to Solitude

Being, World, and Loneliness

immutable structure of Being. Finally, I will reflect on possibilities for future work. Piece-by-piece, I aim to construct a holistic picture of the mood of loneliness, namely how it conditions Being and world.

Our first step is to consider a formal definition of loneliness in its more general signification, so as to contrast it with loneliness as mood. I will begin with this leg of our project below.

In order to properly grasp loneliness, it will be helpful to distinguish it from another phenomenon with which it is likely to be confused: solitude. This definitional rift is what I shall use as the starting point for our investigation. Of the philosophers already mentioned, Hannah Arendt and Hans-Georg Gadamer are careful to make an explicit distinction between these two concepts.7 By understanding this difference between loneliness and solitude, insights into the nature of the former will hopefully become evident.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt describes solitude as something quite apart from loneliness. To her, solitude is essentially a being by oneself together with oneself. She explains, “The solitary man . . . is alone and therefore ‘can be together with himself ’ since men have the capacity of ‘talking with themselves.’ In solitude, in other words, I am ‘by myself,’ together with myself, and therefore two-in-one. . . .”8 Arendt’s conception of solitude is strikingly discordant with what comes to mind when we imagine being alone. However, this sort of “being alone,” she contends, is

7. The absence of Heidegger’s voice in the discussion to follow might initially strike the reader as curious: if I purport to undertake a Heideggerian analysis of loneliness, then why would I leave Heidegger’s own contributions to the phenomenology of loneliness undiscussed? I offer the underwhelming reply that Heidegger simply does not have an explicit phenomenology of loneliness anywhere in his work: the closest he gets to this is in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, where he considers the phenomenon of solitude (but not loneliness) at length (Heidegger, Martin. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (Indiana University Press, 2012). Why not, then, at least include his remarks on solitude (especially since, as is about to become evident, a close reading of the solitary experience constitutes a significant move in my own investigation into loneliness)? This in turn is because, when Heidegger refers to “solitude,” he and I have far from the same thing in mind: while he would characterize solitude as a man’s individuation with respect to Dasein (i.e., man’s constitution as a unique, determinate individual), I—in the company of Arendt and Gadamer—conceive of normal loneliness as an affective (in the sense of psychical or psychological “feeling”) social experience. But this distinction is to be properly elaborated in the considerations that proceed. 8. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 476.

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Being, World, and Loneliness

a healthy and productive part of human life, and is not the same thing as “being lonely.” Hans-Georg Gadamer agrees when he writes:

In many German towns there is a Philosophenweg, a “philosophers’ path:” there’s an especially famous one in Heidelberg. For those with an ear for history, this “philosophers’ path” is not named after the philosophy professors. We should rather understand a “philosopher” as someone who has a remarkable inclination for walking through the area alone. . . Now, what is sought in the quest for solitude is not actually solitude, but “abiding” with something else, undisturbed by anyone or anything else. So what one is looking for on the philosophers’ path is not really solitude at all, but the soft breathing of nature that takes one up into his life as if through a gesture of sympathy.9

Both Arendt and Gadamer seem to allude to a latent connection between man, self, and world that is recognized in solitude. When in solitude, men are permitted the opportunity to entertain themselves with their curiosities and introspections, all while also grounding themselves in their environment. The solitary person is reflexively cognizant of his self and habitat; moreover, in a representative way, although “alone,” he is also still connected with others. Arendt makes this apparent when she writes, “this dialogue of the two-in-one does not lose contact with the world of my fellow-men because they are represented in the self with whom I lead the dialogue of thought.” Man in solitude is nonetheless a social man, a product of socialization and society, who is in contact with others even when by himself.10 Furthermore, it would appear still that Arendt and Gadamer understand solitude as a voluntary or self-inflicted condition: one is in solitude because one wants to be, and nonetheless retains autonomy over oneself and at least a limited ability to move between the private and the public domains. Solitude, then, is a contemplative and willful tarrying alongside oneself, where one is able to attend to matters important or close to them and remain in the presence of the other.

This definition of solitude contrasts starkly with the account given of loneliness. Loneliness, Arendt specifies, unlike solitude, is an isolating and confining experience. Whereas man in solitude is in the company of peers in the mode of being with himself, the man in loneliness is “actually one, deserted by all others,” including himself.11 Where there is loneliness, there can be no tarrying alongside oneself, for there is no one to tarry alongside. Man, furthermore, is deserted by, as opposed to voluntarily

9. Gadamer, “Isolation as a Symptom of Self-Alienation,” 102-3. 10. A quote from Max Scheler’s The Nature of Sympathy echoes this idea: “Robinson Crusoe would never think: ‘There is no community and I belong to none : I am alone in the world. He would not only possess the notion and idea of community, but would also think: ‘I know that there is a community, and that I belong to one (or several such); but I am unacquainted with the individuals comprising them, and with the empirical groups of such individuals which constitute the community as it actually exists.’” Scheler, Max. The Nature of Sympathy (New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. 11. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 476.

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