Disputed Questions
A Trappist monk sets out what choosing solitude actually costs, and why he insisted it was not the same thing as withdrawing from the world.
Essays by the Trappist monk on solitude, on Pasternak, on Mount Athos, and on the tension between the contemplative life and a world that keeps demanding engagement. The long piece on solitude sets out what the choice actually costs, and why Merton thought it was not the same thing as withdrawal.
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Maria Popova
The theologian and Trappist monk Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915–December 10, 1968) takes up the choice of solitude, its preconditions and its consequences, in a thirty-page essay titled “Notes for a Philosophy of a Solitude,” found in his 1960 collection Disputed Questions (public library).
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