Hannah Arendt,
‘Terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other… Therefore, one of the primary concerns of all tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about. Isolation may be the beginning of terror; it certaintly is its most fertile ground; it always is its result. This isolation is, as it were, pre-totalitarian; its hallmark is impotence insofar as power always comes from men acting together… isolated men are powerless by definition.’
Hannah Arendt, ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’ 2PPndPP enlarged Edn, Meridian Books (1971)
"Arendt thus describes loneliness as the anxiety we have over the loss of self that occurs upon being severed from a common world that can confirm the truth of our experience. She explains that this anxiety causes individuals to lose trust in who they are and "the elementary confidence in the world which is necessary to make experiences at all. Self and world, the capacity for thought and experience are lost at the same time”. Upon falling into despair over this loss of self and the surrounding world, we become disoriented; loneliness overwhelms us with doubt and uncertainty regarding the truth of our experience in the world, leaving us without a tangible reality in which to ground ourselves. For this reason, Arendt says, the feeling of loneliness is "among the most radical and desperate experiences of man."
24T24TGaffney, J. (2016). ‘Another Origin of Totalitarianism: Arendt on the Loneliness of Liberal Citizens’ Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 47(1), 1-17. 24T24T34T34Thttps://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2015.109740534T
