ABSTRACT
Ronald Stade's chapter treats what are described as the ‘distinct and incompatible impulses’ of human sociability and unsociability: universally it is the case that individuals oscillate between a will to be sociable and a will to be unsociable. Stade's point of analytical origin is a Kantian reference to the human ‘dilemma’ of being both social and wanting to have everything one's own way. ‘Unsociable sociability’, as Kant termed it, means that human beings combine a propensity to enter into society with a resistance that threatens constantly to break up society. The inner life of the human individual entails the perpetual predicament of desiring an (unsociable) autonomy and at the same time needing to be sociable and recognised by others. Three strategies for life present themselves, Stade suggests: masked unsociability, radical sociability and radical unsociability; his chapter is a review of each option. Stade's conclusion is that, unsociable sociability, while an existential dilemma, is also a rich source of human creativity, and that, for the most part, the comfort of sociability is compatible with voluntary periods of unsociability. What is needed, ethically, are social arrangements whereby individuals are able to manage unsociable sociability in ways beneficial and gratifying to themselves.
