Diane is an associate professor of philosophy and mother of 3 boys.
RUNNING: A RETURN TO NATURE
Let's first consider the human infant: as soon as they can stand and walk, they start running, much to the detriment of their parents, who are already quite inert and thus reduced to chasing after them breathlessly to protect them from potential dangers. It has therefore become necessary to teach children, and later adolescents, to move around "without running!" This expression is often heard around swimming pools, in school and even high school corridors, on staircases, in restaurants or apartments—in short, in all places where a certain decorum is required.
Running is therefore first and foremost a return to spontaneity, to nature, and we will therefore generally prefer to run outdoors.
JOOTING, RUNNING AND JOGGING
While the term "footing" (jogging) may be outdated, it nonetheless reminds us, through a surprising false anglicism, of our bipedalism—that is, the fact that for a few million years now we have moved on our two feet without using our forelimbs, which have become hands. It is true that Victor of Aveyron, the wild child taken in by the good Professor Itard, liked to frolic on all fours in the forest, as Truffaut so aptly illustrated, but this is clearly an exception and therefore cannot be called "footing." As for jogging, it is now used almost exclusively to describe a shapeless tracksuit that lazy people like to wear on Sundays, even though it represents the ultimate fashion faux pas and is sometimes not even suitable for running.
Running is all the rage these days, which rules out any use of simple jogging. But this also implies a fairly specific function. While joggers might run occasionally on Sundays for leisure, jogging already had a more health-oriented aspect, a kind of run for well-being. Runners, on the other hand, practice a sport, but not just any sport. They don't just run: they Running works, and not just any old way. It's mobile, efficient, and fast. There's a kind of fluidity to it, linked to the lightness of its almost ethereal movement. Relaxed comfort in the service of mobility and responsiveness—it might remind us of the sporty image of a certain President of the Republic; but poor man, he was still in the jogging era, he hadn't yet had the chance to slip into the trendy running gear. You have that chance. Seize it!
THE DIRECTION OF THE RACE
However, practicing this sport should not spare you the question: why run?
For balance, the harmony felt when one transcends the very Cartesian duality between body and soul by experiencing their union?
For performance, self-improvement, or even self-change or transformation?
To improve self-control?
In the first case, go for it! You'll know how to stay in moderation. In the second, beware of bigorexia, or exercise addiction. Seneca, for example, along with a host of Platonic philosophers, would advise moderation to avoid dulling the mind. He advocates exercises like running "that loosen the body without being too distracting." In the third, beware of the illusion of hyper-control: read or reread the Manual From Epictetus! The fluid elegance of the runner could well join the Stoic style: the essential thing is not to succeed (a performance, a time), but to do it with virtue, class, style, even if one does not reach the target.
What if running was a way not only to experience the harmonious union of soul and body, but also to subjectively experience a particular form of temporality, between the instant and infinity, in the awareness of our finitude?
“And you run and you run / To catch up with the sun / But it’s sinking,” sang Pink Floyd in their song Time. Since it's so beautiful, they must be right.
