Philosophy student Jennifer Stitt writes a thoughtful essay asking whether we would become lonely in solitude or find new depths? Philosophers have long distinguished between solitude and loneliness. Emerson celebrated the former, in which "nature may speak to the imagination, as she never does in company." Socrates celebrated the soundless dialogue "which the soul holds with herself." And in the 20th century, Hannah Arendt muses, "Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business," reminding us that the self "is the only one from whom you can never get away - except by ceasing to think."
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