The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness

Julian Stern, Christopher A. Sink, Wong Ping Ho, Malgorzata Walejko, Julian Stern, Christopher A. Sink, Wong Ping Ho, Malgorzata Walejko

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350162150
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Teoría y práctica de la educación

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness is the first major account integrating research on solitude, silence and loneliness from across academic disciplines and across the lifespan. The editors explore how being alone – in its different forms, positive and negative, as solitude, silence and loneliness – is learned and developed, and how it is experienced in childhood and youth, adulthood and old age. Philosophical, psychological, historical, cultural and religious issues are addressed by distinguished scholars from Europe, North and Latin America, and Asia.

Part I

Solitude

Part I

Introduction

Małgorzata Wałejko

The Good Space

Now I see how much time I spent to fill the space which doesn’t need to be filled that way, because it is a good space – my space. (Student, University of Szczecin)

Part I of this Handbook is devoted to solitude, described as ‘the good space’ by a university student. At the time this chapter was written, students had just submitted assignments based on giving up using their mobile phones that eat up most of their free time, for five days. The assignments illustrated the process and results of ‘disengagement from other people’, as Koch has defined solitude (1994: 44). Solitudinous disengagement might involve perception, thought, emotion and action (Koch, 1994: 57) and can be either enforced or chosen. (The students’ task was voluntary.) Thus, solitude has been described in two contrasting ways, as a form of punishment (exile, solitary confinement or disciplinary techniques in education) and as a state to be sought for the sake of personal or spiritual development (as hermits or – the students again).

‘I left my home to read a book on a bench. I was reading, looking up to the sky now and then. It was beautiful, gently blue. Clouds were moving fast. The bench, book and me. Silence all around me. Just a bench under my block became my place, where I could focus and be alone’.

‘Listening to sounds of classical music I wasn’t thinking of any missed messages. I’ve notices a significant improvement in mood’.

‘I’m learning to value my time and devote a part of it to a talk to myself, to considerate’.

‘I admired the last autumn leaves on the trees. I haven’t spot them before’.

‘I reminded myself how I love to paint, what kind of pleasure it gives me’.

‘During my walk I encountered a few lovely places, which I necessarily wanted to register, but I had no mobile with me . . . So, I “registered” them in my head to possess beautiful memories’.

We read in their diaries that the ‘experiment’ opened them up to see the beauty of nature, literature and art, their (forgotten) talents and passions, their inner world of thoughts. It revealed a deeper attention, when a person doesn’t take a quick photograph, often never to be seen again, but looks to see and to remember. But the first step, the primary condition to set up a process of chosen solitude, is an agreement to disengage. That agreement is to restrain from filling up the ‘good space’ with what randomly comes from outside: people, stimuli, superficial turmoil. Only then can you accept the space, and can fill it in with what is truly yours, coming from the inside. As the Polish poet, Anna Kamieńska wrote, ‘We must internally accept / solitude, / to be able to fill it with / effort, / love, / prayer. // The solitude / which is not accepted / can not be filled’ (Kamieńska, 1995: 40).

It takes effort to accept the space – as we read in some of the following chapters – whether this is at schools, to provide solitude practices (Chapters 2 and 3), at work, to be, for example, a reflective leader (Chapter 5), in nature (Chapter 4), in our spiritual lives (Chapters 8 and 9) and through art, music and literature (Chapter 7). Because of the effort and its possible fruits, Paul Tillich named solitude ‘the glory of being alone’, in contrast to ‘the suffering of being alone’, that is loneliness (Tillich, 1991: 4). According to Bréhant, strong souls will strengthen in solitude, and these deserve ‘the glory’, whereas ailing souls will get stuck in it (Bréhant, 1980: 31).

On the other hand, solitude might also entail suffering, especially if it is enforced, leading to the emotion of loneliness. In Part I we encounter such descriptions taken from the world of politics, with the marginalized (Chapter 6), and from the world of art, music and literature, with the experience of exile (Chapter 7).

