Thinking in transit

Megan Craig

Edward Casey

pp. 51-67

in: Ron Scapp, Brian Seitz (eds), Philosophy, travel, and place, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

This essay explores the situation of thinking and writing while in motion between places. Building on the authors' experiences as philosophers who commute regularly, they explore what it means to do creative work while being conveyed by vehicles that mediate their direct contact with the earth, freeing them to think and write otherwise than when engaged in more fully practical ways. They identify three parameters of this situation: movement across space and in time, the suspension of body mass, and the transportation of this mass in a manner that releases new energies and new directions of thought. They conclude that serious writing need not happen in the traditional sedentary manner—in libraries and personal studies—but can be done, and sometimes done better, in transit.