Hello and welcome to Overthink.
The podcast where two philosophers try and help you navigate the difficult waters of modern life.
I'm Ellie Anderson and I'm David Peña Guzman.
There is a myth out there about philosophers, Ellie, that I'm sure you and I are very familiar with.
And that is the myth that philosophers are lonely hermits that spend most of their time in a room with no other people,
spinning their thoughts and generating novel and original ideas without any kind of social contact or social support.
The historian Barbara Taylor says that this myth of the lonely philosopher runs throughout the history of Western philosophy,
and it stems from an idea that we already find as early as Plato,
which is the idea that philosophical thinking,
maybe like thinking in general, is a kind of inner monologue.
It's like a voice inside your head, saying things and developing thoughts,
and that in order for that voice to work, you need to put yourself in a position of utter solitude.
Let's think about why philosophical work might have the reputation of being lonely,
but don't worry for you non-philosophers.
We're also going to be talking about loneliness in general, not just about ourselves.
But I do think that there's an extent to which the kind of work we have to do as philosophers,
which involves long periods of sustained reading,
writing, and thinking, requires maybe not loneliness, but at least solitude,
which is a distinction we'll be thematizing in the episode.
I definitely find that I get my best work done in the morning.