The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes

What is solitude, why do we crave and fear it, and how do we distinguish it properly from loneliness? It lies at the core of the lives of philosophers and their self-reflective contemplations, and is the enabling (and disabling) condition that allows us to seriously question how to live creatively and meaningfully.
David Farrell Krell is the decisive living philosophical voice on how philosophers can creatively engage their solitudes. The scale and range of his understanding of solitudes are taken up in this book by some of the most distinguished Continental philosophers in the English speaking world. Each author addresses the problem of solitude from a different angle, and imagines how to face and respond creatively to it. Blending philosophical narrative and straightforward philosophical treatises, this book provides the inspiration for how to contemplate our own versions of solitude and its creative potentials. Some focus on past philosophers or poets, such as Heidegger and Hölderlin, while others deal more directly with Krell’s work as being exemplar of their own imaginings of creative solitudes. Other authors respond personally and creatively in their demonstrations of how we can, and must, seek solitude.
Including an original chapter by Krell, this book is an invigorating meditation on the possibility of being philosophical about the life through solitude, and the meaning of this powerfully resonant and universal human experience.