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Books
Civic Solitude by Robert Talisse
John B. Min ponders temporarily stepping away from people for the sake of political understanding.
If you search for images of ‘solitude’, you will see a person gazing serenely into the ocean or at mountains. When you search for pictures of ‘civic’ (you will have to put ‘civic in democracy’, otherwise you’ll get Honda Civics), you will see people’s fists, bull horns, voting booths, or angry protests. These two disparate images are familiar to us – indeed, this is how we often think about both civic life and solitude. But does it make sense to advocate for civic solitude?
As Robert Talisse, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, acknowledges, this question may seem odd, because democracy is supposed to be about action – voting, electioneering, communicating, protesting, resisting, and mobilizing – not so much about solitude. Political self-isolation is especially nonsensical given the political unrest we’re experiencing these days.
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