Recently, German philosopher Immanuel Kant and I have been spending a lot of time together. We are old friends, really. He was my conversation partner for the first philosophy paper I ever wrote as a freshman in college. Despite our long-standing relationship, I learned something new about him the other day. Something shocking.
Immanuel Kant–the man whose “Copernican turn” revolutionized the way that Western philosophy understood theoretical knowledge, the man who more than held his own against some of the best minds in Western history, the man who has constructed some of the longest and most intelligent-sounding sentences I have reckoned with–he is said to have never left his hometown of Konigsberg.
How did such an isolated life produce such innovative and insightful understandings about how all people work? I imagine he’d remind me that reason is accessible to anyone, anywhere, at anytime, regardless of how traveled or untraveled one may be. Nevertheless, this surprising fact has got me thinking about the purpose of travel, as so many people attest to its educational power. If some of the deepest truths about humanity can be garnered from an armchair and a few good books, as Kant’s life demonstrates, then why should one travel?
Don’t worry: I am not going suggest that we put our suitcases in storage and surrender our frequent flyer miles. What I mean to say is, by pondering all that we can know and experience without travel, perhaps we can gain more accurate insight into exactly what travel can provide that other things simply cannot. And once we realize the truly unique quality of travel, we can approach it with the right intentions–with intentions of getting out of it the precious things it has to offer that we can not find any other way.
What can encounters with other places offer that Immanuel Kant simply could not have known or experienced from his Prussian hometown? Surely, he could read about other lives, but could he experience the profound sense of empathy that comes with witnessing people’s lives up-close? Could the greatest prose and poetry capture the beauty of a meal that tastes truly innovative to one’s naive taste-buds, or a landscape one could not have dreamed up on one’s own?
I am not advising that one leave reason at home entirely, only that, when we travel we should search for and relish in these sorts of Truths because we can’t find them in the same way in the comfortable mundane. When we travel there can be moments when even reason bows to kiss the new earth.
