Philosophy Today

Volume 17, Issue 3, Fall 1973

Autobiographical Loneliness

The overtones of the experience of loneliness are paradoxical suggesting a pure, disembodied state or condition of man which has 'descended' and found immediate expression in a present-at-hand occurrence. How are we to explain this merging of the metaphysical and the accidental? I wish to suggest that this merging takes place through our narrations to ourselves of how we have uncovered our loneliness. These narrations arise as we encounter and bespeak the possibilities of our existence here. And paradoxically, these narrations provide us with a feeling of companionship to our own experience which renders loneliness full, rich and close to the source of our emergence.