Discussing Montaigne's 'of Solitude' with Doctor Cole Simmons

Max Weber / May 05, 2020

Montaigne’s Of Solitude is a reflection on the importance and dangers of solitude. He examines the misleading nature of ambition and the ways in which ambition in public life can follow us into our solitary retreats and abodes. The solitary man must consider why he chooses solitude, what he will do once he has escaped the crowd, what his source of strength will be, and, in sum, how he can learn to live with himself. Montaigne sends the reader mixed messages about the importance of books, health and wealth, friends, philosophy, and religion. These good things appear in some places good and in some places fools’ errands. This device is meant to show the reader in a variety of ways the dilemma faced by men seeking to obtain good things for themselves.

Why is solitude preferable? 

Perhaps it is not preferable. You can think of the reasons why people do go into solitude.  Life can be embarrassing, and often time people go into solitude after an extremely embarrassing episode in their life. There's almost an infinite amount of reasons why. The focus that Montaigne takes is the desire to be a virtuous person and to more or less preserve your energy. When you have to deal with people, whether it be in politics, or whether it be in a family, or even if you're just a businessman, if you spend all of your time dealing with people then it is very difficult to know your self - to take your self and to know how to enjoy your company. 

Though solitude allows you to focus on yourself, of course, that could be dangerous. Everyone knows that solitude is when people oftentimes go mad. 

So its something in the style of Saint Jonh of the Cross' "Dark Night of the Soul", that one must reach his lowest, and darkest, and most alone position to enlighten oneself. 

It could be. Montaigne isn't as heavy or serious as that, I would say. He is not saying, like Pascal or Saint John of the Cross that there has to something "rock bottom" about it. You hit rock bottom when things go very, very, bad, and you can't go any lower, and then you can begin to rebuild on a good foundation. There's nothing about Montaigne that would need one to think that things need to be going badly for you to desire to retreat within yourself and need to preserve your vital energy. 

 So it can be done by anyone - by someone who is well off or someone who has hit rock bottom?

Yeah. There is a philosopher who he admires, Arcesilaus, because he is very wealthy, but he uses his wealth moderately. He uses it to enrich his solitude, but not to ruin his solitude as so many people would. 

Here, the difficulty of solitude is that even if you could escape the vices of others, you take yourself with you. So if you don't like your own company, then being alone is not going to be a good time for you. There are people who need a constant distraction in order to hide from themselves or hide their situation from themselves. 

I think it's very normal to want to do that - to spend your evenings out with friends so that you can relax a little bit - that makes perfect sense to me. But it can be the case that if you decide to withdraw from society and you have a vicious soul you could cannibalise yourself - make yourself far more miserable than you need to be. 

So the risk would be that if we isolate ourselves is that we would do "over-catharsis", that we would engage in activities to forget ourselves or to release stress, but in the end, all of these activities will lead to our own detriment in a sort of way. 

Yeah, I mean do you ever have these kinds of moments where you take a good look at yourself, and you remember something in the past and it brings you a lot of pain. If you're alone there's nothing stopping that experience from recurring over and over and over again. 

So in a way, dwelling on our thoughts is an excellent way for us to grow but it is also an excellent method of finding new ways of beating ourselves up over our past. 

 Yeah, that can happen. And it's not very healthy. 

 By what right do we withdraw? What gives us the right to withdraw? 

You can withdraw from a family, or you can have a duty to your country. So what gives us the right to do this? By what right do we make our happiness based on ourselves and not on others? A lot of people would say that is selfish and narrow-minded perhaps. 

So what justification does Montaigne give us?

Well, it gets pretty sticky because Montaigne gives a couple of justification.s The main one he gives is old age. He says well when you get you've spent your life caring about other people but now you're tired and weaker than ever before, so could they really begrudge you some time to yourself? 

So he, in a sense he condemns all young people to public life - he says you have concern yourself with your nation and with your family, and you don't have the right to withdraw and to focus on yourself. 

But there are other justifications too though.  For example, what if you live in a bad nation. That would give you the right to withdraw - and to withdraw from public life and to say "I will let the madhouse run itself. I will take my own company, thank you." 

Is there another justification?

