Lars Fredrik H盲ndler Svendsen is a Norwegian author and philosopher who is professor at the University of Bergen. He has published several books translated into 24 languages. He is also engaged as project manager in the think tank Civita. In 2008 he was awarded the Meltzer Prize for outstanding research, and in 2010 he was awarded the prisoners' Testament.
This is a solid philosophical work on loneliness. It combines conceptual analysis with empirical findings, which is what you'd generally expect from a modern philosopher. The book is short, but pretty dense. I'm just going to list the main ideas for those of you who want to get a sense about the discussions in this book:
- There's an important distinction between "alone" and "lonely": the first is physical, the other is emotional; you can be at a family dinner (not alone) but still feel lonely, and you can very well be alone in your room and not feel lonely
- Loneliness can be understood as an emotion; from an evolutionary standpoint, the advantage of having this emotion is that it tells you that your social needs are not being met
- The main factor correlated with /causing loneliness is lack of trust in other people (I recommend watching Mad Men, which explores exactly this idea, I think); other factors: your expect too much from your social interactions, you are too critical of yourself and others in social situations, you are too self-absorbed
- Loneliness shows why friendship and love are important
- It's contentious whether or not modern individualism is one of the main causes of loneliness
- Solitude is a positive form of loneliness which can help an individual get in touch with his/her inner self, and it can also help you be more creative; loneliness is being alone with yourself, while solitude is being together with yourself
- The text ends on a Sartrian key: Your loneliness is your loneliness. You've gotten yourself into that shiz (through a long chain of poor decisions), and you need to take responsibility for that and fix it yourself. As Svendsen puts it: don't expect others to remedy your loneliness. No one has a right to a life without loneliness, just as no one has a right to be happy.