PHIL 456ELoneliness

Catalog

Loneliness may have always been a human birthright, but it is showing up in bigger and bigger ways as we progress into the 21st-century. People are finding fewer community spaces and fewer friends, having less sex, getting more depressed, and so on. It's a huge bummer. This seminar will philosophically investigate the concept of loneliness and its normative profile alongside some of its causes and political consequences. In order to better understand loneliness, we will also discuss various plausible opposites like friendship, love, and solidarity. Can there be something edifying in loneliness, or do we have a duty to combat it in our own lives and others'? How have one-off factors like the COVID pandemic contributed to the rise in reported loneliness as opposed to ongoing trends like social media and political polarization? What are the implications of the gendered and medicalized ways in which we describe, e.g., the "male loneliness epidemic"? How seriously do we take proposals regarding a right to sex or companionship? And is this yet another arena where we should welcome AI as a panacea?