International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW)

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28.04.2020

What does living alone mean in times of Corona?

Blog article by Vanessa Weihgold

Even though the Duden dictionary defines "alone" and "lonely" as synonyms, most people distinguish in their language use positively alone and negatively lonely. For a long time there was the image of the scholar who, in the solitude of his ivory tower, surrenders to thinking and can only become creative in this way. This romantic form of loneliness belongs to the human being just as much as being together. Sometimes we have to step back to look at a problem from a different angle. Or to find ourselves. Without the social pressure we can give space to the sides of our ego that would find little recognition in society, but which also want to be lived (Svendsen 2016).

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