Searching for Heroes

The line: A lonely place to be, and so I learned to depend on me—taken from the song The Greatest Love of All, at first appears to be the quintessential experience of loneliness, and a response to it. A number of neo-Aristotelians have defended the position that moral behavior is a category of behavior which is in part derived from our specific vulnerability as creatures who necessarily rely on the moral behaviors of other creatures like us. I argue that this vulnerability can be felt as an account of loneliness that is strengthened against Anca (ghea22s?) solitude as never-aloneness. According to the standard account of neo-Aristotelian vulnerability as developed by Alister Macintyre (1999) and (nuss01a?), as humans, we are creatures who only experience well-being in community with others to whom we share close relationships with, we are vulnerable in our need for, and reliance on such relationships. In a recent paper, Anca Gheaus (2022) defends an account of solitude as a panacea to loneliness. In this paper, I use a neo-Aristotelian account of vulnerability as an account of loneliness which I argue avoids Gheaus account of solitude. I then develop an account of solitude that addresses this loneliness in a way not achieved by Gheaus.