Ruth Rebecca Tietjen will give a talk on existential, social and political loneliness

Department of Philosophy and the Centre for Ethics cordially invite you on Monday, 25 November at 16:15, Jakobi 2-336 to attend a talk by Dr. Ruth Rebecca Tietjen  “Variations on loneliness: existential, social, political”. Dr. Tietjen is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy at Tilburg University and Pof. Dr. Theda Rehbock’s Philosophy Resident at Susimetsa Philosophicum.

About the lecture:

In recent years, loneliness has received increasing attention in both the public and academic discourse. Examples include the nomination of the first British Loneliness Minister in 2018, the publication of the U.S. Surgeon General’s report on “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” in August 2023, and the World Health Organization’s “Commission on Social Connection” established in 2024 to recognize and resource loneliness as a global mental health problem. While extremism scholars have connected loneliness to radicalization, feminist theorists have emphasized the connection between loneliness and marginalization. My talk brings these debates together in exploring the existential, social, and political foundations and implications of loneliness.

First, drawing on the exploration of contemporary first-personal auto-theoretical accounts of loneliness, it investigates the relationship between loneliness and social marginalization in connection with social categories such as class, age, and gender. Second, it compares and contrasts the way how loneliness is experienced and described in these cases with the way in which members of privileged and radicalized groups appeal to feelings of loneliness to justify their political demands. In my presentation, I am searching for a creative form of expression that allows us to take the existential and political meaning of loneliness seriously.

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