In the 1950s, the philosopher Mary Midgley submitted a script to the BBC, “Rings and Books.” In it, she called out a fact hiding in plain sight: most of the household names in Western philosophy are bachelors. ¹

“In case you doubt that, here are some figures,” Midgley announces. Here is her list:

Plato
Plotinus
Bacon
Descartes
Spinoza
Leibniz
Hobbes
Locke
Berkeley
Hume
Kant

For whatever reason, she neglects to add Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche who also fit the bill. Midgley’s concern isn’t that there is anything wrong with being unmarried (or male). Her concern is that this persistent trait may have molded Western philosophy – and thus the way the rest of us think – to be too narrow.

Do loner types who’ve never had to change a diaper or take care of an aging parent understand the world better than the rest of us? Is a life of solitude, away from messy human interaction, really the best way to understand reality? The BBC rejected her argument as a “trivial, irrelevant intrusion of domestic matters into intellectual life.” I’m sure the irony wasn’t lost on her.

Midgley’s script is ripe for social debate, but that’s not what interests me most. What interests me is the practical question this raises: Is a quiet, independent life ideal for personal development? Are our social duties – especially to spouses, kids, and other dependents – a complement to our inner lives, or are they a distraction?

First, let’s get something obvious out the way: Plato, Kant, and all these other “bachelors” weren’t ordinary guys. You could say they dedicated their lives to advancing philosophical ideas the way a scientist dedicates sixty waking hours a week to finding the life-saving cure to a disease. It was their job, even if some saw little financial compensation during their lifetimes.

However, being a philosopher is not as formally defined as, say, being a physicist or a doctor. This is no defect of philosophy; it’s in its very definition, “love of wisdom,” as a unifying pursuit. In fact, Socrates – the OG of the Western philosophical tradition – didn’t leave behind a single written word and spent his days wandering barefoot around the marketplace talking with people. Philosophy is about life itself. It’s accesible to all of us, all the time.

This is why Midgley’s observation matters. How we think affects how we live, and how we live affects how we think.

The Need to “Know Thyself”

Here’s something most of us can agree on: “Philosophers,” Midgley says, “above all need to concentrate…The objection to [an active family life] lies in certain obstacles which it puts in the way of intellectual development.”

She continues:

“Because independent thought is so difficult, the philosophic adolescent (even more than other adolescents) withdraws himself from the influences around him to develop ideas in harmony with his own personality. This is necessary if the personality is to be formed at all. But once it is formed, most people recoil towards experience, and attempt to bring their strengthened self to terms with the rich confusion from which it fled. Marriage, which is a willing acceptance of the genuinely and lastingly strange, is typical of this revulsion. The great philosophers did not return. Their thoughts, unlike yours and mine, had powers enough to keep them gazing into the pool of solitude.”

As someone who’s been married over a decade, I can verify the need to accept the “lasting strangeness” in each other. A happy marriage is less about finding an ideal thought partner than it is about seeing and loving the differences in each other. And if marriage doesn’t pry your gaze from the pool of solitude, children certainly will. 

If you’re (currently) single with no children, keep in mind that caretaking, mentoring, volunteering, being a therapist, and many other vocations also keep one busy and responsible to other people. Marriage and parenthood are the most extreme examples, but not the only ones. There are neglectful parents who spend more time in personal pursuits than many teachers, activists, and others who serve their fellow humans on the daily. 

Midgley is careful to say that solitude and self-discovery are necessary for all of us, especially during our critical years from youth to adulthood. Otherwise we won’t have a “strengthened self” to bring to our relationships with others. The need for quiet personal development is obvious to most of us in the Western world. The need for family responsibilities is less so (Confucius and his successors would balk at this, it should go without saying. Most Westerners prize the individual above social units).

So, is messy family life an inherent good, or a distraction? 

Maybe it depends.

