Solitude as a form of “being-with” Julián Marías (1914-2005) was a Spanish philosopher, a student of Ortega y Gasset, and a major thinker of the so-called Madrid School. The Spanish Civil War interrupted his philosophy studies at Complutence University of Madrid, and after the war his PhD thesis was rejected because of his criticism of the dictator Franco. He was imprisoned for several months, and was released thanks to the intervention of several public figures. He was, however, banned from teaching for more than 30 years. As a result, he visited USA several times where he gave philosophy courses in important universities. He also founded, together with his teacher Ortega y Gasset, the Institute of Humanities. Marías’ philosophy focuses on real life-situations. The foundation of philosophy, for him, is the real life of human beings, and philosophy investigates and systematizes the root of human existence as it is lived in real situations. The following text is taken from Chapter 7 of Marías’ book REASON AND LIFE (1956). Here Marías argues that a fundamental characteristic of human life is “living with”: Human beings are not individual atoms, but are essentially “with” other human beings. Even when I am in solitude, I am “with” others who are absent. In contrast, a stone or a chair cannot be “with” other things, and cannot be in solitude. Thus, solitude is a form of “being with” – being with nobody. To live is, for the human being, both to be in the world and live with others: Two essential modes of “being with.” This means that a person’s world – in the deepest sense of the term – is double, containing both nature and society. But it is not enough to say that my circumstance includes, in addition to other “things” also other human beings, because that would make human beings just another part of nature. The important point is that these people function differently, as centers of other lives, of the circumstances that are mine too. In other words, I encounter in my circumstance from the very beginning other people, who likewise encounter me, and who take me into consideration just as I do with them. Therefore, I take them into consideration in a peculiar way, which includes taking into consideration how they take me into consideration. Therefore, our reciprocal attitudes is very different from the way I relate to “things,” because, although I am with things, things are not, strictly speaking, with me. For this reason, things lack, even when they are in contact with me most directly, the proximity that makes other people my neighbors. This situation, which goes far beyond mere co-existence, is what we call LIVING WITH. […] Living-with is not something added to the life of the individual, but one of its primary modes, on the same level as its localization in space, its temporality, or its being immersed in its physical surroundings. One might object that a person can be alone, but apart from the fact that this is not strictly true, it proves the fundamental character of living-with. Because only a creature whose nature consists of being accompanied can be alone. A stone is not, and cannot be, alone. Solitude is not a real “property” or “quality” – being alone is not like being seated, or being tired, or being asleep. To be alone means to be WITHOUT SOMEBODY. Solitude is a mode of living-with other people, in the concrete mode of absence, and it is, therefore, an actual lack. To use a paradox: I need other people in order to be alone – without them. But at this point we must be very cautious because we may fall into a number of errors, in particular two. The first of these would be to believe that living-with is something secondary to individual life, so that individuals exist each one by himself, and then they can join together, or associate with one another, in order to achieve some purpose. In that case, living-with would be something derived, and it would be perfectly reducible to individual human reality. […] The fact is that human life, which contains the dimension of living-with, has two possibilities within this living-with: solitude and company. In both of these cases, other people appear, although in different ways: as present or absent. I am with other people, or alone with other people. But since eventually my life is MINE – it is what I do and what happens to me, and nobody can take my place or share with me my actions, which determine what I am going to be at each moment – my life’s deepest root is solitude. And every company is, in reality, an attempt – culminating in friendship and in love – to merge two solitudes. |