By Silvia Ayuso (
El País
)
Marjan Bouwmeester is not the first philosopher to take an interest in loneliness.
Many, over the centuries, have considered the question, and in
El cielo vacío
("
The empty sky
", Siruela, not yet translated into French), the Dutch thinker invokes several of her predecessors, including Blaise Pascal and Simone de Beauvoir, who inspired the title of this book dedicated to a question that increasingly concerns our societies and our governments.
The confinement did not change Bouwmeester's conception of loneliness, but it did allow him to think more about the difference between "
being alone
",
loneliness
in English, which expresses a voluntary decision and positive, and the fact of
feeling lonely
”, this feeling of
loneliness
which is the pain of being alone.
In her native country, where she publishes under her surname, Slob (Bouwmeester is a pseudonym, her mother's maiden name, which she chose in homage to her)…
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