Existential Loneliness and the Politics of Friendship

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General, issued an advisory, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness,” which detailed a decline in social connection in U.S. society over the past 30 years, correlating this to rising rates of depression, anxiety, violence, and self-harm. Western culture is on a historical trajectory towards loneliness, supported by technologies that provide a simulacrum of sociality, political ideologies that divorce us from a common experience of reality, and a capitalism that breeds rapacious competitiveness. This paper explores the sources and consequences of existential loneliness in contemporary society, showing loneliness as the common root of contemporary social, political, and environmental violence. It addresses loneliness from the perspectives of philosophy and theology to show that a politics of friendship is a foundation for a just society. This research intervenes in the fields of social ethics and political theory by articulating paths of renewed encounter founded in agonistic pluralism and radical hospitality.