Self-confinement

Self-confinement has become a vogue word today. Although it exists already longer, only few people such as physicists used it (it’s a physical term). My Oxford and Collins English Dictionaries don’t give it, nor does my English-Dutch Van Dale dictionary. But since a few months everybody uses it and everybody applies it. From fear to be infected by the new coronavirus, people stay at home as much as possible trying not to become ill. In some countries, like France, Spain and Italy people are or were even ordered by law to stay at home and there we can better speak of confinement, although many people agree with the measure (but you can be fined if you leave your home without a legal reason). In other countries, like the Netherlands, Germany and the UK, people are seriously requested to stay at home, but there are no sanctions if they don’t. Nevertheless, also there most people comply with the request. Then we can really speak of self-confinement.

Although the term self-confinement in its social sense is new, the idea isn’t. Introverts like it to do things alone and sometimes avoid other people, which doesn’t mean, however, that they retire themselves deliberately from the world. They simply like it to avoid others now and then. Writers often retire themselves and close themselves off from contacts with others, so that they can better concentrate on the writing process, although some authors, like once Sartre, don’t mind to create new work in – once – smoky and noisy rooms like cafes. Here I want to talk about philosophers who isolated themselves.

For many who know a bit about the history of philosophy a clear case of self-confinement is Montaigne. Montaigne was a counsellor of the Parlement (high court) in Bordeaux. However, he hated the intrigues and machinations there. His father died in 1568 and Montaigne inherited the castle and the estate and so “in 1571, he retired from public life to the Tower of the château, his so-called ‘citadel’, in the Dordogne, where he almost totally isolated himself from every social and family affair”, as the Wikipedia tells us. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne) In other words, Montaigne went into self-confinement. However, do you really believe that an ordinary country gentleman who has isolated himself from the world will be urgently asked by the King of France to become mayor of Bordeaux ten years later? No, of course. Montaigne retired from his job and the world of the Parlement, but he held friendly relations with his neighbours like the Marquis de Foix, travelled to Paris, was a mediator in political conflicts between the King of France and the King of Navarra, etc., etc. You can read all this in the outstanding biographies by Desan and Bardyn. It’s true that Montaigne regularly confined himself to his Tour for writing essays. In that sense Montaigne confined himself, but he didn’t retire himself from the world.

A philosopher who does have lived almost in self-confinement now and then was Ludwig Wittgenstein. Sometimes Wittgenstein wanted to flee from the people around him and to isolate himself from the world. Therefore he built (with his own hands) a cabin on a fjord far away in Skjolden in Norway. Certainly then in 1913 Skjolden must really have been an isolated village. It must have been difficult to get there, not only to Skjolden but also to the cabin. I was there in 2011 (see my blog dated 29 July 2011) and you could get to the cabin only by climbing along a steep, stony and dangerous path. Or you could come there via the lake and climb from the shore under the cabin to the cabin. If there is one place where a philosopher lived that can be described as self-confinement it is Wittgenstein’s cabin in Norway. He used it now and then between 1913 and 1951.

Another philosopher who sometimes lived in a kind of self-confinement was Friedrich Nietzsche, although also Nietzsche didn’t live an isolated life. From 1881 till 1888 Nietzsche often stayed in the little Sils Maria in Switzerland, always in summer. However, the philosopher didn’t stay there because he wanted to isolate himself, but he suffered from migraine and here in the healthy climate of the Swiss Alps he felt well. He made walks through the mountains and he had always a notebook with him in which he wrote down his philosophical thoughts.

Here we see three famous cases of philosophers who are known to have lived in a kind of self-confinement. It will not be difficult to mention more. Two other well-known cases are Heidegger and Thoreau. The former often retired himself to his Hütte (hut) near Todtnauberg, Germany, where he looked for rest and wrote many of his important works. Thoreau built himself a hut near the Walden Pond in Massachusetts, where he tried to live a natural life. But also Thoreau didn’t live there an isolated live. He often went to the nearby Concord and also received guests in his hut. Moreover, he hasn’t lived there continuously. But be it as it may, such cases make clear that even if you confine yourself or have to confine yourself to a certain place in order to live there in isolation, this doesn’t mean that you have yourself cut off from the world. The latter is really exceptional. Most self-confiners are no hermits. When people confine themselves or are confined to a certain place, it is for an apparent reason and usually only temporarily. Nobody can survive in complete isolation, for in the end humans are social beings.