Being, World, and Loneliness Loneliness as attunement, like all attunements, discloses the world in a certain way to us, makes certain aspects of the world available for us to encounter. In solitude, we are two-in-one, free to move between the domain of the self and of others. In loneliness, we are simply one, yet still acknowledge, even if implicitly, the presence of others: they are wholly out of reach, they may even be hostile to us, but they are still there for us; we may feel alone, but in a strange way we know that we are not. In the mood of loneliness, however, the world discloses itself to us as a place in which we are alone. It is not a fleeting emotional state, nor an extended one, wherein we comprehend others as beings in existence who happen to be inaccessible to us. We are not a “one” who can, as Arendt describes, “find himself and [start] the thinking dialogue of solitude.”17 Others appear to us not as others, but as foreign things wholly unlike us in Being, as mere tools for utilitarian exploitation or obstacles impeding our productivity. Otherness is replaced by material objectification, and so others, as Heidegger might say, have consequently been nihilated—“made Nothing.”18 We are existentially alone. Thus, loneliness as attunement can be defined as such: a submissive mode of Being-alone-in-the-world in which all others are nihilated.
4 The Being-alone-in-the-world of Loneliness as Attunement: Being-alone-in-the-world as a Fleeing in the Face of Being Being-alone-in-the-world. This is the phenomenal face of the mood of loneliness. But we cannot now say that our investigation is complete, or even nearing completion, for we have not yet articulated the character of this “Being-alone-in-the-world,” nor its existential implications for Dasein. Only by continuing down this line of inquiry can we formulate a suitable understanding of what it means for Dasein to Be, ontologically, lonely. When Dasein is in the mood of loneliness, it encounters the world as a place in which it is alone. This is only possible for Dasein, however, insofar as it flees in the face of itself : it must hide from, be oblivious to, part of its own Being. Dasein, according to its Being, cannot ever be alone, as Being-there inextricably possesses the character of Being-with (Mitsein) Others. Heidegger writes: 17. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 477. 18. Heidegger, Martin. What Is Metaphysics? (Jovian Press, 2019).
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