alone-in-the-world as a Fleeing in the Face of Being

Being, World, and Loneliness

Loneliness as attunement, like all attunements, discloses the world in a certain way to us, makes certain aspects of the world available for us to encounter. In solitude, we are two-in-one, free to move between the domain of the self and of others. In loneliness, we are simply one, yet still acknowledge, even if implicitly, the presence of others: they are wholly out of reach, they may even be hostile to us, but they are still there for us; we may feel alone, but in a strange way we know that we are not. In the mood of loneliness, however, the world discloses itself to us as a place in which we are alone. It is not a fleeting emotional state, nor an extended one, wherein we comprehend others as beings in existence who happen to be inaccessible to us. We are not a “one” who can, as Arendt describes, “find himself and [start] the thinking dialogue of solitude.”17 Others appear to us not as others, but as foreign things wholly unlike us in Being, as mere tools for utilitarian exploitation or obstacles impeding our productivity. Otherness is replaced by material objectification, and so others, as Heidegger might say, have consequently been nihilated—“made Nothing.”18 We are existentially alone. Thus, loneliness as attunement can be defined as such: a submissive mode of Being-alone-in-the-world in which all others are nihilated.

Being-alone-in-the-world. This is the phenomenal face of the mood of loneliness. But we cannot now say that our investigation is complete, or even nearing completion, for we have not yet articulated the character of this “Being-alone-in-the-world,” nor its existential implications for Dasein. Only by continuing down this line of inquiry can we formulate a suitable understanding of what it means for Dasein to Be, ontologically, lonely.

When Dasein is in the mood of loneliness, it encounters the world as a place in which it is alone. This is only possible for Dasein, however, insofar as it flees in the face of itself : it must hide from, be oblivious to, part of its own Being. Dasein, according to its Being, cannot ever be alone, as Being-there inextricably possesses the character of Being-with (Mitsein) Others. Heidegger writes:

17. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 477. 18. Heidegger, Martin. What Is Metaphysics? (Jovian Press, 2019).

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By ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me—those over whom the “I” stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too. This Being-there-too [Auch-da-sein] with them does not have the ontological character of a Being-present-at-hand-along-‘with’ them within a world. This ‘with’ is something of the character of Dasein; the ‘too’ means a sameness of Being as circumspectively concernful Being-in-the-world. . . . Being-in is Being-with Others.19

When Dasein is attuned in a “lonely” manner, all others are nihilated. But what is vital to remember, and what the term “nihilation” partly implies, is that others do not actually “go” anywhere in loneliness. Others are not annihilated, or destroyed; they do not literally cease to exist. Heidegger acknowledges this when he speaks of the nihilative capacity of anxiety in What Is Metaphysics?20 In terms of what is disclosed to Dasein, however, others are simply nowhere to be found. They are not present as “others,” who are us, i.e., who share our Being (Dasein), but instead are encountered as so unlike us and distant from us that we no longer understand ourselves as “among them,” even though we must be in order to Be-ourselves at all.

This revelation might initially strike us as implicative of one of two things, or both: (i) we have inadvertently reverted to our original definition of loneliness, in which we retain an implicit awareness of others (since we admit that the presence of others is integral to our own ontological constitution), and/or (ii) we have arrived at a blatant contradiction in our analysis, where Dasein exists in an “other-less” world of others (since we have posited that Dasein is both wholly alienated from others, yet somehow still inextricably among them). I contend that each of these conclusions is shortsighted, and before we move forward with our investigation it is necessary to address them both. As for (i), I simply do not believe that this is what we have done. In our original conception of loneliness, it could be said that Dasein is itself aware of others, but left in want of their presence. In our current conception of loneliness as a mood, Dasein does not interpret others as others. It cannot possibly have even a latent understanding of the persistence of their Being; nonetheless, others are still very much there, physically and materially. They just do not show up for Dasein within the scope of its phenomenal world. As for (ii), I agree: there is certainly a contradiction here. But this is not indicative of fault on our part, nor the fruitlessness of our analysis. Rather, it refers to something distinct about the character of Being-alone-in-the-world: namely, that it entails Dasein’s fleeing in the face of its own Being.

