Loneliness is not solitude but a distinct condition of being deserted by others

Evidence

Loneliness is not solitude. Solitude requires being alone whereas loneliness shows itself most sharply in company with others. Apart from a few stray remarks—usually framed in a paradoxical mood like Cato’s statement (reported by Cicero, De Re Publico, I, 17): numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset, “never was he less alone than when he was alone,” or, rather, “never was he less lonely than when he was in solitude”—it seems that Epictetus, the emancipated slave philosopher of Greek origin, was the first to distinguish between loneliness and solitude. His discovery, in a way, was accidental, his chief interest being neither solitude nor loneliness, but being alone (monos) in the sense of absolute independence. As Epictetus sees it (Dissertationes, Book 3, ch. 13) the lonely man (eremos) finds himself surrounded by others with whom he cannot establish contact or to whose hostility he is exposed. The solitary man, on the contrary, is alone and therefore “can be together with himself” since men have the capacity of “talking with themselves.” In solitude, in other words, I am “by myself,” together with my self, and therefore two-in-one, whereas in loneliness I am actually one, deserted by all others. All thinking, strictly speaking, is done in solitude and is a dialogue between me and myself; but this dialogue of the two-in-one does not lose contact with the world of my fellow-men because they are represented in the self with whom I lead the dialogue of thought. The problem of solitude is that this two-in-one needs the others in order to become one again: one unchangeable individual whose identity can never be mistaken for that of any other. For the confirmation of my identity I depend entirely upon other people; and it is the great saving grace of companionship for solitary men that it makes them “whole” again, saves them from the dialogue of thought in which one remains always equivocal, restores the identity which makes them speak with the single voice of one unexchangeable person. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1080

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes Arendt’s foundational distinction between solitude (two-in-one dialogue of thought) and loneliness (being one, deserted by all) — a load-bearing concept for her account of totalitarian terror.
• XREF: Directly scaffolds the later Islamophobia-field argument that colonial and totalitarian logics isolate subjects; also connects to Arendt’s own earlier chapters on the masses as ‘atomized individuals.’ — connects to: Human friendship heals loneliness that no plant medicine can reach. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 274
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that identity confirmation depends entirely on other people, and that solitude’s two-in-one dialogue needs others to become ‘one again,’ is a dense ontological argument that resists paraphrase.