Filozof

Two summers ago, and almost two years after giving birth to my son, I found myself driving aimlessly through the streets of Los Angeles with a dull, deep ache in my chest, an ache somehow amplified by the brilliant midday sun and blue sky above. Being somewhat picky, I had driven in on a weekday for a haircut. The plan had been to return home immediately afterwards to avoid the worst of the day’s traffic on the interstate so that I could make it home for dinner. Instead, I drove aimlessly through the streets of Silver Lake, stopped for a coffee in West Hollywood, and drove deeper into the city, all with a lurking awareness that every stop and detour was inching me closer to rush hour in a city notorious for soul-crushing traffic. By the time I punched my home address into Google Maps from the parking lot of the Getty – a destination I’d chosen because it felt like an especially dignified place to brood – the drive time to home had more than doubled. Simultaneously frustrated with myself (I would, after all, have to sit through more traffic) and strangely satisfied (the trap I’d half-wittingly laid for myself had worked), I called my husband to say it wouldn’t make sense to leave the city anytime soon, that I wouldn’t be home in time for dinner.

Broadly characterized, loneliness is a painful subjective feeling that results when our desires for recognition or connection are not fulfilled (or are perceived to be unfulfilled). Importantly, however, there are many forms of meaningful recognition and endless forms of connection that we may need, not all of which can be offered even by beloved others who know us extremely well and appreciate many features of us. In addition to desiring recognition of our basic worth as human beings – wanting to be recognized as beings with unconditional value, as Hannah Arendt and Kieran Setiya highlight – we want to be recognized in ourparticularity: we want to be seen, understood, and valued as the particular individuals that we are. Just as I may become lonely if no one reflects my unconditional worth back to me, I may become lonely when others in my life fail to acknowledge or sufficiently appreciate a valued aspect of my identity or self-conception. Indeed, even in cases where my beloved appreciates certain features of me (perhaps my sense of humour and my passion for analysis) simply because they are features ofmeand I am their beloved, I may experience loneliness absent adeeperform of appreciation, one that requires that these features resonate affectively with my beloved in the way required for him to genuinely value them.

Experiences of romantic love, which both structure the lover’s aspirational self and provide affirmation of that self, are instructive here. As Anne Carson notes, when an individual is in love, ‘there appears within him a sudden vision of a different self, perhaps a better self, compounded of his own being and that of his beloved. Touched to life by erotic accident, this enlargement of self is a complex and unnerving occurrence … All at once a self never known before, which now strikes [him] as the true one, is coming into focus’. Through attaching to and desiring a particular other when in love, I come to value and desire to manifest certain qualities and to pursue certain projects or forms of life. Spurred on by erotic desire, the lover may aspire not only to be more like the beloved but to be more like the beloved’s ideal lover, even to be better in general. In addition, love often transforms the lover’s projects, desired forms of life, and reasons for acting. In these ways and others, romantic love tends to create an aspirational self. As this aspirational self develops, it is often shared with the beloved(I feel more alive; I’ve become gentler, more forgiving). This positions the beloved especially well to see that self – and, when love is attentive and mutual, to reflect a deep appreciation of that self back to the lover.

In experiences of mutual romantic love, the lover’s aspirational self may also be shaped by a picture of the lover constructed by their beloved, a picture of someone with qualities, projects, and reasons for acting that the lover does not yet possess. Reflecting that (often highly idealized) picture back to the lover, the beloved may draw the lover beyond himself, inspiring him in directions he had not yet envisioned for himself. Whether this involves a recognition of the lover’s potential that is genuinely responsive to the lover or a more fanciful process that Stendhal calls ‘crystallisation’ – a ‘process of the mind which discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events’ – the lover’s adoption of certain features of this picture, whether as already extant or aspirational, expands his self. In this way, both the lover’s aspirational self and his sense of what is possible may be shaped. But of course, love affairs may end. And in cases where the lover does not have others in his life to see and affirm his aspirational self, the lover may not only feel less himself but extremely lonely. Without anyone to affirm (however idealistically) his aspirant identity as a great artist or sensitive lover, to inquire into and support his aspiration, he may experience a painful feeling resulting from a lack of recognition – not only of who he is but who he is capable of being.

