Ingrid Schreiber

Research Topic

Why was solitude pathologised in the Enlightenment, when autonomy and liberal individualism were the plats du jour?

My research examines this tension in the work of Immanuel Kant, against a backdrop of eighteenth-century discourse on social isolation, misanthropy, ethical egoism and the state of nature. I am fascinated by how this discourse established a delicate balancing act between subjective sovereignty and modes of sociability and civil integration which still persists (in all its imperfection) today.

Supervisor: Professor Avi Lifschitz