Kaitlyn Creasy: On Loneliness

As social beings, loneliness is a common human experience, perhaps even an inevitable feature of the human condition. In this event, Kaitlyn Creasy offers an account of loneliness, arguing that experiences of loneliness make salient our fundamental vulnerability and powerlessness due to our reliance on others to fulfil our social needs. In this account, loneliness is a painful subjective feeling that results from an unfulfilled desire for recognition or connection. As these complex needs and desires vary in form from person to person, so too do the conditions required to alleviate such loneliness.

Kaitlyn invites us to consider the potential value of loneliness as a means to self-knowledge; an opportunity to identify the specific needs and desires we must seek to fulfill in order to live a life that is meaningful to us. Under the right circumstances, loneliness can function as an impetus for positive self-transformation. She cautions, however, that this is often not what happens; instead, loneliness results in despair and withdrawal, sadness, anger, shame, or resentment. In extreme cases, loneliness may play a role in catalysing vicious attitudes, such as a cruel hatred towards the community of people whose perceived failure to fulfil one’s unmet social needs is taken as a personal affront.

Kaitlyn's writing on this topic draws on autobiographical material, creating rich accounts of personal experiences of loneliness. This event will also explore the value of autobiography, and life-writing more broadly, for developing a philosophical understanding of human emotional experience.

About the Speaker:

Kaitlyn Creasy is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, San Bernardino. She writes in the areas of nineteenth-century European philosophy (especially Nietzsche), moral psychology, and ethics. Her work in these areas explores how our psychological lives are formed and sustained, as well as how various emotional experiences may facilitate or hinder agency, self-formation, and flourishing.

Kaitlyn’s article ‘Lessons in Loneliness’ is featured in the current issue of The Philosopher: Crossing the Floods.

The Moderator:

Kate Warlow-Corcoran is a UK-based philosopher interested in 19th and 20th Century European philosophy (particularly the work of Theodor Adorno) and contemporary philosophy of mind. She recently completed an MRes in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a Managing Editor at The Philosopher and co-edited the current issue of our publication: Crossing the Floods.

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This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. It is open to the public and held on Zoom. The event is free to attend but the Zoom registration page has, by default, an optional donation amount that you can change to zero (or whatever you wish). Donations go to The Philosopher magazine to cover our costs and expand the scope of our series.

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About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.