Why do philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche value solitude? Isn't it miserable...

Why do philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche value solitude? Isn't it miserable, pathetic and unhealthy to be alone?

They liked to think, and solitude to the best way to get some real writing done.

some people find solace in themselves

Like many philosophers they mistook things they personally enjoyed as being inherently good or desirable and things they personally abhorred as evil.

One can only cultivate true Selbstverständnis when able to commune with one's own thoughts and subjectivity as a world of its own. Only through the depths of contemplation can the underlying reality of existence be penetrated.

Solitude is essential to philosophy as a practice.

They were introverted. It's healthy for an introvert to be alone, despite how much American culture asserts the contrary.

Also, being alone helps facilitate thought. Crowds are necessarily irrational and emotional.

I found this book interesting.

> miserable, pathetic and unhealthy
Just like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche!

only is you are an untermensch who is capable of deriving genuine stimulation from interlocutors of the herd

Some sort of social commentary?

t. lenina

nah, more personality related.

Just introvert circle jerking.

More like validation or even confirmation bias.

check your extrovert privilege shitlord.

They realised how socially incapable they were and thus began to admire the life to which they were condemned.

To develop an accurate and indipendent thought you do not need people to influence you

>start reading what she says
>quickly lose interest
Schopenhauer was right!

Depends who you spend time with, most people are so empty of any substance that one might as well be alone.

consider your insult for a moment

company is mostly great from the perspective of those who are below the norm.

That actually makes it funnier. I'm thinking of that image of Finns waiting for the bus.

Solitude is fun, but like any fun you have to accustom yourself to it.

Being able to just sit, on your own, and enjoy yourself is a real skill that's very rewarding once you can cultivate it. You're simply enjoying your own life in the truest sense.

>Nietzsche
>prescibing intrinsic "good" and "evil"
pick one

They don't really value solitude and they agree it sucks. But something sucking isn't a reason not to do it a priori.

Being alone can be a valuable source of inspiration, knowledge, strength, and so on.

also nietzsche's idea of loneliness is more like, you don't follow academic currents in your department, do your own work boldly rather than be a sheep in the trend, rather than literally go out into the forest, he sort of means both but not exclusively literal physical isolation, it's also metaphysical isolation.

>It's healthy for an introvert to be alone, despite how much American culture asserts the contrary.
No it's not. It's healthy to have doses of alonity, but pure aloneness for long periods is very bad.

I'm pretty sure Nietzsche values solitude, as he lists it as a virtue (along with courage, insight, and sympathy) in section 284 of Beyond Good and Evil.

Fuck off. If you can't deal with yourself, you are fucked in the head. Simple as that. You don't go living in woods for the rest of your life, but solid periods of loneliness is healthier then being surrounded by other people and their spheres of shit.

No doubt they valued it for different reasons. It's not like "philosophers" are all of the same personality type, hence why they have different philosophies.

With Schopenhauer, he probably preferred solitude out of a combination of disgust for others, and because it exhausted him to try and keep up with them. Hence why he sounded so crabby in his criticisms, and was an antinatalist pessimist that attempted suicide. His criticisms were often valid, but he paints the picture through his writing of being somewhat insufferable to be around.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, was actually not that much of a solitary. He roomed with colleagues all the time, traveled Europe, etc. He even denounced scholars and people who spent all their lives just reading. For him, solitude was just a means to think more clearly, and address more serious problems that he felt he had to address the right way.

What made you such a salty cunt?

Schopenhauer tells us about this in his parable on the hedgehogs:

>A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told—in the English phrase—to keep their distance. By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself.

>His criticisms were often valid, but he paints the picture through his writing of being somewhat insufferable to be around.
I don't think he'd be insufferable. His analyses are spot on, and it's obvious that he's keen observer with a razor sharp mind.

The problem is that his inferiority complex drives him to attribute all things negative to others and all things positive to himself; something I'd almost call un-schopenhauerian, in the sense that by his own philosophy neither him nor the people chose their preferences which are merely manifestations of the will.

Still, I think he'd be an interesting person to talk to and argue with.

Memetzsche

schoppy confirmed for using baseless biological analogies.

(/phil/ with no science is shit tier)

>It's healthy to have doses of alonity, but pure aloneness for long periods is very bad.

"Health" is not an intrinsic good nor is "health" a term with any other meaning but "is more socially acceptable". Solitude is connected to depression, shorter life, lack of social skills, etc.

To put it into simpler words, health is a spook.

I don't think Schope's point relies upon the truth of the porcupine anecdote.

Yea I know, I just wanted to complain about it anyway.

There's a reason that people go insane in solitary isolation, and it's considered a punishment not just a naughty corner where they can think about what they did.

Humans aren't designed to be alone for long periods of time. Also, you're not isolated if you're talking here, this is a form of social media that connects you to other people.

>Why do philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche value solitude?
Because they despise any social setting they can't dominate.
The number of power tripping idiots who have expressed how they'd love to just be alone somewhere, my god. Those cranky old farts that live out of a vehicle in the wilderness? Just infantile power trippers, nothing else.
Solitary work makes a man vicious, it takes great discipline to live without being normalised by the people around you. The extremes of misanthropy or untested universal loving kindess are traps and dead ends.
Nietzsche describes himslef as the last decent man alive, which is a joke since you can't be indecent without other people around.

I feel you, but I don't even think he was bringing that up in an attempt to prove his point by pointing to a real zoological phenomenon. It reads more like an aesop fable with anthropomorphized animal characters. Schopenhauer made a serious effort to write in such a manner that anybody could understand what he was saying, bucking the Hegelian trend, so parables like that would make sense.

Even introverts lose their sanity with no company

This, Nietzsche also had health problems that kept him in bed for long periods of time.

They were depressed because of their narcissism. They had the classic symptom of "the world isn't how I like it to be, better write it instead of taking action because I'm not a leader, I'm a thinker".

this desu

But Schopenhauer directly refers to the bourgeoisie whenever he goes mental on women. He was deliberately targeting the most progressive/liberal-minded people of his day.

>I can only be happyvaound others

Pleb.