Companies developing chatbots often tout the AI chatbot as a human’s “best friend,” promising round-the-clock support to alleviate users’ feelings of solitude. However, for Confucianism, solitude has not been regarded entirely as a negative state to be avoided. One can distinguish between two forms of what we might call solitude: “Negative solitude,” refers to a lack of social connection, in contrast to Confucian-style “Positive solitude” which is dedicated to self-cultivation. The latter is considered especially important for the exemplary person. Confucian ethics values solitude as a space for introspection and moral refinement.
The Doctrine of the Mean and the Great Learning framed self-reflection in isolation as a prerequisite for ethical engagement with others: “An exemplary person must be watchful over himself when he is alone.” Moral cultivation demands consistency between private thought and public conduct, making vigilance in solitude慎独 the ultimate test of character. To cultivate oneself, one must sincerely exert effort to do good and eliminate evil, while resolutely avoiding self-deception. According to the Great Learning, one must hate evil as intensely as hating a foul stench and love good as dearly as loving beauty. Individual moral agents have exclusive access to their own psychological dispositions and states that determine whether their outward moral behavior is sincere. What matters are the feelings, thoughts, and attitudes that they experience for themselves, alone, and not for the sake of others or public perceptions of them. Accordingly, one must be especially vigilant in this solitary state to examine the subtlest impulses of the mind. Unlike petty individuals who do evil in secret but try to mask it outwardly, exemplary persons must practice vigilance in solitude.
Ideal Confucian friendship, then, is not a remedy for void but an extension of self-cultivation, where two individuals, already committed to virtue via self-cultivation, come together to further develop their own humaneness. In short, the Confucian tradition considers positive solitude essential to self-cultivation which is an indispensable ground for genuine friendship. In this light, AI companionship’s promise of “never being alone” appears not just misguided but morally corrosive. By eliminating the necessity of solitude, it deprives individuals of the very condition that makes authentic friendship possible: the sincerity that emerges when one stands alone before standing together.
