Tarasenko Yu. I.

, student

National Aviation University, Kyiv

PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF LONELINESS

Loneliness is one of the major philosophical problems of society. This is a problem for any society,
any form of the spatial organization - from large cities to small villages. Loneliness has been and remains an
object of study of philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists, sociologists, anthropologists, educators,
representatives of other scientific disciplines.
The concept “loneliness” is multifaceted. While common definitions of loneliness describe it as a
state of solitude or being alone, loneliness is actually a state of mind. Loneliness causes people to feel empty,
alone and unwanted. People who are lonely often crave human contact, but their state of mind makes it more
difficult to form connections with other people. Loneliness, according to many experts, is not necessarily about
being alone. Instead, it is the perception of being alone and isolated that matters most. It is a feeling where
people experience a powerful surge of emptiness and solitude. Loneliness is more than the feeling of wanting
company or wanting to do something with another person. Someone who is lonely may find it difficult to form
any human contact.
Theoretical understanding of this problem can be already found in ancient times. The Book of
Ecclesiastes (one of the books of the Old Testament) tells us that people were sensitive to loneliness in those
distant ages and perceived it like a drama that led to a profound depletion of the individual: “A man is all alone,
and there is no other man; he has neither son nor brother; and there is no end of all his labor, his eyes are never
satisfied with riches”. This scriptural text is the most remote source of knowledge. It is fulfilled with the
tragedy of absence of connection with the world of people. The theme of pained loneliness also dominates in
Christianity, which is turned to the hearts of humiliated and offended people. From the very beginning,
Christianity took over and accumulated a sense of loneliness and turned it into an ideological nerve of all
creeds. The confirmation of that is the image of Christ, standing unattainable above his pupils and crowds in its
moral perfection.
So, as it was mentioned above, philosophy pays a significant attention to loneliness. Almost all the
major philosophical schools and streams in greater or lesser extent and in accordance with their philosophical
principles focused their attention on loneliness as one of the most important problems of the mankind. Plato
and Aristotle pointed out the importance of communication as opposed to loneliness of an individual.
Plato considered that when making love was feeling another person sexually, then, like the whole
life, it was a spiritual matter, of course, as any feeling is spiritual. In fact, it defines spiritual. Then we say, that
making love is a matter of creating and of feeling sexual Life Energy, and that doing so, largely consists of
feeling the soul of another, of the one with whom you are creating and feeling sexual Energies. Loneliness is
(and therefore it is defined as) the blocking Energy that is projected by a Criminal Mind, and that prevents you
from sensing and feeling the souls of other people. Loneliness is not a normal condition, because normally you
feel people, wherever they are: therefore it is an enforced condition; 'loneliness' is the Energy that blocks you
from feeling others, and that blocks others from feeling you.
As the theoretical understanding of the problem of loneliness in the 19 th century there were formed
two main philosophical concepts: the concepts of the American Transcendentalists and the European
existentialists. They gave two different interpretations of the concept of loneliness – optimistic and pessimistic.
According to the American Transcendentalists, loneliness is a voluntary solitude which provides an
opportunity for the expression of the soul craving or desire for beauty, goodness and perfection. A physical
isolation within the framework of this concept is just the first step on the path to a higher, spiritual solitude.
Transcendentalists were the first who made the difference between loneliness as a result of despair of urban life
and solitude as the need for a creative individual to focus on his spiritual potency, which can create a barrier in
the human soul against the tidal waves of urban civilization. Solitude is a state of being alone and secluded
from other people. It often implies having made a conscious choice to be alone. It gives them an opportunity to
spend some time with themselves and focus on the important aspects of their lives. It energizes them and gives
them a respite to recuperate from the sheer monotony of life. We all need time to be on our own. We need
space so that we can be free temporarily from the social noise and recover. It is a conscious choice we make to
be free from the pressures of life and find solace in the recesses of our own hearts and minds. Loneliness is not
the same as being alone. Loneliness does not require being alone and is often experienced even in crowded
places. It can be described as the absence of identification, understanding or compassion.

