The Solitude of the Country

monoThe Solitude of the Country
The author of The Solitude of the Country is a man named Samuel Johnson. Much of Johnson’s writing drew from his own experiences and his beliefs and philosophy of mankind and intellectualism. In regards to retirement, Johnson wrote an essay explaining how we as social beings and intellectuals have a right and duty to remain far from the “solitude in the country” for the good they can do for humanity.
Many people view retirement as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. There is “a propensity to talk much of the delights of retirement…descriptions of the peace and happiness of a country life.” Johnson, however, views retirement as a contradiction to what many people desire or have prior conceptions about. What many of the people who are nearing retirement wish for is to gain their privacy and to further their intellectualism. But learning things is not a solitary event.
What good is acquiring that much knowledge if you have no one to share it with and converse with? By having a conversation with another person you have the ability to compare
your thoughts with another and discover truths and falsehoods. The Socratic Method in philosophy states that you can only find the truth if you challenge it until it cannot be false. But if you are alone in your solitude in the country, no one remains to test the application of the truth. Johnson writes this to explain that our responsibility, as humans, to mankind is to...

The Solitude of the Country

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