Hello and welcome to Overthink,
the podcast where your two favorite philosophy professors take you along the road less traveled.
I am David Peña-Guzman and I'm Ellie Anderson.
There's a common misconception that philosophers don't travel.
Many think that we're sort of up in our ivory tower,
armchair thinking about abstract ideas with no real connection to the real world.
And in one of the books that I really enjoyed reading in preparation for this episode,
it's called Philosophers Abroad, The Meaning of Travel by Emily Thomas.
Thomas points out that this misconception is likely due to two figures, Kant,
who famously barely ever traveled outside of Königsberg where he lived in spite of writing an entire text on anthropology in which he speculated about different races and second Socrates who never actually set foot outside of the city walls of Athens.
Yeah, I mean, fair point.
If you're trying to paint a picture of the traditional philosopher by the standards of Socrates and the magician from Königsberg,
you're going to get a very reclusive image of who we are and what we do.
Although I think this also raises the question of what we mean by travel,
because although neither Socrates nor Kant ever really Left their hometown.
I mean they kind of traveled within their hometown
because both of them love to go on walks I mean Socrates is a peripatetic philosopher engaging people in the Agora and Kant was famous
for going on these walks that were super regular to the point that some of his neighbors and other locals would tell what time of the day was by seeing the philosopher walking around so it's a kind of like local travel,
I would say Okay, David, so you're absolutely right that what we mean by travel is an open question,
and that's something we'll be really getting into in the episode.