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 One of the most prominent representatives of the American transcendentalists of 19 th century was the
American writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He is best
known for his book “Walden, or life in the woods”, where he described such varied topics as “economy”,
“reading”, “winter animals” and “solitude”. In a separate chapter he described the effects of living solitary and
close to the nature. Due to his book we have an opportunity to learn about his philosophical view of solitude.
Comprehending his own philosophy of voluntary solitude, H. Thoreau spent more than two years (1845-1847)
in a handmade miserable hut on the shore of Walden Pond not far from Concord. It was not just a remote place
from the civilization, but it was the place where he could find solitude and make an experiment in self-reliance.
At the heart of his philosophy there was the principle, according to which it is enough for an individual to
withdraw into himself to revive a powerful desire for beauty, goodness and perfection.
Having spent two years close to the nature, H. Thoreau understood that the person’s boundless
spiritual wealth needed solitude and closeness to the nature. H. Thoreau regarded the life away from people not
like isolation, but rather as entering into a communion and unity with a grand space, a perception of his
greatness, harmony and purity. The nature itself is a "sweet and beneficial society." A man needs to be close
not to the crowd, but to the nature as "the eternal source of life”. By making a distinction between loneliness
and solitude, H. Thoreau gave a negative meaning to the first one and a positive one to the second. According
to him loneliness is a painful isolation of a man from the nature, alienation of a person as a particle of the world
harmony. It appears in a crowd, in the everyday social life. “Society, even the best one, tires and distracts from
the serious thoughts, – said H. Thoreau. – I love to be alone. With no one it is so nice to talk as with loneliness.
We are often more lonely among men, than in the silence of our rooms”. And solitude is the way to find peace
[2].
The existentialist school of thought views loneliness as the essence of being human. Each human
being comes into the world alone, travels through life as a separate person, and ultimately dies alone.
According to the existentialist thinkers human beings actively “engage” each other and the universe as they
communicate and create, and loneliness is merely the feeling of being cut off from this process.
Now let’s consider what different representatives of this school think about loneliness.
Jose Ortega y Gasset considered that loneliness is an inseparable part of us. It is contained in the way
of life, which belongs individually to everyone and nobody can possess this life or live it except its owner. We
can’t “give” our feelings to others or make others understand our thoughts and beliefs. If, for example, your
friend understands something which you do not understand, you can’t just take his understanding as a certain
thing; you must make an effort to understand this yourself. No one can become clever for you; only you can
make yourself intelligent making your own efforts.
This is our personality, our “I”, which is inseparable from us. We can’t give it away. As J. Ortega
said: “Human life is precisely because of its inalienability, in fact, is loneliness, the initial loneliness”.
The concept of loneliness suggests that the "I" exists in the world of minerals, plants, animals, and
other people. And the "I" must improve relations with all of the members of the world, look for the
harmonization of my existence with other beings, search for unity. This unity does not occur as a result of
mixing two liquids, fused into a single vessel; this is the unity of principally unmerged beings.
Wherever I am located this is “the place of mine”, my “here”. I can understand the surrounding world
only from me “here”. According to Jose Ortega y Gasset with the birth everyone gets his own place in the
world, which can’t belong to someone else. We are lonely from the very beginning.
Jean-Paul Sartre, the French writer and philosopher, believed in epistemic loneliness which is the
fundamental and unsolvable paradox between the desire of man's consciousness to have meaning met with the
isolation and nothingness of the universe. Jean-Paul Sartre saw the essential struggle of epistemic loneliness –
to unite the emptiness of nothingness with the fullness of being. Mankind's frustrated attempt to create this
harmony within itself is yearning for divine. Thus, J.-P. Sartre viewed God as the projection of human
epistemic loneliness, while man himself is nothing else but loneliness forever frustrated by his fruitless
endeavors at self-completion.
J.-P. Sartre believed that love is a mankind's most radical attempt of consciousness to transcend its
own loneliness. Through love, he argued, man endeavors to annihilate his contingency and satisfy his esurience
for the abundance of being. J.-P. Sartre also believed that lovers are attempting to preserve their "internal
negation" (freedom) while eliminating their "external negation" (epistemic loneliness). However, since these
two freedoms cannot be reconciled into a perpetual unity, love is doomed. Any apparent unity between the two
is self-deception; an "illusion of fusion", which will serve to propel the lovers into more devastating epistemic
loneliness than they had not tried to escape it [7].

