This article proposes a distinct role for solitude in education, specifically as a means of promoting self-realisation. Solitude is understood as a willed disengagement, as described by Koch, and its relationship to loneliness and to silence is explained. Notwithstanding a degree of disengagement, solitude can be and often is experienced as dialogic, with dialogue not only being internal (dialogue with the self) but also with others, near or distant. Self-realisation is described positively in terms of Macmurray's 'becoming more real' and the deep ecology of Naess, and is distanced from psychological and psychotherapeutic approaches to self-actualisation and self-esteem, not least because self-realisation may involve a significant degree of suffering. Drawing on philosophical and literary sources from both Anglophone and Polish traditions, the significance of this research for schooling is not simply organisational (i.e. organising opportunities for those in school to have positive experiences of solitude) but moral and political.