In his analysis of anxiety in Being and Time, Heidegger writes that “Dasein’s

19. Heidegger, Being and Time, 154-5. 20. Heidegger, What Is Metaphysics?

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absorption in the ‘they’ and its absorption in the ‘world’ of its concern, make manifest something like a fleeing of Dasein in the face of itself. . . .”21 Dasein “flees in the face of itself,” in the face of its own Being. This is because Dasein finds itself lost in the “world” of the “they.” To clarify what this means: for Heidegger, “the they” (das Man) is not a definite being, nor is it a sort of “genus” to which any individual Dasein can belong. It is instead an existential quality of Dasein, a “no one” that is in fact everyone, which comes to light in statements such as “one reads newspapers on public transportation” or “one judges about literature and art.”22 The “they” is that constitutive aspect of Dasein that dictates what it is “one” does, shaped by society and its normative expectations. Even without others, even when Dasein is Being-alone-in-the-world, it cannot help but also fundamentally possess the characteristic that is Being-with. In the mood of loneliness, one is wrenched completely from others, but their scent does not leave him, metaphysically speaking. Dasein has already been imprinted by the conventions of society and can never be rid of them, even when alone-in-the-world and totally turned away from them. When Dasein flees in the face of itself in loneliness, it refuses to grasp its own Being: namely, its inexorable existential character of Being-with. But it only does this in the assumption of its “they-self ”: the everyday mode of Being in which Dasein is dispersed into the “they.”23

To apprehend how the “they” get represented in the mood of loneliness, we must first figure out what “one” is to do when alone-in-the-world. When there is no opportunity for us with others, when we fail to recognize ourselves as among others in failing to recognize others as others who are like us, how does “one” react? One does not go running out into the world to “find” the others whom he has lost. One is alone-in-the-world, and so there is simply no way by which one might approach otherness. Instead, in the phenomenal absence of others, one turns inward to console and to preoccupy oneself: one burrows deeper into his phenomenally “other-less” world. One works alone; one studies alone; one builds alone. One pours himself into his career, his work, his worldly affairs—not for others, nor for the sake of pleasure, but because it is just “what one does.” It is all that one has left to do. In a world devoid of others, all that remains is oneself and one’s tools. Yet without others, there is nothing (no one) meaningful for which to provide, to construct, to create. One toils endlessly and aimlessly, drowns himself in his distractions and calls it

21. Heidegger, Being and Time, 229. 22. Ibid, 164-5. 23. Ibid, 167.

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“living a life.” One refuses to acknowledge himself as having the kind of Being such that he, in order to have his Being—which he must always—is necessarily with others; and this is accomplished as he, in affirmation of the they-self, orients himself towards material equipment for the sake of productivity itself.

One looks at the clock mounted on the wall: he did not produce the clock, the clock was not tailored specifically for him: an other (as in, another determinate, individual Dasein) built the clock, somewhere off in a factory, and the clock was made for others who reside in the world. But one does not notice this. One looks at the clock and announces “I’m late for work!” or “the game is about to come on!” And when one then arrives at work, or turns on the game, all those others he encounters—coworkers, team members—do not show up as such. One does not look at them and proclaim, “Others! Here they are: beings like me!” But rather one tells himself that “here is my work” or “here is my entertainment,” and nothing more. Otherness is thus denigrated to the status of, at best, utility; at worst, pure inconspicuousness.

Loneliness as mood, I contend, is the predominant mode of Being involved in each of the modern man’s “social” (to use the word so loosely that it signifies nothing of the sort) affairs. Let us more explicitly contemplate some occasions for entry into the realm of society that crop up intermittently, for most of us, in our own lives: social media; emails; text messages; type-written letters; newspapers; news outlets; television shows. Each of these mediums of social exchange is almost always bound up in a context of engagement that obliterates whatever about them might be taken as genuinely “social.” We scroll through social media as a way to pass the time, totally ignorant of the interpersonal opportunities implicit in our activity; other users do not show up for us qua social others, but as objects of entertainment, stimulation, levity, envy, desire, etc.—as means to ends, from which we hope to derive personal satisfaction. Through email, we encounter others as mere acquaintances, with whom we interact by necessity or obligation, stripped from the context of human companionship. In text, our socialization takes on a casual and detached character, lacking both sophisticated expression and genuine human connection. This characterization is, we quickly find, applicable to each of the aforementioned “social” ventures. No matter the particular content, the form of our modern social lives has been purged of all sociality via the nihilation of others in loneliness.

In loneliness as an attunement, Dasein discloses a world in which it is alone. But what is more, we now find, is that Dasein discovers things within this world

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