The first of the accounts in Part I is by Piotr Domeracki, who provides us with a panoramic-synthesizing introduction to the philosophy of solitude, which emerged in the twentieth century, although with its origin (in its modern form) going back to the eighteenth century. Domeracki refers to the study of solitude as ‘monoseology’, from the Greek. The increase of interest in the issue at the beginning of the twenty-first century, he believes, is related to a ‘loneliness pandemic’, a shared experience and ‘our collective trauma’. There are two public responses to the phenomenon, optimistic and pessimistic, and it is pessimism that has been the more dominant. Domeracki argues that contemporary culture promotes narcissistic individualism, which, alongside community-creating attitudes, leads to a ‘society of individuals’, units in fact strictly isolated by modern communication techniques. Modern times typically involve a narcissistic concentration on oneself (and having an audience), with a deconcentration on the other, resulting in a ‘society of the spectacle’.

Chapters 2 and 3 consider schooling. Helen Lees in Chapter 2 presents an approach to solitude in education as a neglected human right. We have a right to education, but do not yet have a right to solitude. The lack of attention to solitude in schooling – however popular mindfulness and other meditative practices have become – might be partly caused by the association with its negative, punitive forms. Lees describes how in school, where cooperation and collaboration are promoted, solitude may be seen as political resistance, a rebellion against manipulation. So solitude can play a role of protector in a busy school community, as it enables children to keep a comfortable distance from each other, preventing some violence. Standing apart from others, reference to the norm of the learning community supports constructing otherness. Lees refers to the problem of technology, specifically exacerbated by the remote education resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. The distinction is made between solitudinous ‘busyness’ and solitude as an experience of enstasy, protected from the harmful influence of others. According to Lees, students need to realize what ‘productive solitude’ can be, in a hyper-connected world. She goes on to consider the status of solitude in ‘alternative education’, but returns at the end of the chapter to consider possible spaces for solitude in schools and the contribution to health and well-being of the right to think in peace and privacy, undisturbed.

In Chapter 3, Michael T Buchanan provides insights from a qualitative study of solitude and the goals of Catholic education. Because social interaction is a basic feature of humanity, isolation has often been viewed negatively. But too much sociality can be stressful and oppressive. Schools are learning communities, where dialogical interaction is referred to as the main method of education, while solitude has been associated with disciplinary strategies. Buchanan’s study on Religious Education leadership in Catholic schools identifies the need for planned solitude opportunities for leaders, teachers and students at all levels of schooling. Buchanan describes how solitude practices can help foster positive socialization (and, paradoxically, the sense of inclusion), creativity, and independent thought. Therefore, teachers should seek for these practices. Solitude experiences in the Catholic tradition are described in terms of the life and teachings of Jesus, along with monastic traditions. Although Catholic schools in Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used to offer various forms of solitude (such as retreats and worship), now they concentrate more on communal settings rather than on solitude.

Amanda Fulford in Chapter 4 explains what it means to experience solitude in nature. By studying key works on the theme by Henry David Thoreau, the nineteenth-century American philosopher, and Nan Shepherd, the twentieth-century author and poet, Fulford asks if solitude can be equated with solitariness. Their ways of perceiving are compared and solitude is described as a kind of communion and presence stemming from attentiveness to what surrounds us. Both Thoreau and Shepherd are richly poetic and philosophical, as is Fulford’s Chapter 4. Solitude is not just being without human others in the outdoors: we are opened up to the possibilities of society with nature herself. Fulford finds some remarkable lines connecting Shepherd’s and Thoreau’s works, with solitude described by both as ‘less an absence than a form of presence’. For Shepherd it was not solitude in the mountains that she craved; it was rather the friendship and company of the mountains. Moreover, she walked with an unnamed companion and it did not distract from but enhanced the silence. Thoreau’s preference for solitude was not a simple aversion to society and a rejection of hospitality of people, animals and ideas: he drew readers’ attention to the unfamiliar and the foreign. They both pursued relationships with others and sought solitude in nature apart from people. Although solitude in nature, as described by Thoreau and Shepherd, may not be a model for everyone, we can instead experience solitude in nature in urban locations ‘as communion with one’s surroundings that foster a particular kind of engagement and attention that brings the ordinary into presence such that we see things in a new way’. Attention of this kind involves a lack of intention, just pure waiting without judgement. Attention is our hope for solitude in the midst of the ordinary life.

