those potential books, in Walking with Plato: A Philosophical Hike Through the British Isles.
He's no …
