EXISTENTIAL LONELINESS
Existential
Loneliness is a
new concept
in existential philosophy and psychology.
This sense of emptiness and void
is really a problem within each
person,
not a lack of meaningful relationships.
But we are very familiar with beliefs about loving relationships.
So we often believe that our deep deficiency is an interpersonal
problem.
But existential loneliness is deeper than either
(1) the absence of a specific person we love
or (2) the lack of any meaningful connections with others.
Because existential loneliness is so easy to confuse
with
problems of love or problems of having no relationships,
we might spend a few years of our lives
struggling with existential loneliness
using methods that are appropriate only for interpersonal loneliness.
We might discover that no matter how good our
personal relationships are,
we still feel 'empty' and 'lonesome'.
If so, perhaps we are really struggling with our Existential Malaise
disguised as a complex of problems in personal relationships.
If you have already tried to solve this problem by
improving your relationships,
and if you already know that love is NOT the answer to our Malaise,
perhaps you are ready for this alternative approach.
The Internet resources listed below take as their
first task
separating interpersonal
loneliness from existential loneliness.
Then they probe more deeply into our Existential Predicament
and seek ways beyond existential loneliness.
You might begin by reading a three-page essay
entitled:
"Loneliness
of
Spirit: Deeper than the Reach of Love"
A slightly longer presentation (4 pages) appears in
a small book called
Opening
to Grace:
Transcending Our Spiritual Malaise
:
Chapter 1:
"Interpersonal
Loneliness and Spiritual Loneliness"
The most comprehensive treatment of existential
loneliness in print
is the first chapter of Our
Existential
Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, & Death
:
Chapter 1:
"Existential Loneliness:
Deeper than the Reach of Love"
This chapter is 14 pages long.
The above link contains the complete table of contents
for Chapter 1 and the first page.
An older version of the 3-page article mentioned
first is here:
"Loneliness
of
Spirit: Deeper than the Reach of Love"
In response to this article, you can read questions from readers
and answers from the author here:
Questions
and
Answers about
"Loneliness of Spirit: Deeper than the Reach of Love"
.
If you would consider taking a class on our
Existential Malaise,
which includes one discussion of existential loneliness,
here is the complete course description:
"Our
Existential
Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, & Death"
.
This description includes a distant learning option.