Insociabilité
In Schopenhauer, the natural inclination—not virtue, not asceticism—of the highly intellectual man to withdraw from the company of others. The principle is one of proportion: the more a mind possesses within itself, the less it needs the outside world, and the less others can offer it; inner wealth makes society almost superfluous. This unsociability is thus neither misanthropy nor discipline, but the reverse of a mental self-sufficiency. It extends the *[douleur et l'ennui]*: the rich mind fills its own void alone, while the poor mind flees to gatherings to escape its own. It must be distinguished from monastic *[anachôrèse]*, an ascetic retreat pursued for God, and from Stoic *[autarkeia]*, self-sufficiency won through virtue: Schopenhauerian unsociability is received with intelligence, not earned through effort.
Car plus un homme possède en lui-même, moins il a besoin du monde extérieur et moins les autres peuvent lui être utiles. Aussi la supériorité de l’intelligence conduit-elle à l’insociabilité.
The movement described by Schopenhauer is a gradation, not a whim. The intelligent man “will first and foremost seek to escape all pain, all hassle, and to find rest and leisure”; he chooses a quiet life, shields himself from nuisances, and after having spent time among “what are called men,” “he will prefer a secluded existence.” At the end, for the truly superior mind, solitude. Each step sheds a little more of the outside world.
What governs this slope is a balance: inner wealth on one side, the need for others on the other. The verbatim states it plainly—the more one possesses within, the less the external world is necessary, the less others can be of use. Society is not fled out of disdain; it simply becomes of little use to one who is self-sufficient. “A hundred fools gathered together still do not make a reasonable man”: quantity never replaces quality, and high society offers the rare mind no nourishment to match its measure.
Solitude then becomes the place that reveals each person. “It is in solitude, where each is reduced to their own resources, that what one has in oneself is shown.” The fool suffocates there, “crushed by the eternal burden of his wretched individuality”; the richly gifted man “fills and animates the most desolate landscape with his thoughts.” Schopenhauer calls on Seneca for support: “omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui”—folly is disgusted with itself, and that is why the fool needs the noise of others, while the wise man has no use for it.
To be distinguished from anachoresis. The desert monk withdraws through discipline and for God; his solitude is a spiritual work, wrested from the appetite for company. Schopenhauerian unsociability is not a struggle against oneself: it is an inclination that follows intelligence as the shadow follows the body.
To be distinguished also from Stoic autarkeia. The sage makes himself self-sufficient through virtue, by reducing his desires to what depends on him. Here, self-sufficiency is not moral but intellectual, and above all it is received: one does not become a superior mind through practice, one simply is. The same root explains the kinship with pain and boredom— the rich mind has no need of society to fill a void, because it has no void to fill.