Presence and Isolation

Presence to oneself is born paradoxically from isolation. This fundamental solitude, far from being a withdrawal, constitutes the breeding ground of all authentic thought and the foundation of our humanity.

Isolation as birth to oneself

To be present to oneself is, above all, to think for oneself. This capacity takes root in the acute awareness of our existence outside of any social space. Certainly, we are born into a society, engendered by other human beings, two, more, or fewer according to contemporary configurations of parenthood. Yet, in our most intimate feeling of existence, we remain irreducibly isolated. As Heidegger wrote in Being and Time (1927), we are “thrown” into the world, but this very condition reveals our absolute singularity.

This original isolation is not a curse but a blessing. It constitutes the foundation upon which our capacity to think autonomously is built. Without this primary distance from the social world, we would be condemned to being nothing but the echo of the voices surrounding us, mirrors reflecting the thoughts of others without ever accessing our own inner light.

The solitude I speak of here is not the accidental one of someone who finds themselves momentarily alone. It is an ontological solitude, constitutive of our very being. It persists at the heart of the densest crowd, in the most tender intimacy, for it touches what is most irreducible in us: our consciousness of existing as a unique and separate individual.

The great figures of solitary thought

It is quite striking to observe that the most influential philosophers and artists of our time were often profoundly isolated beings. Take Gaston Bachelard, this philosopher of poetic imagination who revolutionized the understanding of reverie; long marginalized by the university institution, he developed his thought in relative intellectual solitude. Walter Benjamin, whose writings on art and modernity are so enlightening and so widely referenced today, lived in exile, isolated from his peers, developing in this marginality his thought so original that it was only with great difficulty accepted. In the field of art, Vincent Van Gogh, for his part, embodies this creative solitude to the point of tragedy: “One may have a great fire in one’s soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it”, he wrote to his brother Theo in 1888.

These figures were certainly in relation with other intellectuals or artists of their time, Van Gogh’s correspondence with Gauguin, Benjamin’s exchanges with Adorno, Bachelard’s dialogues with the surrealists bear witness to this. But fundamentally, they remained alone in the elaboration of their thought, little recognized, often misunderstood, notably by the university institution which could not, during their lifetime, measure their genius. Nietzsche himself prophesied: “Some men are born posthumous” (1888 also in Ecce Homo published posthumously in 1908), a phrase that applied cruelly to his own intellectual destiny.

I do not, however, want to nourish a romantic imagery of the cursed intellectual. Other thinkers, recognized and celebrated during their lifetime, also knew this essential solitude. Sartre, despite his celebrity, wrote: “Hell is other people” (in his play No Exit, 1943), thus expressing the fundamental difficulty of authentic communication. His free lover Simone de Beauvoir, surrounded and admired, also testifies in her memoirs to moments of vertiginous intellectual solitude. The isolation I speak of is therefore not always externally visible; it can coexist with social recognition, for it touches something much deeper and more essential than the simple fact of being surrounded or not.

The risk of autonomous thought

What then is this creative isolation? It is the risk assumed, against all odds, of thinking for oneself. It is accepting the possibility of social delegitimization, of misunderstanding, even contempt. It is maintaining, against all winds and tides, this certainty anchored in the deepest part of oneself: that of one’s own rightness, not out of pride, but out of fidelity to one’s inner presence. Kierkegaard wrote “The crowd is untruth” (1846), not out of contempt for others nor withdrawal from social life, but from awareness that personal truth can only emerge through an intimate distancing from gregarious unanimity.

This presence to oneself constitutes, in my view, the very essence of our humanity. It is what allows its radiance around us, for paradoxically, it is by being fully ourselves that we become capable of touching and enriching others in depth. It puts us in contact with this fundamental human truth: we are alone with our thought. Whether others legitimize it in the present or whether it is recognized only after our death, this ultimately matters little. Did not Spinoza, whose Ethics was published posthumously in 1677, live in the serene certainty of his thought, indifferent to excommunications and anathemas, which were nevertheless of immense social and institutional violence?

The only thing that truly matters is this presence to ourselves. It founds us, forges us, sustains us, builds us both personally and collectively. It gives the most stigmatized people the strength to maintain their convictions even when the most publicized voices drag them through the mud. Rosa Parks, sitting in that Montgomery bus on December 1, 1955, was she not fully present to herself, alone facing an entire system that denied her? Her act of refusal, accomplished consciously and in dignified solitude, facing the driver’s order to give up her seat to whites, would trigger a collective reaction; her arrest would become the starting point of the Montgomery bus boycott, a vast non-violent movement led notably by the young pastor Martin Luther King Jr., supported by the African-American community for 381 days to demand an end to segregation in public transportation.

