That life is a journey is a metaphor that is anything but trivial. The ways of life are often tortuous and sometimes, unexpectedly, they lead us back to the starting point. Philosophy too is a long journey, in search of a horizon of meaning. For many thinkers it was a pilgrimage to be faced strictly on foot: for Socrates, Rousseau, Nietzsche, reflecting without walking for kilometers would have been absolutely impossible and Hobbes had an inkwell installed in his walking stick, to take notes while walking. Montaigne, on the other hand, much preferred riding.
Eudaimonia
Today there are those who believe that the most suitable means of meditation is the train. Eric Weiner, American thinker, in his essay Socrates express, questions the true value of philosophy, that is to offer us concrete solutions to face our daily lives and to aspire to get as close as possible to the condition that the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia, (” well-being”, “psychophysical balance”). Philosophy, therefore, far from being mere abstract speculation, must go back to being a sort of spiritual exercise – so Pierre Hadot – or even, according to Weiner, a form of self-help. There is no place more suitable for philosophical reflection than a train cabin: one loses the perception of time and is surrounded by an almost amniotic atmosphere.
Means of locomotion considered by most to be somewhat out of fashion, the train is, however, capable of making our mad rush stop and of placing us in a state of meditative suspension for a few hours. The project is within everyone’s reach: all you need is a notebook and a pen or tablet, to jot down the thoughts of those philosophers we hear speak to our existence, then starting to strike up a real conversation with them. The only problem: being willing to travel continuously. Weiner is a lucky man: his work as a correspondent has allowed him to travel using the railway lines of countries all over the world; and it is precisely on these trains – in India, in Japan, in Europe, in the USA – that he composes the fourteen chapters of this useful and comforting book. Comforting because the philosophers protagonists of the various chapters are presented in their fragile and defective humanity, however endowed with courage and determination in wanting to embrace life projects impracticable for anyone else. The volume is divided into three sections, for each of the three ages of life; in fact, every age needs a different philosophy, because it poses different questions. As for the answers, it is by no means certain that they will arrive, but that is not the important thing. Walking around the agora of Athens, we learn with Socrates that a philosophical question does not ask for information, but expands our horizon and exposes us to the dangers of the unknown, often revealing uncomfortable truths. The Athenian “gadfly”, so called due to its tight dialectic that gave no respite, nailed the interlocutor, pushing him to find within himself the right questions to ask; he was a sort of psychotherapist who, however, had a lot of time available and didn’t charge.
Conversation with Socrates
Weiner strips himself and throws himself into a very close conversation with a Socrates, which forces him to wonder what it really means to be a good father and what is the point of being successful. Let us now follow the agitated Jean-Jacques Rousseau: we follow him panting along the 480 km journey that he covered on foot from Geneva to Paris, and from him we learn that thought does not exist above or outside the body and that “the heart has its own intelligence, which is accessed not with a furrowed brow and clenched jaw, but with relaxed legs and swinging arms”. With Henry David Thoreau, we leave behind the conventions and comforts of city life – even if Weiner admits that he has difficulty separating himself from the cell phone and wi-fi -, to embrace a frugal life in an isolated cabin in the woods near Concorde (Massachusetts): from him we learn to look at the elements of nature that come towards us and reveal themselves to us for what they are; seeing is an act of the will and knowing how to find beauty everywhere, even where it would be unthinkable, is a magnificent moral test. And here, suddenly, we find ourselves in the Garden of Epicurus, where we learn that, in order to reach the state of ataraxia (tranquility) we should give up those desires – here Weiner confesses his immoderate passion for some luxury items – which haunt us and deprive us of inner freedom. In Ashford (UK), we are face to face with Simone Weil, whose penetrating eyes observe us through adorable glasses: her philosophy of attention – which is very different from concentration – is nothing but a radical empathy towards others, an exercise in very human compassion.
With the TGV en route to Paris
With a TGV train we travel to Paris. Here, sitting at a café, we talk to the very elegant Simone de Beauvoir on the subject of old age, taking note of the best strategies for dealing with it, among which, above all: stop worrying about what other people think, always remain curious and become poets of habit. But we can still learn a lot: to dominate the passions at the first manifestation, according to the recommendation of the Stoic Epictetus; to understand, with Confucius, what is the difference between simple education and true kindness; with Michel de Montaigne, to think about death with a deep feeling of acceptance. Among the pages of this book, we will seem to travel within our own life and, suddenly, we will seem to try, as described by Tolstoy in The death of Ivan Ilyich, “what happens when you go by train: you think you’re going forward but you go backwards and, suddenly, you understand what the true direction is”.