Anthony Storr, an eminent 20th psychotherapist and writer had this to say about the solitary lives of the great thinkers:

“Would they have been happier if they had been able, or more inclined, to seek personal fulfilment in love rather than their work? It is impossible to say. What should be emphasized is that mankind would be infinitely the poorer if such men of genius were unable to flourish, and we must therefore consider that their traits of personality, as well as their high intelligence, are biologically adaptive. The psychopathology of such men is no more than an exaggeration of traits which can be found in all of us. We all need to find some order in the world, to make some sense out of our existence.” ²

The most famous of all the inscriptions at the door of the ancient Delphic oracle was, “know thyself.” Unlike the enchanted world of Harry Potter, our lives do not come with a Sorting Hat that looks into our soul and tells us which path we are to take. ³

That task is up to us alone.

The Active versus Contemplative Life: A False Choice?

I’ve made the case that there’s no way to “prove” that family life is better than a life of solitude, or vice versa. That said, I want to point out an odd quirk of Western philosophy: the dichotomy of the “contemplative life” versus the “active life.”

Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics concludes that contemplation is the most “godlike” activity we can engage in, and thus it’s the ultimate goal to achieve eudaimonia – a flourishing life. “And for a human being, this is the life that accords with the intellect,” he writes. “This life, therefore, is also the happiest.” ⁴

What’s interesting is that Aristotle does not say anywhere that contemplation is at odds with family duties or social life. In fact, an active civic life is part of achieving eudaimonia for him. Later thinkers, however, doubled down on the “contemplation” part. By the Middle Ages, “Via Activa” and “Via Contemplativa” were very separate lifestyles. Saint Thomas Aquinas, the towering authority of the 13th century, made it clear in his Summa Theologica that the life of contemplation was superior.

The allure of the contemplative life has followed us into the modern era. Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, often cloistered himself in a tower in his estate and spent his day surrounded by books. Perhaps one of the most extreme examples is the 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard who abruptly broke his engagement with Regine Olsen to live an ascetic life with his books and journals, never marrying and never recovering from his broken heart (Olsen never got over him, either). It’s possible we would never have Fear and Trembling or The Concept of Anxiety if Kierkegaard hadn’t lived a life of solitude, but it’s also possible he would have lived twenty years longer and written just as much if he’d been happily married. 

This bizarre dichotomy of an “active life” versus a “contemplative life” has created unnecessary confusion for too many. A mother of three needn’t assume her intellectual growth is doomed because she’s responsible for taking care of children. A reclusive bookworm is mistaken if he thinks the most valuable life truths he can learn are in a book or a podcast episode (as wonderful as books and podcast episodes are).

The world is our laboratory for testing out the ideas we think up and for gathering new ideas we can bring back to our dens of solitude. Time alone to reflect and time spent with others – including intense intimate, messy, extended time – is complimentary to our understanding the world. Spouses, children, parents, students, siblings, therapy clients: these people remind us that we’re different from them. Those differences force us to examine ourselves.

The famous Western philosophers may have led lives that were mostly solitary, even eccentric, but that doesn’t mean extreme independence is necessary for all philosophical individuals all the time. And we should be careful to rationalize how we spend our days: a Kierkegaard may be productive with a life of intensely independent solitude, but few of us are Kierkegaard. There’s a difference between a life of minimal social obligation because you are furiously writing and working on world-changing ideas, and a life spent all day on the Internet. And often those two seem more similar than they really are. I know this from experience.

It’s important to gaze into the pool of solitude long enough and often enough to nurture our thoughts. The key is to know when to pull away and rejoin civilization. And of course, to not fall in and drown.

***

Read Next: The Right Way to Live with Regret and Anxiety →

1. Harris, Malcolm. “Rings and Books.” Raven Magazine, Johns Hopkins University, 12 Mar. 2024, https://ravenmagazine.org/magazine/rings-books/.
2. Storr, A. (2015). Solitude: A Return to the Self. Free Press.
3. I will say, though, I am a very proud Ravenclaw.
4. Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins. University of Chicago Press, 2012.