Michael De Sapio
It seems to me that solitude is the natural habitat of the philosophical and imaginative conservative today. He is essentially one who is “unfit for the modern world,” an antiquated being devoted to impossible ideals like Don Quixote. In order for him to remain himself, he must enter into communion with like-minded souls—or, failing that, enter into solitude as much as possible.
“We have to sequester ourselves and repossess ourselves.” —Michel de Montaigne
For some, solitude is an occasional retreat from the world to refresh the soul’s energies. For others it is a more or less permanent way of life. So it was for Michel de Montaigne, inventor of the essay (and thus, I suppose, our patron saint at this journal). After a number of years of solid civil service, Montaigne retired from public life at the age of 38 to study and write in seclusion, something which being a man of means made easier. He wrote about solitude in the 39th of his Essays, drawing on what the classical tradition had to say on the topic from Cicero to Seneca and finding some of it insincere or inadequate.
Montaigne felt that Cicero, for example, praised solitude merely in the guise of wanting further fame and glory while in solitude. Solitude, in his case, was a cover for vainglory and ambition. Whereas true solitude, for Montaigne, involved an utter indifference to and rejection of those external things in favor of the goods of the mind. What Montaigne seems to have valued in solitude above all is the sense of self-possession that it brings, the independence and freedom from the conformity of society. “‘Tis not enough to shift the soil only; a man must flee from the popular conditions that have taken possession of his soul, he must sequester and come again to himself.” What might appear at first like selfishness or indifference is actually the cultivation of the soul, » Read More
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2024/09/solitude-conservative-temperament-michael-de-sapio.html