ABSTRACT
Our life, in fact, is not a collection of solo performances but an immensely intricate large-scale dance in which solos take their place among figures performed by groups of the most varying sizes. On the other side, too, we can sometimes feel strongly called to solitary action and this can sometimes turn out rightly. Theorists such as Thomas Hobbes and Friedrich Nietzsche who have simplified it on egoist lines have told us vital psychological truths, but we cannot accept them as despots. We need to put these matters in a wider context where the many sides of our nature are more realistically accepted. Most obviously this means that the emphasis on competition in recent political and economic thinking the constant insistence on tournaments between individuals as central to human life is a pernicious myth and the supposedly scientific story about evolution that has been used to back it is just a fantasy.