Chapter 5 by David Weir presents solitude as a chance for business leaders to build latent strength, to work on reflection, critique, introspection and, in consequence, improve their leadership capabilities. Part I reviews theories of leadership emphasizing judgement skills as the core of effectiveness when a leader faces wicked problems. Readers will find here an analysis of leadership as connected with action, a list of capabilities – cognitive, intuitive, charismatic – that a good leader should possess. According to conventional theories, leaders need to focus on response mechanisms, but concentrating on ‘how to get things done’ instead of ‘whether they are worth doing’ is problematic. ‘Wicked problems’ require emotional intelligence as well as good judgement, and solitude provides a chance to confront who you (really) are, a foundational state of being human. Weir believes that the value of solitude is increasingly recognized in leadership and management training. He focuses on the need for ‘wilderness’ in leadership education. Wilderness takes its inspiration from the biblical account of Jesus and Essene philosophy. This is the ‘temptation’ takes place, a ‘trying out’, ‘testing’ or ‘practising for future’. In the wilderness one learns new ways and better methods, as Jesus preparing himself for the ultimate test. Thus, solitude is an opportunity for leaders to create latent capability made possible by ‘the open mind, open heart and open will’. Finally, Weir enumerates the benefits that leaders might acquire from wilderness time.

Henrieta Șerban and Aleksander Cywiński in Chapter 6 describe how solitude is a political issue for individuals and for states. Individuals in solitude, as described by Hobbes and Machiavelli, seem to have a ‘need’ for states and yet they cannot avoid a fundamental loneliness. The philosophy of Blaga helps explain how solitude can lead to action, while Arendt, Honneth and Habermas tie this into the possibilities of democracy. In the pandemic, are the positive or negative aspects of political solitude – the estrangement or the activism – going to predominate? And just as solitude is an important lens through which to consider individual people in political systems, so, also, are whole states. Countries may be described both positively and negatively, actively and passively, as alone on the world’s stage. Terms like ‘loneliness’ and ‘solitude’ are appropriate when considering how states reject or are rejected by other states, just as sociability and intimacy would be relevant to considerations of international political alliances. The macro- and micro-political aspects of solitude and loneliness provide new ways to consider politics and new ways to consider aloneness.

Chapter 7, by Julian Stern, explores solitude in literature, music and art, starting with an explanation of why art can be used alongside conventional research to help understand solitude. In the pre-Romantic period exile and ecstasy are described as the most characteristic forms of solitude. The Roman writer Ovid, exiled himself, created a body of exile literature. Stern notes that the very first use of the word ‘lonely’ was by Shakespeare, associated with exile, and Shakespeare also helped create a modern, emotional, sense of loneliness. The second solitude theme of that time was ecstasy, commonly described in religious traditions of the desert, alone in a cave or living as hermits or anchoresses. In the Romantic period we encounter the artist as a solitary figure and solitude itself as sought, mainly in nature. Wordsworth, one of the most significant Romantic poets of solitude, eagerly used the word ‘lonely’ but in the meaning related to a place more than to an emotion; Hölderlin, in contrast, is seen as describing more emotional loneliness. For visual representations of the solitary-artist-in-nature, Friedrich is well known. Romantic musicians of solitude include Liszt and Paganini, both charismatic virtuoso performers, standing on the concert stage as on a solitary mountain-top – in danger of falling into solipsism.

In post-Romantic arts, solitude has three faces. Lonesomeness, related to a risk of the loss of nature, is artistically described through images of American cowboys, outlaws and frontiers, and through the poetry of Dic kinson and Whitman. There is a return of exilic literature, too. The second face of post-Romantic solitude is that of suppressed/oppressed sexuality leading to the sense of isolation...