The Psychology and Philosophy of Solitude
By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.
Solitude and loneliness are not synonyms; if anything, they’re opposites. Whereas there is not much to recommend in loneliness, solitude gives us the freedom to think our own thoughts, follow our own inclinations, and live, if only for a time, entirely at our own pace.
Other people constrain us. They may be too inhibited for us, shrinking from thoughts that we would pursue, or unable to have them; or they may be too boorish, offending our sensitivities with their nasty habits and crude opinions.
Company, like employment, is a trade-off. A job provides income, security, and structure, but at the cost of our best life. Similarly, company provides affection, stimulation, and distraction, but at the cost of sinking our time and potential. For many people, this is a bargain well worth making. But perhaps not you, or you wouldn’t have read this far.
The Metaphysics of Loneliness
We tend to think of lonely people as single people, assimilating people who are lonely with people who are alone, and people who are alone with people who are single. But people who are single are not necessarily alone, and people who are alone are not necessarily lonely. Conversely, it is possible and even common to feel at our loneliest when completely surrounded by partner, family, and friends.
Many people choose to remain single, and some even choose to isolate themselves, or, at least, not to actively seek out social bonds. Such ‘loners’ (the very term is pejorative, implying, as it does, abnormality and deviousness) may revel in their rich inner life or simply dislike or distrust the company of others, which, they feel, comes with more costs than benefits. Many loners are actually very good with people when needs must, or when the right person turns up.
Timon of Athens, who lived at around the same time as Plato, began life in wealth, lavishing money upon his fawning friends, and, in accordance with his notion of friendship, never expecting anything in return. But when he ran out of coin, all his friends deserted him, reducing him to the hard toil of labouring the fields.
One day, as Timon tilled the earth, he uncovered a pot of gold, and, suddenly, all his former friends came tumbling back. But rather than welcome them with open arms, he cursed them and drove them away with sticks and clods of earth. Timon declared his hatred of humankind and withdrew into the forest—where, much to his chagrin, people sought him out as some kind of holy man.
Did Timon feel lonely in the forest? Probably not, because he did not believe that he lacked for anything. As he no longer valued his friends or their company, he could not have desired or missed them—even though he may have pined for a better class of person, and, in that limited sense, felt lonely. Loneliness is not an objective state of affairs so much as a subjective state of mind, a function of desired and achieved levels of social interaction and also of types of interaction. Lovers often feel lonely in the single absence of their beloved, even when completely surrounded by family and friends. Jilted lovers feel much lonelier than lovers who are merely apart from their beloved, indicating that loneliness is not merely a matter of the amount or degree of interaction, but also of the potential or possibility for interaction—as brought home during the coronavirus lockdowns.
Conversely, it is common to feel lonely within a marriage because the relationship is no longer validating or nurturing us, but diminishing us and holding us back. As the writer Anton Chekhov (d. 1904) admonished, ‘If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.’
And yet for many people marriage is, among others, an attempt to flee from their lifelong loneliness and escape from their inescapable demons.
At the bottom, loneliness is not the experience of lacking but the experience of living. It is, in other words, part and parcel of the human condition. Unless a person is resolved, it can only be a matter of time before the feeling of loneliness resurfaces, often with a vengeance.
On this account, loneliness is the manifestation of the conflict between our desire for meaning and the absence of meaning from the universe, an absence that is all the more glaring in modern societies which have sacrificed traditional structures of meaning on the thin altar of truth.
So much explains why people with a strong sense of purpose and meaning, or simply with a strong narrative, such as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, or St Anthony of the Desert, are protected from loneliness regardless of the circumstances in which they may find themselves.
St Anthony (d. 356 CE), like Thoreau centuries later, sought out aloneness precisely because he understood that it could bring him closer to the real questions and value of life. He spent fifteen years in a tomb and twenty years in an abandoned fort in the desert of Egypt before his devotees persuaded him to withdraw from his seclusion to instruct and organise them, whence his epithet, ‘Father of All Monks’ (‘monk’ and ‘monastery’ derive from the Greek, monos, ‘solitary’, ‘alone’). Anthony emerged from the fort not broken and emaciated, as all had been expecting, but healthy and radiant, and expired in his hundred and sixth year—which in the fourth century might in itself have counted as a minor miracle.
Loneliness vs Solitude
St Anthony did not lead a life of loneliness, but one of solitude. Loneliness, the pain of being alone, is distressing; solitude, the joy of being alone, is freeing and empowering.
Our unconscious requires solitude to process experiences and unravel problems, so much so that our body imposes it upon us each night in the form of sleep. By removing us from the constraints, distractions, and opinions imposed upon us by others, solitude frees us to reconnect with ourself, assimilate ideas, and generate identity and meaning.
For Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900), people without the aptitude or opportunity for solitude are mere slaves because they have no alternative but to parrot culture and society. In contrast, anyone who has unmasked society naturally seeks out solitude, which becomes the source and guarantor of a more authentic set of values and ambitions.
Nietzsche was never one to mince his words:
I go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody’s cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.
Solitude removes us from the mindless humdrum of everyday life into a higher consciousness which reconnects us with our deepest humanity, and also with the natural world, which quickens into our muse and companion. When we think of company, we usually think of people. But animals too are company, as are plants, the sea, wine, and all beautiful things. I call them ‘low intensity company’, and, often, I prefer them.
By loosening the bonds of dependency and the constraints of compromise (and compromise about compromise), we free ourselves up for problem solving, creativity, and spirituality. If we are able and willing to embrace it, this opportunity to refine our perspectives creates the strength and security for still greater solitude and, in time, the substance and meaning that guards against loneliness.
The life of St Anthony can leave the impression that solitude is at odds with attachment, but this need not be the case so long as the one is not pitted against the other. For the poet RM Rilke (d. 1926), the highest task of lovers is not merely to tolerate but ‘stand guard over’ the solitude of the other.
Of his early mentor, the sculptor Auguste Rodin, Rilke wrote: ‘Rodin was solitary before he was famous. And fame, when it arrived, made him perhaps more solitary.’ Other creatives who found inspiration in solitude include Emily Dickinson, Frida Kahlo, Marcel Proust, Nikola Tesla, and Vincent van Gogh.
In Solitude: A Return to the Self (1988), the psychiatrist Anthony Storr persuasively argues that: ‘The happiest lives are probably those in which neither interpersonal relationships nor impersonal interests are idealised as the only way to salvation. The desire and pursuit of the whole must comprehend both aspects of human nature.’
Be this as it may, not everyone is capable of solitude, and for many people aloneness will never amount to anything more than bitter loneliness. Younger people often find aloneness difficult, while older people are more likely, or less unlikely, to seek it out. So much suggests that solitude, the joy of being alone, stems from, as well as promotes, a state of maturity and inner richness.
Profound peace of heart and perfect peace of mind, these highest earthly goods after health, are to be found in solitude alone, and, as a permanent disposition, only in the deepest seclusion. And if our own self is great and rich, we enjoy the happiest state that can be found on this miserable earth. —Arthur Schopenhauer
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