Collection

Loneliness

Loneliness is often seen as one of the great public mental health crises of our time. Much research is being devoted to finding possible remedies. Yet it is not at all clear whether we have as yet a sufficiently developed, informed, and secure understanding of what loneliness is and how it should be conceptualized. The papers in this special issue seek to contribute to this discussion by considering loneliness from a variety of perspectives in the philosophy of mind and social and political philosophy. Themes of shared interest across the articles include differences between loneliness and solitude; the variety of absences and affordances encountered in experiences of loneliness; and how an agent's attunement to the social world is disrupted in loneliness. These foundational themes, and others, are examined in this special issue through the lens of philosophy in the analytic and phenomenological traditions, while keeping in sight broader considerations of mental and physical health and wellbeing.

Editors

  • Emily Hughes

    Emily Hughes, is a postdoctoral research associate in philosophy at the University of York working on the AHRC-funded project ‘Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience.’ I completed my PhD at the University of New South Wales. My research is situated in the intersection between existential phenomenology and the philosophy of psychiatry and psychology, with a particular focus on phenomenological interpretations of affect and the way in which emotions modify temporal and spatial experience. emily.hughes@york.ac.uk

  • Joel Krueger

    Joel Krueger is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Exeter. He works primarily in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of cognitive science: specifically, issues in 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended) cognition, including emotions, social cognition, and psychopathology. He also does work on comparative philosophy and philosophy of music. j.krueger@exeter.ac.uk

  • Tom Roberts

    Tom Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Exeter, UK. He works principally in the philosophy of mind and psychology, with particular interests in the emotions and the senses. His research also considers topics in aesthetics, and in the philosophy of psychiatry. tom.roberts@exeter.ac.uk

  • Axel Seemann

    Axel Seemann is Professor of Philosophy at Bentley University. Most of his work is in the philosophy of mind, with a main focus on its social aspect. His particular interest is in shared forms of perception, action, and knowledge. He is the author of “The Shared World: Perceptual Common Knowledge, Demonstrative Communication, and Social Space” (MIT Press 2019). aseemann@bentley.edu

Articles (15 in this collection)

  1. Introduction: Loneliness

    Authors (first, second and last of 4)

    • Axel Seemann
    • Emily Hughes
    • Joel Krueger
    • Content type: EditorialNotes
    • Published: 02 November 2023
    • Pages: 1079 - 1081
  2. Loneliness and Mood

    Authors

    • Thomas J. Spiegel
    • Content type: OriginalPaper
    • Open Access
    • Published: 13 June 2023
    • Pages: 1155 - 1163
  3. On Experiential Loneliness

    Authors

    • Philipp Schmidt
    • Content type: OriginalPaper
    • Open Access
    • Published: 13 June 2023
    • Pages: 1093 - 1108
  4. Loneliness as Cause

    Authors

    • Elena Popa
    • Content type: OriginalPaper
    • Open Access
    • Published: 01 June 2023
    • Pages: 1175 - 1184