Problém a tajomstvo existenciálnej osamelosti
Problem and mystery of existential loneliness

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to examine the nature of existential loneliness and point out how complex and difficult it is to conceptually grasp it. It is exactly this complexity, or perhaps even paradoxicity, of the nature of existential loneliness that is the reason why it is necessary to examine this phenomenon not only on the level of an objective problem but also to consider the moment of mystery. While examining this problem, the author differentiates between the phenomena of isolation, solitude and loneliness, the last of which is seen as (1) a negative subjective experience, connected to the absence of a valuably important unity between a subject (individual, but also group) and something (someone) else, or as (2) a psychological (empirical) and existential loneliness. The author understands existential loneliness as an objectless, a priori, and thus also universal and necessary way of existence (and self-understanding) of human being-there in its being and co-being in the world. In this context the author considers the understanding of existential loneliness as conditio humana a serious problem, since it means that the human being is a priori, always and everywhere, lonely and, at the same time, loneliness is meant to be encountered as a whole in our experience. The author rejects the frequent reduction of existential loneliness to a specific type of a psychological (empirical) one and sees the solution to the problem in the acceptance of the existence of a strange, boundary type of experience, in which existential loneliness as conditio humana paradoxically appears to man. The existentiality of this experience consists in that it transcends the subject-object (intentional) structure of everyday consciousness and is an experience of non-being (nothingness, emptiness, timelessness) and thus also human finitude.

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