"What we explore in Loneliness is something which underlies those occasional forms of personal loneliness which are familiar to us all. First, there is a cultural loneliness, characteristic of the modern world. Urban Americans, for example, are inherently lonely in a way that villagers in India are not. And then there is an even deeper loneliness that is a universal human experience, inherent in the human condition."--Jacket. pt. 1. Philosophies of loneliness: In praise of loneliness / Wesley J. Wildman -- Conscience: the lonely discourse / Daniel O. Dahlstrom. The solitudes of philosophy / William Desmond -- The uncaptive eye: solipsism in Wittgenstein's Tractatus / Juliet Floyd -- Floyd, Wittgenstein, and loneliness / Hilary Putnam -- Loneliness and solitude / Eliot Deutsch -- pt. 2. Literature and the lonely prophet: The loneliness of Moses / Elie Wiesel -- The loneliness of Koheleth / Ruth Anna Putnam -- The long loneliness of Dorothy Day / Daniel Berrigan -- Loneliness and poetry / Christopher Ricks -- pt. 3. Varieties of cultural loneliness: Being alone in the modern civitas / Lawrence Cahoone -- A room of one's own / Kathleen M. Sands -- Sex and the failure of intimacy / Dennis O'Brien -- A new Confucian lament for alienation / Robert Cummings Neville -- "Wander lonely as a rhinoceros" / Malcolm David Eckel.