Koski - The phenomenology and the philosophy of running : the multiple dimensions of long-distance running

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Tapio Koski 1

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Physical exercise has in highly industrialized countries with a high standard of living a very different relationship to an individual and ones awareness than before. As an activity running is not dependent on technology. Ones own body and a terrain suitable for running suffice. This may initiate the experience of the autonomy and freedom of ones actions. Unless you deliberately want to use your body and muscular strength, you choose an instrument that suits the purpose. Today, taking a physical exercise or a sports activity is a conscious choice. The conscious choice to take an exercise means challenging your bodily self. The goals of the challenge naturally depend on your motivation. For example, climbing the stairs to the fifth floor calls for a deliberate choice to walk up instead of taking the lift. It calls for entertaining the possibility to see yourself as someone climbing the stairs instead. The degree of difficulty in realizing the challenge determines its nature. It means challenging oneself in relation to an achievable goal. The starting point is the idea that you can challenge your bodily and mental self through the flesh. Challenging yourself through the flesh is a conscious choice to be a sportive (mobile?) person. The conscious choice to take an exercise means challenging your bodily self.

This book deals with running and philosophy. Someone may ask the question what does running have to do with philosophy, what is philosophy needed for? Running involves running, a concrete physical and sweaty activity, rhythmic breathing, gasping whereas philosophy is about philosophy and thinking, a somewhat secondary activity compared to running. One does not learn to run by reading books. Rather, one learns by running only. However, we must bear in mind that a human being is (also) a thinking creature who by thinking is capable of adjusting ones body to certain conditions and situations. A human being makes a conscious decision when and how long to run, what factors need to be taken into account in order to make the activity to best benefit and suit oneself. Each and every running experience increases our understanding about the former exercises. The increased understanding also affects the way we understand the subsequent exercise. A runner will notice the changes in her health and well-being inflicted by running. In short, running affects both ones body and ones mind.

When running or performing some exercise, a human is in a different relationship to the world compared to ones everyday activities. While in motion, the runner will face herself one on one in a sense. When running becomes important to you, you may raise the question about its nature and significance to your physical and mental health, hence your life as a whole. A runner may end up experiencing running as a positive activity and become curious to know, for example, what happened during the latest exercise when the feeling was light and euphoric and everything happened as if by itself, at ease and so naturally. Where did the experience of delight come from, without any obvious reason? And when such an experience continues after the exercise, you may easily come to ask the question what this experience means to your life and your running. At that point we are already quite far in the philosophical pondering. This is philosophy regardless whether one thinks of it as such or not. One exercises philosophy even when denying it as useless for humans!

Running is a bodily-mental event in the corporeal world in which a runner goes through and takes a grip on an experience individually, yet partially in a way that is specific to humans, and thus common to all people. It is this common part that I wish to explore. What are these experiences that are common to all, and what is it that is so important and significant in them?

I will discuss the nature of the experiences evoked by long-distance running, how they occur and how to conceptualize and express them. Many of the experiences can be expressed with everyday language, even though they or their nature often remain unconscious. Philosophers have not investigated those hidden experiential levels (except for a few), neither have they been studied in relation to the analysis of human existence. One of those is the aforementioned experience of delight, which is apparently familiar to those who have been running long distances. Those who do not run themselves may think that this is a result from the runners personality, from the fact that she is a joyful person. Such experiences are probably shared amongst runners. Those who do not run are not, however, involved in those discussions, leaving this aspect or dimension unknown to them, which means that their understanding about running remains quite thin. What I mean to say is that you may gain your own experiences about running only by running, or else your relationship to running is formed by conceptual means only. J.P. Roos, a Finnish scholar and runner, writes about the thin understanding in his Internet book Marathon man s life as follows: A little bit later in the same chapter Roos states the following: