Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature: Third Edition - Softcover

Mijuskovic, Ben Lazare

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1469789337 ISBN 13: 9781469789330

Publisher: iUniverse, 2012

Synopsis

Drawing on the fields of psychology, literature, and philosophy, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature argues that loneliness has been the universal concern of mankind since the Greek myths and dramas, the dialogues of Plato, and the treatises of Aristotle.

Author Ben Lazare Mijuskovic, whose insights are culled from both his theoretical studies and his practical experiences, contends that loneliness has constituted a universal theme of Western thought from the Hellenic age into the contemporary period. In Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature, he shows how man has always felt alone and that the meaning of man is loneliness.

Presenting both a discussion and a philosophical inquiry into the nature of loneliness, Mijuskovic cites examples from more than one hundred writers on loneliness, including Erich Fromm, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Clark Moustakas, Rollo May, and James Howard in psychology; Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Thomas Wolfe and William Golding in literature; and Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre in philosophy.

Insightful and comprehensive, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature demonstrates that loneliness is the basic nature of humans and is an unavoidable condition that all must face.

European Review, 21:2 (May, 2013), 309-311. Ben Mijuskovic, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse. 2012).

Ben Lazare Mijuskovic offers in his book a very different approach to loneliness. According to him, far from being an occasional or temporary phenomenon, loneliness—or better the fear of loneliness—is the strongest motivational drive in human beings. He argues that “following the replenishment of air, water, nourishment, and sleep, the most insistent and immediate necessity is man desire to escape his loneliness,” to avoid the feeling of existential, human isolation” (p xxx). The Leibnizian image of the monad—as a self-enclosed “windowless” being—gives an acute portrait of this oppressive prison. To support this thesis, Mijuskovic uses an interdisciplinary approach--philosophy, psychology, and literature—through which the “picture of man as continually fighting to escape the quasi-solipsistic prison of his frightening solitude” reverberates.

Besides insisting on the primacy of our human concern to struggle with the spectre of loneliness, Mijuskovic has sought to account for the reasons why this is the case. The core of his argumentation relies on a theory of consciousness. In Western thought three dominant models can be distinguished: (a) the self-consciousness or reflexive model; (b) the empirical or behavioral model; and (c) the intentional or phenomenological model. According to the last two models, it is difficult, if not inconceivable, to understand how loneliness is even possible. Only the theory that attributes a reflexive nature to the powers of the mind can adequately explain loneliness. The very constitution of our consciousness determines our confinement. “When a human being successfully ‘reflects’ on his self, reflexively captures his own intrinsically unique situation, he grasps (self-consciously) the nothingness of his existence as a ‘transcendental condition’—universal, necessary (a priori—structuring his entire being-in-the-world. This originary level of recognition is the ground-source for his sensory-cognitive awareness of loneliness” (p. 13). Silvana Mandolesi

About this title

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LONELINESS IN PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND LITERATURE

By BEN LAZARE MIJUSKOVIC

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Ben Lazare Mijuskovic
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4697-8933-0

Contents

Acknowledgments..........................................................................................................xxvPreface to the Second Edition............................................................................................xxviiPreface to the Third Edition: Loneliness and Self-Consciousness..........................................................xxixIntroduction.............................................................................................................1Chapter One Loneliness and a Theory of Consciousness.....................................................................1Chapter Two Loneliness and the Reflexivity of Consciousness..............................................................23Chapter Three Loneliness and Time-Consciousness..........................................................................43Chapter Four Types of Loneliness.........................................................................................60Chapter Five Loneliness and Narcissism...................................................................................71Chapter Six Loneliness and Phenomenology.................................................................................88Chapter Seven Loneliness and the Possibility of a Private Language.......................................................107Chapter Eight Loneliness and the Divided Self............................................................................117Conclusion...............................................................................................................133Appendix A Loneliness: an Interdisciplinary Approach.....................................................................136Appendix B Loneliness and Personal Identity..............................................................................172Appendix C The Sociology and Psychology of Loneliness....................................................................190Appendix D Kant's Reflections on the Unity of Consciousness, Time-Consciousness, and the Unconscious.....................206

