Goethe in the Roman Campagna, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein

If you were asked to name the leading lights of Western philosophy down the ages, the following will, without doubt, feature prominently: Friedrich Nietzsche, George Santayana, Jean-Paul Sartre, Benedict de Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, Henry David Thoreau, Voltaire, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, John Locke and David Hume. Any listing of great historians, novelists and poets of Europe will feature Samuel Butler, Gustave Flaubert, Edward Gibbon, Oliver Goldsmith, Washington Irving, Franz Kafka, Charles Lamb, T.E. Lawrence, Henry James, Alexander Pope, Marcel Proust, Stendhal and Jonathan Swift. When citing great composers of Western classical music, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin and Ludwig van Beethoven can never be overlooked. Eugène Delacroix, Vincent van Gogh, Michelangelo, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Leonardo da Vinci would grace any shortlist of immortal painters and sculptors not only of Europe but also of the entire world. Talking of scientists, among household names are Nicolaus Copernicus, René Descartes, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal and Isaac Newton. Now add to this already impressive list, the economist, Adam Smith, and Giacomo Casanova — better known as a womanizer but who authored arguably the most authentic source of customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century — and the entire list reads like a roll-call of the architects of Western civilization.

Incidentally, some insist, not surprisingly, that they were all bachelors. And if one were to take into consideration the immense contributions of the many (ostensibly) celibate medieval monks and theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Desiderius Erasmus and Michael Servetus, who were instrumental in dragging Europe out of the dark Age of Faith and paving the way for the glorious Renaissance, then a clearer picture emerges of the vital role unmarried men played in this remarkable journey.

“Woman inspires us to great things,” remarked Alexandre Dumas, “and prevents us from achieving them.” The bitter Nietzsche considered marriage (if not women, in general) to be a distraction from philosophical pursuits. Many other eminent men may not have been bachelors, but were effectively single — in the way Benjamin Franklin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Milton, Thomas Paine or Shakespeare remained. “Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men,” wrote Francis Bacon, not a bachelor, but perhaps wishing he were. “Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing,” notes Goethe. “A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.”

Some years ago, a noted Japanese researcher analysed the biographical data of some 280 famous scientists and discovered that they all peaked professionally in their twenties, beyond which their careers spiralled downward. Married scientists suffered the worst decline in productivity. However, those who never married remained highly productive well into their fifties. One theory suggests that married men lack an evolutionary reason to continue working hard — that is, to attract females. More likely is the fact that they lack the time and solitude. The polymath and eminent critic, George Steiner, observed, “Philosophy is an unworldly, abstruse, often egomaniacal obsession. Marriage is about roughage, bills, garbage disposal, and noise. There is something vulgar, almost absurd, in the notion of a Mrs Plato or a Mme Descartes, or of Wittgenstein on a honeymoon.”

The single life may be ideal for a Copernicus or a Sartre, but isn’t there some truth in the old Puritan notion that the bachelor is a menace to society? In Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility, Germaine Greer notes that “the most threatened group in human society, as in animal societies, is the unmated male: the unmated male is more likely to wind up in prison or in an asylum or dead than his mated counterpart. He is less likely to be promoted at work, and he is considered a poor credit risk”. Also, there is a school of thought which holds, with some justification, that the female, in her dual tasks as mother and wife, plays a crucial role in tempering the testosterone-fuelled excesses of the young male, and are the carriers of morality and the shapers of the next generation. The French diplomat, Talleyrand, may be one of the most versatile and influential personalities in European history, but he is also remembered as a womanizer. He reasoned that the married man was the steady one: “a married man with a family will do anything for money.” But the other common belief that men need durable ties to women to discipline themselves for civilized life is debatable as women’s attitude to life has changed drastically in recent times. Women now argue that they, too, are equally in need of the good old civilizing influence as much as the men.

It is easy to adopt an iconic view of the bachelor — a resigned cynic or hopeless romantic, a man of infinite sorrow and sophistication, of real or imagined conquests, or the misanthropic bar-room brawler. But, in fact, no single image prevails. What could be more bittersweet than the memories of unrequited love nursed by an old bachelor? Irving was one well acquainted with this sentiment: “With married men their amorous romance is apt to decline after marriage…but with a bachelor, though it may slumber, it never dies. It is always liable to break out again in transient flashes.”

Times have changed, but not quite to the bachelor’s advantage. Old dad is unable to work overtime because he has promised to run Missy to her ballet class and Master to his football practice. He is reluctant to leave town because the Missus has been tetchy about his too-frequent travel, and likes to remind him that she too works, and how unfair it is to expect her to do it all. The bachelor, by contrast, is believed to have few responsibilities and can work as many hours as needed or cover for his married colleagues, particularly for the much maligned mothers on the staff.

One enduring myth holds that the bachelor is an expert on the female sex, a legend encouraged by the married H.L. Mencken, “the sage of Baltimore”, who affirmed that “Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too”. The story further goes that the bachelor’s married friends seldom speak of their troubles, though their eyes betray a deep-rooted sorrow and a tragic lonesomeness, not least due to an unfilled desire for male companionship. “If you are afraid of loneliness,” warned the famous Russian doctor-turned-story-teller, Anton Chekhov, “don’t marry.”