In this article, we illuminate the affective phenomenon of loneliness by exploring the question of how it relates to love and other forms of friendship. We reflect in particular on the question of how different forms of loneliness are relevant to human existence. Distinguishing three forms of loneliness, we first introduce two border cases of loneliness: unfelt loneliness in which one's individuality is denied and one therefore cannot feel lonely; and existential loneliness in which the possibility of intimacy and existential communication are denied and one therefore cannot but feel lonely. We then turn to loneliness that occurs within intimate friendships-even the most intimate ones. In our analysis, we pay attention especially to the role of communication. In order to do so, we repeatedly turn to poetic expressions of loneliness. We argue that loneliness cannot reflect only the absence or partial failure of communication but also the inherent limits of communication. These limits in turn point back to the nature of human existence and love itself.

Emotions are not merely physiological disturbances: they are experiences through which we apprehend truths about ourselves and the world. Emotions embody an understanding that is accessible to us only by means of affective experience. Only through emotions can we perceive meaning in life, and only by feeling emotions are we capable of recognizing the value or significance of anything whatsoever. Our affective responses and dispositions therefore play a critical role in our apprehension of meaningful truth—furthermore, their felt quality is intimately related to the awareness that they provide. Truthfulness is at issue in episodes of such emotions as anger, fear, and grief. Even apparently irrational emotions can show us what distinguishes emotion from other modes of cognitive activity: the turbulent feeling of being afraid is our way of recognizing a potential threat as such. What is disclosed to us when we experience fear can be either a misconstrual of something harmless as a danger or an axiologically salient fact about the world. Yet only a being able to perceive itself as threatened is susceptible to becoming afraid. So the later chapters of Knowing Emotions turn to the background conditions of affective experience: for instance, why it is only if we care about the life and well-being of a person that we are disposed to react with fear when that person is threatened? Our emotional dispositions of love, care, and concern serve as conditions of possibility for the discovery of significance or value, enabling us to perceive what is meaningful.

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