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Hermits: The Insights of Solitude
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Ours is an age obsessed by personal relationships. From cradle to grave we have a need to bond, or so we are told by psychiatrists and agony aunts who go on to insist that our capacity to form and retain attachments is a basic criterion of psychological health. When we discsuss solitude, it tends to be in the context of 'the problem of loneliness'.
Yet in previous ages the capacity to seek fulfilment outside society has been admired and seen as a measure of discernment and inner security. Hermits build up great reputations, not only for ascetisism and spirituality but for their insight into the human condition.
In this lucid and highly readble book, Peter France shows that these men and women still have something vitally important to say to a society that fears solitude. Tracing the history of hermits, from the Taoists and Ancient Greeks up to the present day, he provides fascinating accounts of the lives of some of those who have chosen to live apart, and the knowledge derived from their lives of contemplation: Diogenes and the Desert Fathers; the Russian startsy, Henry David Thoreau, Ramakrishna, charles de Foucauld, Thomas Merton and the American poet Robert Lax, a modern hermit who lives on an island in the Aegean. These accounts are interwoven and illuminated by extracts from the writings of hermits, from Thoreau's Waldren journals to Thomas Merton's moving reflections on the fruits of solitary meditation.
Ours is an age obsessed by personal relationships. From cradle to grave we have a need to bond, or so we are told by psychiatrists and agony aunts who go on to insist that our capacity to form and retain attachments is a basic criterion of psychological health. When we discsuss solitude, it tends to be in the context of 'the problem of loneliness'.
Yet in previous ages the capacity to seek fulfilment outside society has been admired and seen as a measure of discernment and inner security. Hermits build up great reputations, not only for ascetisism and spirituality but for their insight into the human condition.
In this lucid and highly readble book, Peter France shows that these men and women still have something vitally important to say to a society that fears solitude. Tracing the history of hermits, from the Taoists and Ancient Greeks up to the present day, he provides fascinating accounts of the lives of some of those who have chosen to live apart, and the knowledge derived from their lives of contemplation: Diogenes and the Desert Fathers; the Russian startsy, Henry David Thoreau, Ramakrishna, charles de Foucauld, Thomas Merton and the American poet Robert Lax, a modern hermit who lives on an island in the Aegean. These accounts are interwoven and illuminated by extracts from the writings of hermits, from Thoreau's Waldren journals to Thomas Merton's moving reflections on the fruits of solitary meditation.
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