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 J.-P. Sartre also introduced such notion of loneliness as “loneliness responsibility”. According to him
we are completely alone in choosing our actions. We are not able to transfer the burden of our decision making
and responsibility for this decision to anyone. I am doomed to choose myself.
Other representatives of the existentialist school of thought are B. Pascal, F. Nietzsche. According to
B. Pascal, a man is utterly alone and abandoned in a meaningless existence. He runs into the wall of his own
loneliness, surrounded by the infinite and empty universe. People are afraid of being alone with their thoughts,
and therefore they seek for salvation from loneliness in “entertainment” or in actions. Instead of having a rest,
which they often dream of, they irresistibly reach to the "entertainment", which is often troublesome, expensive
and even life-threatening (e.g., war). People tend to occupy the official posts that bring a lot of trouble, because
it attracts visitors, which do not leave any time to think about themselves. But when they are finally free from
work, they feel miserable and abandoned. The paradox of human existence, as B. Pascal saw, is in the fact that
"we are overcoming barriers in order to achieve peace, but when we have coped with them we begin to suffer
from this peace, because we fall into the power of thinking about the troubles that already exist or which will
come."
F. Nietzsche was also inclined to say that each of us individually was sentenced to a metaphysical
loneliness, that with the death of God, one becomes a "last man". His very popular quotation was “The worth
of a man is measured by the amount of loneliness that he can withstand”.
So both philosophers clearly illustrated the drama of their time - the total process of alienation of
individuals, where each lives and dies alone.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard's loneliness is a closed world of the inner self, the world which can’t be
opened by anyone other than God. Man, according to S. Kierkegaard, exists only for God, because God exists
for him. God disposes a man of the world, closes the person in himself. Identity that exists in the subjective
self-isolation is a foreign to any sociality. This fact inevitably leads to loneliness.
According to the Russian thinker N. A. Berdyaev you can become a person only through the moment
of loneliness. Here are experienced the uniqueness and originality of the human "I" and therefore a free man
seeks for solitude. N. Berdyaev concludes that "loneliness is a social phenomenon." “Loneliness is a
contradiction. Loneliness is tragic”. But…“through loneliness a person is born”, – wrote the Russian writer and
philosopher.
Among the variety of views on existential loneliness there revealed two main trends. The first is to
understand loneliness as a negative or passive condition, which destroys the human personality. The second is
related to the definition of loneliness as a creative, active, essential, inherent beginning, from which an
accomplished personality comes.
It won’t be an exaggeration to say that the fact that a lot of the prominent philosophers were
interested in the discussion of the problem of loneliness, points out the relevance of the topic. Loneliness is one
of the most important problems of the modern society. The term "lonely crowd”, which had been launched in
the 50s of the last century by the American sociologist D. Rismen became the criterion of our time.
The society of the 21st century is characterized by the scientific and technological progress. By
pressing a button (no matter whether it is a computer, a telephone or a fax) you can communicate with another
city or country very fast and easily and then suffer from the feeling of emptiness and apartness. Many people
feel lonely while they are surrounded by exactly the same individuals. We often hear that the man who for the
first time seems to be quite a happy and successful person, feels lonely and useless.
This feeling is common for people of all ages. It is a constant companion of alienation. It has a great
influence on the modern youth nowadays. The reason for this is the thing that we live in the era of a high
technological culture. As a consequence, new forms of life appears, a picture of the world changes, man falls
under the influence of new means of media and communication. The Internet gives us an opportunity to
communicate with people of different countries without any restrictions and just staying at our houses. The
modern youth becomes more and more dependent on it. As a result, young men and women dissolve in the
today’s information box. Moreover, they are deprived of a meaningful communication with people in their real
life.
The main way to deal with the problem of loneliness is to take an active part in social life, to move all
the time, to go to the cinema, to go in for sports, to spend more time with friends and relatives. Another way is
to form unions, organize campaigns and so on.
French Association of St. Vincent from Paulo, one of the largest charitable organizations in the
world, organizes campaigns against loneliness under the slogan: "Loneliness is the disappearance of the world
from the eyes!" Almost 50% of all inhabitants of France suffer from this “illness”. The members of the
organization call everyone to participate in the fight and consider it a great national affair.

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 In conclusion I’d like to express my own opinion concerning the problem of loneliness.
Personally, I think the most painful human experience, apart from physical pain itself, is really loneliness.
Aristotle said: “Man is a social being”. It means that he can’t live apart from society. For social animals like us,
the worst feeling in the world is to be trapped on a desert island with no one who cares about us, interacts with
us and witnesses what we do. Surely, we might find it relaxing for a few days, as a break from the engulfment
we often feel in the company of others, but after a while any island may become a hell for us.

RESOURCES

1. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.military/BS5-M98T19A/HVhJFtQDvDgJ - Plato On
Making Love And Defining Loneliness/14 November 2004 {HRI 20041114-V2.1} (Version 2.1 on
25 May 2007)
2. Торо Г.Д. Уолден, или жизнь в лесу / Г.Д. Торо. – М., 1980.
3. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/6263228/Loneliness - from Wikipedia -The literature network, Henry
David Thoreau;
4. А.Б.Демидов. Феномены человеческого бытия. Учеб. пособие. - Минск: ЗАО Издательский
центр "Экономпресс", 1999. - 180 с. http://psylib.org.ua/books/demid01/index.htm -
А.Б.Демидов;
5. http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org – Existentialism A Philosophy;
6. http://plato.stanford.edu – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Existentialism;
7. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. New York: Philosophical Library. pp. 456.
8. http://www.credo-ua.org -У Франції борються з самотністю CREDO Католицький часопис;