This is a solid philosophical work on loneliness. It combines conceptual analysis with empirical findings, which is what you'd generally expect from a modern philosopher. The book is short, but pretty dense. I'm just going to list the main ideas for those of you who want to get a sense about the discussions in this book:
- There's an important distinction between "alone" and "lonely": the first is physical, the other is emotional; you can be at a family dinner (not alone) but still feel lonely, and you can very well be alone in your room and not feel lonely
- Loneliness can be understood as an emotion; from an evolutionary standpoint, the advantage of having this emotion is that it tells you that your social needs are not being met
- The main factor correlated with /causing loneliness is lack of trust in other people (I recommend watching Mad Men, which explores exactly this idea, I think); other factors: your expect too much from your social interactions, you are too critical of yourself and others in social situations, you are too self-absorbed
- Loneliness shows why friendship and love are important
- It's contentious whether or not modern individualism is one of the main causes of loneliness
- Solitude is a positive form of loneliness which can help an individual get in touch with his/her inner self, and it can also help you be more creative; loneliness is being alone with yourself, while solitude is being together with yourself
- The text ends on a Sartrian key: Your loneliness is your loneliness. You've gotten yourself into that shiz (through a long chain of poor decisions), and you need to take responsibility for that and fix it yourself. As Svendsen puts it: don't expect others to remedy your loneliness. No one has a right to a life without loneliness, just as no one has a right to be happy.