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Hello, in 1845, the American writer Henry David Thoreau moved into a small log

cabinet built in the woods of Concord Massachusetts. He remained there for two years

living simply and in close proximity to nature, but his remote existence

had another advantage as he wrote in his masterpiece Walden, I never found the companion that

was so companionable as solitude. Thoreau is one of a long line of thinkers who've sought solitude from Christian

hermits to romantic poets.

For some, it's been a place of refuge from the world, for others, an absolute necessity

for deep contemplation or self-examination.

Alders successfully suggested that solitude might offer greater moral benefits than organized religion.

But some philosophers have seen solitude as self-indulgent or actively dangerous.

With me to discuss the philosophy of solitude are Melissa Lane, professor of politics at Princeton University.

Simon Blackburn, Professor of Philosophy

at the New College of the Humanities

and Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge,

and John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy

at the University of St Andrews.

Melissa Lane, can we begin by clarifying what solitude means to a philosopher?

Solitude isn't simply being alone.

It's an active achievement, a distinctive condition of experience in which one can still the voices of society in the mind and that allows a form of authentic experience and that might be keeping company with oneself or it might be an experience of nature or of God.

Are you distinguishing, are we in this program going to distinguish solitude from

...