Chapter One

Loneliness and a Theory of Consciousness

In this chapter, I wish to accomplish two things. First, I shall offer an image of man as intrinsically alone and irredeemably lost, man as continually struggling to escape the solipsistic prison of his frightening solitude. Second, I will attempt to offer a theory of consciousness that will afford an insight into why man is so desperately lonely. In order to prosecute my case, I intend to draw on the disciplines of psychology, literature, and philosophy. Obviously, there can be no promise of any permanent "cure" for this affliction, since if, indeed, man is essentially isolated, he can never in principle overcome this monadic condition. Perhaps in the ancient sense that "the truth shall set us free," he will be better able to cope with this existential fact of human isolation as a result of understanding it; however, there can be no final escape from, or transcendence beyond, loneliness so long as man is alive. In saying this, I do not wish to suggest that man is unable temporarily to alleviate his sense of loneliness but rather that the relief can never be permanent or even long lasting.

There is a strong tendency to regard loneliness as a modern, or even merely a contemporary, phenomenon. Often, for example, it is described as some sort of "alienation" brought about by our technological, bureaucratic, economic or societal organization. This view, I am convinced, is quite mistaken. Rather, I believe that man has always and everywhere suffered from feelings of acute loneliness and that his entire existence is consumed by the struggle to escape his fate. In this regard, I wish to contend that the feeling—and reality—of forlornness constitutes the very essence of man's existence and that the "reflexive" awareness of radical isolation consists of a primordial and undeniable structure within human self-consciousness (reflexion, apperception; a mirror reflects, it merely passively doubles what is present; the mind, by contrast, actively transforms what it is thinking). Thus, each of us, in utter separation—consciously or unconsciously, successfully or failingly—agonizingly twists in order to escape his unique destiny. Now, in saying this, I do not mean to suggest that "human nature" is ever the same or that it is unchangeable. With the Existentialists (as well as with Hegel and Marx, in a qualified sense), I would agree that man is always free to create himself anew, to posit absolutely novel meanings for his own individual existence, or to shatter the bonds of a confining "environmental determinism." I agree with Sartre:

I am free ... Freedom has crashed down on me like a thunderbolt ... I am free. Beyond anguish, beyond remorse. Free ... Suddenly, out of the blue, freedom crashed down on me and swept me off my feet ... I knew myself alone, utterly alone in the midst of this well-meaning little universe of yours. I was like a man who's lost his shadow. And there was nothing left in heaven, no right or wrong, nor anyone to give me orders. (Sartre, The Flies)

So there is no question here of offering a static conception of human nature, of exhibiting man as constantly of the same "stuff." Quite the contrary, man, as an individual, is always free to change his "essence," "meaning," or "purpose," so long as he is self-conscious. But, again, this spontaneity is itself grounded in something more primevally fundamental, something that transcends the distinction of either free or determined, and that is the fact that man is alone.

Has man really always viewed himself as alone, abandoned? In a previous article, I maintained that the biblical figure of Job and the tragic personality of Oedipus offer paradigmatic examples of enforced solitude. Carl Jung himself draws on antiquity when he suggests a symbolic connection between the Prometheus myth and loneliness. According to Jung, Prometheus's theft of fire represents a step toward greater consciousness (illuminated reflection). Thus, the rebellious Titan robs the gods and thereby gains increasing knowledge (fire as light, light as knowledge) and although he benefits mankind, nevertheless he thereby raises himself above, and alienates himself from, the humanity he so valiantly sought to befriend. "The pain of this loneliness is the vengeance of the gods, for never again can he return to mankind. He is, as the myth says, chained to the lonely cliffs of the Caucasus, forsaken of God and man" (Jung, Works, Vol.7, 156-157, note). Prometheus, a Titan, is neither an Olympian nor a man; he is set apart, alone. He is a marginal figure. By stealing fire, he has stolen light, the symbol of knowledge and consciousness. And his penalty is the resultant knowledge that he is completely alone. Prometheus, the friend of man, himself has no friend, for there is no one to share his suffering. In this sense, the tale allegorically depicts the universal condition of each man as an individual, for we also suffer in the vain attempt to reach outwardly, toward other human beings. Similarly, the solitary task of Sisyphus, in the underworld, epitomizes the isolation of human existence. The boulder is unthinking, material being; in stark contrast, the reflexive thought of the sufferer is absorbed in the cognitive apprehension of the isolated nature of his sentence (Camus). And, of course, still in the Greek period, the empathy and pity we feel for Odysseus's plight arises from his "homelessness" and our recognition of his painful estrangement from friends and family. Surely in the saga of Odysseus we find a clear example of the theme of solitude and the longing for home that it produces (see especially Odyssey, Books I and V). Similarly, we discover the motifs of forlornness and separation in the dialogues of Plato. In the Symposium, in Aristophanes's speech in praise of human love (189 d ff.), the playwright recounts the story of the hermaphroditic race, which was split in half as a result of Zeus's anger over a digression. As the dramatist relates it, after the separation,

when the work of bisection was complete it left each half with a desperate yearning for the other, and they ran together and flung their arms around each other's necks, and asked for nothing better than to be rolled into one ... And whenever one half was left alone by the death of its mate, it wandered about questing and clasping in the hope of finding a spare half-woman—or a whole woman, as we should call her nowadays—or a half-man. And so the race was dying out ... So you see, gentlemen, how far back we can trace our innate love for one another, and how this love is always trying to reintegrate our former nature, to make two into one, and to bridge the gulf between one human being and another.

Freud himself cites this passage from Plato's Symposium in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. To throw light on the "origin of sexuality," he has resorted to an appeal to the Aristophanean myth. The issue, as Freud conceives it, centers around the "hypothesis" that certain primeval life-instincts may be found in animal organisms; in turn, these instincts quite possibly have generated or evolved into our contemporary sexual drives. The key to understanding the power of such instincts lies in recognizing their impulse toward unity, more specifically the instincts' desire for unity between male and female. Thus, according to Freud, Plato's allegory suggests the possibility that the "living substance at the time of its coming to life was torn apart into small particles, which have ever since endeavored to reunite through sexual instincts" (p. 52). Now, of course, on Freud's theory, "sexual energy" is the primary motivating force in human beings. As opposed to this view, I wish to claim, instead, that loneliness, or more correctly the drive to avoid a sense of isolation, actually constitutes the dominant psychic force underlying all human consciousness and conduct. Freud and I, therefore, seem rather far apart. But perhaps we are not so distant as it may appear at first glance. For in an explanatory footnote to the Symposium quotation, Freud himself appends an illuminating, even a somewhat betraying, passage from the Upanishads, which does, significantly enough, explicitly emphasize the principle of loneliness rather than sexuality.

Therefore a man who is lonely feels no delight. He wishes for a second. He was so large as man and wife together. He then made his Self to fall in two, and then arose husband and wife. Therefore Yagnavalkya said: "We two are thus (each of us) like half a shell." Therefore the void which was there, is filled by the wife.

Clearly, here in the Vedic legend, loneliness, as opposed to sexual instinct, dominates. Had Freud recognized this, I think it is conceivable to imagine that he might have formulated an entire psychological system grounded in the principle of human loneliness instead of the one he actually did go on to establish, founded on the primordiality of the sexual drive. In other words, I am intimating that loneliness, as a principle, may be every bit as ultimate and comprehensive as Freud's doctrine of sexual needs.

For my own purposes, however, I want to interpret the above selection from the Upanishads as a concession that consciousness is a "void," a nothingness, and further that the ego recognizes its own emptiness and proceeds to posit the existence of the "other" as a companion consciousness in order to assuage its intense feeling of aloneness—its overwhelming sense of a "lack"—and obliterate or forget its sense of absolute isolation. (In Freud, of course, the sexual orgasm produces the effect of achieving a perfect fusion and integration between the participating lovers, a single unity and identity of consciousness. In this sense, the feeling of separation is overcome for a brief moment before monadic consciousness reasserts itself).

Although admittedly, in the Hellenistic age, there is little offered by way of an explicit model indicating the intrinsic isolation of man, we are nonetheless able to uncover many and powerful illustrations of it, if we probe but a little beneath the surface of the literary tradition. For example, such a model may be found in Lucretius's De Rerum Natura, when the poet-philosopher begins his discussion regarding the evolution of society by portraying every man as initially living apart from others and for himself alone (De Rerum Natura, 960–961). (The description itself anticipates Hobbes's characterization of man's lot in the state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.") Indeed, the very principle of the epicurean atom—like the later model of the Leibnizian monad of the eighteenth century—implies singleness, self-containedness, and unrelated substantiality. The individual eagerly seeks to escape this state of hermitic existence, as Lucretius tells us, primarily by a sexual union with another human being. But I would hazard that the foregoing mutual need for companionship, the natural desire to meet, communicate, and unify with another human being, is really motivated by the instinct to overcome a desperate feeling of aloneness rather than to gratify sexual dissatisfaction.

Furthermore, it may be argued that the concept of acute loneliness is served, in the Latin mind, by the idea of exile. Thus, for instance, Ovid's Tristia or Letters from Exile can be interpreted as the author's powerful expression of longing for family, friends, and country, which was precipitated by his banishment from Rome. Furthermore, the ideal of resignation advocated by the dominant philosophic schools in the Roman Period—the Stoic, Epicurean, and Sceptic—are all predicated on the assumption that man exists alone and hence that the wise man is he who can resign himself to this miserable state of affairs. Once the "organic bonds" of the Hellenic polis had been dissolved, and without the consolation of a caring God, or gods, the sage must search for consolation in either (a) acknowledging the harsh, inevitable order of the universe as it insensitively carries man along (like a dog tied to a chariot); (b) intimate but restricted friendship; or (c) nihilistic self-sufficiency. But what is all this but a compelled awareness of the complete aloneness of the individual and the ensuing determination of each man to exist as best he can in a world that denies him political, social, and religious solace?

During the Middle Ages, there is admittedly but slight recognition of man's abandonment, but this is because medieval man thetically posits a perfectly self-conscious being, eternal and ubiquitous, an absolutely all-knowing subject who is solicitous enough to create each individual soul in his own image (as self-conscious), a being, who, although he continually tests man in this world, nevertheless condescends to permit communication through prayer and eventually offers the hope of perpetual preservation in a mutually enjoyed eternal existence. (Later, Descartes will speculate that God not only creates but continually preserves, or re-creates, each soul at every moment of its existence.) Thus, Augustine is not alone. Every page of his Confessions consists of an intimate dialogue with God.

But to overcome loneliness for a while is not to escape or vanquish it for long, and, like the lovers who momentarily "conquer" it, one is always under the threat of separation. In similar fashion, medieval man feared above all to be estranged from God, to have his thoughts alienated from the inclusive, reflective light of God's perfect comprehension (to pray in vain).

Loneliness thus constitutes the inevitable structure of self- awareness that grounds the desperate attempt of each of us, separately, to transcend our mental prison by seeking refuge through communication with another reflexive being. Whereas the subject matter of history, as Aristotle informs us, is properly events in their particularity, by contrast, the sphere of art depicts themes with a universal appeal. Thus, despite the hiatus of time, we readily grasp the emotional continuity between the tragedy of Oedipus and, for example, the solitary sorrows of Richard II, Lear, and Antony in Shakespeare's Renaissance plays. They are all bound together by the common idea of the solitary nature of human suffering. When man reflects on his own sadness, he is inevitably compelled to realize his absolute difference and isolation from the "others" and the singularity of his unique death. The confrontation with his own uniqueness, in turn, promotes the mental anguish that directly follows from each man's acknowledgment of his separated state of awareness/ existence. And it is through projecting our own thoughts and feelings "outwardly" that we grasp this universal "transcendental" condition; that we, as spectators, are led to sympathize, empathize, and even identify with classic tragic figures despite their seemingly removed or "noble" statures. These tragic heroes are "reduced" to our own level because it is in reality the condition of each man, separately, to exist alone. The apprehension of this fact transforms the powerful dramatic figures of the past into the more familiar contemporary "pathetic" characters of today and finally even into ourselves. For example, it is not because we are horrified by the idea of incest that we feel fear and pity for Oedipus but because we all know what it is like to be absolutely alone. Similarly, it is through this same basic emotional affinity that we recognize, in Death of a Salesman, the identical conception upon which tragedies have always depended. Willy Loman, with his suitcases in hand, traveling as a stranger from town to town, living in hotels, starved for human companionship, affection, and "respect" (recognition by others) is "terribly lonely." And he is even a stranger in his own home, to his sons and wife, and to himself. The "salesman," the man who pretends to know and like everyone, in the end, realizes he knows and can count on no one, that he has traveled the confused temporal expanse of a lifetime, like the highways of America, as a solitary atom. Although in his youth he enjoyed the conviction that his personality was his means to friendship and security, in his advanced maturity he sees that, to others, he means even less than the material goods he sells.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from LONELINESS IN PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND LITERATUREby BEN LAZARE MIJUSKOVIC Copyright © 2012 by Ben Lazare Mijuskovic. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1469789337
• ISBN 13: 9781469789330
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306