Solitude and Leadership

William Deresiewicz’s “Solitude and Leadership” draws upon an earlier essay, “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education,” in which he critiqued Ivy League universities. Both works were published in the Phi Beta Kappa quarterly magazine, The American Scholar. The magazine’s title comes from a speech of the same name by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and several of Emerson’s transcendentalist ideals are mirrored in Deresiewicz’s work. Flourishing in the mid-19th century, Transcendentalism was a school of thought that emphasized the freedom of the individual and the creative powers of the human mind. On this view, one can discover truth not primarily by studying the ideas of others but by cultivating one’s intuition and insight.

The most notable of these concepts is self-reliance. Emerson’s “The American Scholar” advocates for the development of a distinctly American intellectual culture, independent of the nation’s European heritage. He stresses the importance of intellectual self-reliance and resisting the popular or commonly accepted path. This emphasis, which is explored in many of Emerson’s writings, parallels Deresiewicz’s insistence on thinking independently and questioning conventional wisdom. Emerson’s speech also highlights the dangers of over-specialization, a warning echoed in Deresiewicz’s criticism of technocrats within a bureaucracy, who are unable to think beyond their narrow expertise.

Deresiewicz also offers a quote from Emerson’s essay “The Conduct of Life”: “He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions” (Paragraph 39). This passage is used to support Deresiewicz’s assertion that true leaders must plot new courses. Likewise, to support his thesis about the importance of conversation, Deresiewicz quotes Emerson’s essay “Friendship”: “The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude” (Paragraph 42). Emerson wrote extensively on the importance of solitude, as did other transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau. Indeed, as Deresiewicz mentions in his introduction, Thoreau is commonly thought of as a man writing his thoughts alone in the silence of the woods.