Cultivating weeds: the place of solitude in the political philosophies of ibn bàjja and nietzsche

Abstract

In this article I examine the central role that solitude plays in the political thought of Ibn Bajja (d. 533 A.H./1139 C.E.) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). These two thinkers come from disparate milieus, are separated by a variety of historical, linguistic, cultural and theologico-political boundaries, and espouse seemingly antipodal worldviews.¹ Yet they share certain concerns about the proper place of the philosopher that set them apart from their respective contemporaries and link them as kindred thinkers. One way to illuminate this kinship is by reading Ibn Bajja's Governance of the Solitary and Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra against the background of Plato's Republic. For both texts embrace the Platonic ideal of the philosopher-ruler, yet ultimately postpone the task of founding a new aristocratic political order based on the marriage of power and wisdom. Instead, they aim at cultivating an autonomous regime of the solitary individual, so that anomalous philosophical natures arising spontaneously in sick cities can flourish and keep philosophy alive in unpromising times and places.