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Is solitide a prerequisite for the rise of individualism? If someone is never actually alone, can he ever conceive of himself as being defined in isolation and separation from others? This line of questioning might give some part of the explanation for the rise of individualism in the modern world. George Duby writes that in the middle ages "People crowded together cheek by jowl, living in promiscuity, sometimes in the midst of a mob. In feudal residences there was no room for individual solitide, except perhaps in the moment of death. When people ventured outside the domestic enclosure, they did so in groups. No journey could be made by fewer than two people, and if it happened that they were not related, they bound themselves by rites of brotherhood, creating an artificial family that lasted as long as the journey required." Philippe Aries agrees: "until the end of the seventeenth century, nobody was ever left alone."
Modern individualism perhaps owes less to philosophy than it does to whoever it was that first divided a house into separate bedrooms, and then put doors on those bedrooms. Could Descartes have carried out his great thought experiment negating others if he had not been able to find a quiet room of his own?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, November 06, 2006 at 01:22 PM
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