 I think there is - it comes before the old age justification. So there are two examples he gives of people really involved in public life - the soldier in the defence of the nation, and the scholar in his burning ambition to make a name for himself among his fellows. He says look, these people spend their entire energies and lives sweating and exerting themselves for people who don't care about them. Politicians don't care about the soldiers, and dead authors don't care about the scholars. So should you spend your life like one of those people, where you use up all of your energy for the sake of someone else, would anyone require that of you. 

So he argues that it is only natural for us to reserve some of our energy for ourselves?

And any reasonable person wouldn't give you a hard time for doing that. 

 So, what does it mean to be in possession of yourself? What would you do? How does Montaigne explore that? 

Yeah, do you just sit around watching Netflix all day, or sit around playing chess with yourself, do you read books, and when you do read books, why do you read them? Do you read them because they are pleasant to you and edify, and they make you better?  Do you read them because you are extremely ambitious, and say "I'm going to be the one that understands this book of poetry better than anyone else, and I'm going be famous"? 

I've heard some scholars describe themselves as one of those little fishes that swims alongside a giant whale, and so long the whale lives the little fish lives too.  So the big whale would be a famous author like Virgil or Homer, and if you're a good scholar of Homer or Virgil, so long as Homer and Virgil get read, you're the little fish and you get to read as well. So a lot of people spend their solitude that way. 

Really the question is, "are you a self-destructive person?"  When you're alone, are you going to drink your face, and destroy your health? Or are you someone who is going to be super ambitious and waste your time doing something no one is going to care about? Or can you really just enjoy having conversations with yourself and with other books in the privacy of your room. 

There is a line from pascal where he says the man who learns to sit alone by himself in his room has reached enlightenment. So when you are by yourself, do you do things that make you happy, or do you do things that make you sad. The nature of pleasant things is that some pleasant things make you happy and sometimes pleasant things just make us sad. So how do you manage your time by yourself? 

What sorts of occupations are fit for free men? How can solitude promote or detract from these? Why aren’t all occupations equally honourable? Or does he think it is a mere matter of suitability?

So, one thing that men can do when they withdraw from public life is to manage the household. They can become overseers of vast estates. But Montaigne says that's mostly an occupation that's fit for slaves and not for free men. This is a kind of ancient view of things, but free men shouldn't spend their time making money. They spend their time on philosophy and war.

 The things that keep people free are philosophy and war. Because, a moneymaker can, of course, make a lot of money, then someone who is can take all his money. A person can be very strong, and very rich, then they can be bamboozled out of their wealth and freedom. So the cultivation of the intellect and the cultivation of the science of war, these are considered the pastimes or the vocations of free men. So if you go into solitude, the question is, do you spend your time in a way that is befitting a free man. Obviously, you might waste it. 

 Say you're a man of great talent, but you spent your time copying texts like a monk - doing something anyone else can do. 

How does one do this? How does one maintain their physical health, and how does one philosophise?

 How one keeps one's physical health usually seems pretty straightforward, but a surprising number of us fail to do it.  I assume keeping your physical wealth mean exercise and eating well and sleeping a good number of hours, but for whatever reason, we find it difficult. 

 When it comes to philosophising I would say I don't know, but the best thing to do is to read books by philosophers, and for the right reason. Let's say, for example, you read Plato every day because you're interested in becoming famous, maybe that will poison your reading of Plato, and make it so you don't read him well. You have to assume these philosophers have something to teach you, and that that teaching is in some sense accessible in their books. 

Should the reader of Montaigne try to emulate or spurn cicero? 

In this essay Montaigne leads the reader in two directions- he spurns the reader makes the reader think that ambition is purely bad - but in other places, he would quote cicero and tell you to follow this mans advice, but he doesn't tell you its cicero - only the editor would tell you that. 

So you're left thinking "well, is cicero a man to emulate or not?". I think what he is trying to point you to is that there are different kinds of ambition. And while he kind of explicitly denies an ambition is a good thing, he is trying to point the reader to a form of higher or more noble ambition. Cicero seems to embody both the ambition that is good and the ambition that is less than savoury - that is foolish. Cicero seems to not believe in the immortality of a soul but wants to be immortal through his works. That seeming contradiction is something that Montaigne uses to push the reader towards a greater sense.