Authenticity against consequences

It matters little whether my ideas are legitimized or not by my contemporaries. What I feel, what constitutes my truth, I must say and embody. My present or future notoriety or legitimacy is secondary; only my presence to myself today counts. Whatever the consequences, unfortunate or virtuous, I make no utilitarian calculation. As Albert Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942): “The absurd man knows only that he is right and does not concern himself with the future.”

My only concern is to be fully myself, to embody this mysterious gift of existence, which some call God, others chance or destiny. The word matters little; what counts is recognizing that our presence is the very justification of our existence. Heidegger spoke of authenticity as a fundamental mode of being: to be authentic is to fully assume one’s finitude and singularity, without taking refuge in the anonymous “They” of common thought.

When we are truly present, we express what is most essential in humanity. This presence necessarily passes through the recognition of our fundamental isolation. Whether we are surrounded or alone, joyful in society or desperate in solitude, at the bottom of us remains this same reality: we are ourselves in an absolute way, and it is in this irreducibility that our dignity resides.

The temptation of intellectual conformism

When I observe certain “intellectuals” who call themselves benevolent deliberately choosing the camp of reassuring stupidity, all the more seductive as it is majority, to preserve their social legitimacy, I cannot help but feel a mixture of pity and irritation. Their absence from themselves leads them to a guilty conformism of which they are often not even aware. They sincerely convince themselves that they work for the common good, unknowingly renouncing their singularity in favor of a supposed community, blinded as they are by the fear, perhaps also unconscious, of losing their social status.

But this is a fundamental error: the community precisely needs free minds to progress and remain alive. Conformism, on the other hand, only ever makes us regress collectively. John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty (1859), already said: “The tyranny of prevailing opinion is more formidable than that of a magistrate.” The great advances of humanity, whether scientific, artistic, ethical or political, have always come from individuals who dared to think against their time.

These conformist intellectuals, artists or people of power reduce their creative power through this absence of risk-taking that impoverishes them. Perhaps they could, if they became aware of it, venture a little further in exploring their own thought. I do not say that everything they think and produce is automatically disqualified, moreover, except for their political thought, for political engagement and conformism are antithetical. Authentic political engagement precisely requires this capacity to think against established evidence, to imagine other possibilities.

The responsibility of free speech

Faced with this tendency toward intellectual conformism, I feel the responsibility to speak out, as I am doing now. It is about defending presence to oneself, with all the risks it entails, against the comfortable but profoundly morbid absence that characterizes so many public discourses. This absence is morbid because it cuts us off from our own vitality, from this creative force that can only emerge in sincerity and risk-taking.

To speak while being connected to one’s deep truth, in presence to oneself, is to accept being misunderstood, criticized, perhaps marginalized. But it is also and above all to open a space where others can recognize their own aspiration to presence. For if we are fundamentally alone, this shared solitude can paradoxically create the deepest bonds: those that unite free beings who recognize each other mutually in their irreducible singularity.

The stakes transcend my individual person. It is about contributing to keeping alive, in our always castrating context, this flame of true presence. As Henry David Thoreau wrote from his cabin at Walden (1854): “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” Our duty is to continue listening to this inner drummer, and to make it resonate for those who are also seeking their own rhythm.

The horizon of presence

Presence to oneself, in its indissoluble link with essential isolation, therefore constitutes the foundation of all authentic thought and all life engaged in humanism. It is not a narcissistic withdrawal but the very condition of our contribution to the world. It is by fully assuming our ontological solitude that we can paradoxically create the most authentic bonds and bring our unique stone to the common edifice.

This presence requires courage: that of confronting the void, misunderstanding, often contempt and therefore solitude. But it offers in return the only wealth that matters: the certainty of being fully alive, of honoring the mystery of our singular existence. We are much more readily invited to dissolve ourselves in the ambient noise, so maintaining our presence becomes an act of resistance as much as an act of faith, for oneself and for us.

May each, in their own way, find the path to this presence. Not to isolate themselves from the world, but to bring to it this irreplaceable contribution: that of a consciousness awakened to itself, capable precisely for this reason of awakening others to their own inner light. For this is, ultimately, the ultimate and magnificent paradox of the human condition: it is in our deepest solitude that we touch the universal.