Solitude and Freedom: From the Controversy between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume to the Nineteenth-century Penitentiary System
Abstract
The article draws on the historic philosophical controversy between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume, comprising a dispute on whether solitude plays a positive (or rather negative) role in protecting individual freedom. The two main parts of the article discuss, respectively, (1) a positive view of solitude and its political consequences (as seen against Rousseau’s ideas) and (2) the use of solitude as punishment (in the light of Hume’s doctrine) in the nineteenth-century penitentiary system (the so-called separate system) and in Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the panopticon. The author brings to light the paradoxes inherent in the theoretical and practical attitudes towards solitude conceived in its relation to faculties such as freedom, self-sufficiency or the lack thereof, so as to put forward the hypothesis that a consideration of solitude in the context of justice might open broader perspectives for the scrutiny of the issue. In conclusion, the author proposes such an attempt based on Giorgio Del Vecchio’s concept of the “right to solitude.”
Keywords:
solitude, freedom, penitentiary system, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David HumeReferences
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