Doi: 10. 17516/1997-1370-0640 Socio-Cultural Determinacy of Human Loneliness

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DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-0640
УДК 130.3:316.73:316.752
Socio-Cultural Determinacy of Human Loneliness
Igor A. Belyaev and Maksim N. Lyashchenko*
Orenburg State University 
Orenburg, 
Russian Federation
Received 19.04.2019, received in revised form 04.08.2020, accepted 12.08.2020
Abstract.
The article justifies the socio-cultural determinacy of human loneliness. 
Philosophical and cultural discourse has been developing through synthesis of 
heterogeneous and diverse theoretical positions. The formula by Karl Marx, which 
shows that the unity of human relationship with nature is determined by the unity of 
relations between individuals, was of paramount importance for the study. The existence 
of society and community was considered as two dialectically interrelated forms of 
sociality, the lack of coordination between which leads to the emergence of human 
loneliness. The statement of the synergetic paradigm on the non-equilibrium nature of 
social structures has become heuristically valuable for conducting the research. Relying 
on the information about age-related peculiarities of human development based on the 
concept of E. Erickson, allowed to obtain the desired result. The philosophical and 
cultural interpretation of these and related provisions made it possible to establish that 
loneliness can be recognised as a consequence of the decreasing community level in the 
course of interaction between individuals and the impossibility of maintaining its high 
level, which is expressed in the Meeting of the Self and the Significant Other (one’s 
own Other). It was revealed that: community with a Significant Other is a measure of 
actualising the integrity and wholeness of the person’s being; the more diverse and wider 
the area of Significant Others, the more harmonious the person’s being; the person who 
has broadened the horizons of the Meeting as fully as possible is truly authentic; an 
increase in the depth of integration of the person with the processes and phenomena that 
are natural for each age stage passed, reduces the likelihood of loneliness, and, therefore, 
makes them more rooted in the existence.