In the years leading up to my lonely, aimless drive through Los Angeles (one of many lonely, aimless drives during that time and since), I had experienced a series of major life changes. A year and a half after landing my first tenure-track job in Indiana – which I experienced as something of a miracle – I landed a second tenure-track job in California. After weathering the first year and a half of Covid in a place without friends or family apart from my husband, I had a child. Toward the end of my pregnancy, my career had picked up steam, and there were no signs of it slowing down. (I remember responding to critics of my book while seven months pregnant on Zoom, wondering whether anyone knew.) And I found, to my surprise, that I didn’twantit to slow down. I had always tried to treat academic philosophy as just ajob. Now, I realized that this was a way of guarding against disappointment – and that philosophy not only engaged and allowed for the expression of centrally important parts of me but also could serve as a venue in which I might make distinctive contributions. Listening to Alvvays’Blue Revon the Getty Center Tram, I felt unrecognizable to family and friends. I hardly felt recognizable to myself.

Of course, along with these changes came changes to my complex of needs. For one, my need for certain forms of intellectual engagement intensified. I longed for contexts in which I could engage in this way – and, importantly, for contexts in which I felt comfortable enough to let my mind run, to think out loud with another person gripped by similar things. For another, I wanted people in my life to appreciate the value of the projects about which I was passionate – doing, reading, and writing philosophy – in a deep way. I wanted them not only to judge my pursuits valuable but tovaluethose pursuits. And I wanted the same people to also appreciateme, to desire to engage in deep and meaningful forms of relationship. While it didn’t feel fair to expect all of this from my husband, my hopes did not seem unreasonable – especially because I had felt these needs being met, in the context of certain relationships I’d developed. But those people were scattered across the globe, and meaningful opportunities for connection difficult to arrange outside of the context of conferences. Without my newly developed needs met, however, I felt painfully alone, like a part of me was missing from my everyday life.

The reaction I had is not uncommon. Experiences of loneliness tend to make certain features of human existence salient: our fundamental vulnerability to others, our powerlessness in the face of certain of our needs. And in a world where so much is out of our hands – including, often, our own flourishing – it can be tempting to respond to these hard facts with what are effectively attempts to exert more control. One response is to turn away from the deliverances of loneliness, to insist on your independence and self-sufficiency, perhaps by implementing practices (like those recommended by pop Stoicism) aimed at detaching from certain outcomes, quieting certain needs, and mastering difficult feelings. Another is to actively try to secure the acknowledgement or connection you crave, perhaps attempting to matter to others in the ways you wish to matter by crafting your image on social media or insisting upon engaging in a particular kind of relationship with another despite their stated unwillingness.

While some of these responses are ethically suspect, others are understandable, even potentially laudable ways of coping in the face of loneliness. My interest here is not to adjudicate among problematic and non-problematic forms of coping. Instead, I want to explore how responses like these – all of which aim at ridding oneself of loneliness as quickly as possible – may not only be problematically defensive, but may also alienate us from important parts of ourselves. While it is often deeply painful and lamentable, loneliness can serve as a means of becoming acquainted with important features of ourselves, features we might miss if we’re too quick to eradicate or look away from our lonely condition. In addition to preventing us from properly facing up to powerlessness and vulnerability as fundamental conditions of human existence, conditions we must acknowledge and respond to properly if we are to live well as the needy creatures we are, these reactions can lead us to miss what loneliness can show us. In short, they can obstruct loneliness’ insights, hindering the positive, disclosive potential of loneliness. As an experience that may show us who and what matters to us, loneliness can be a means of self-knowledge and an engine of transformation.

To begin, loneliness can be a means of self-knowledge, making certain needs, desires, and values salient to the individual in its throes. While certain of these needs, desires, and values may be longstanding, others may be newly developed, perhaps formed in relationship with particular others. By noticing the intensely painful loneliness that resulted from a perceived lack of affirmation of my obsessive, analytic mind in my everyday life – and how deeply seen and appreciated I felt by the close friends I’d made at conferences, who clearly cherished this part of me – I came to see how central that feature was to my self-conception. This particular experience of loneliness taught me more about who I was and how I understood myself. Noticing how connected and fulfilled I felt when engaged in thoughtful, rigorous philosophical conversations – and how alone I felt when I was unable to connect in this way – I came to recognize this activity as a necessary feature of a good and worthwhile life for me.