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Today solitude, or lack of communication, is experienced as something negative. It has become connected with the divorce of the individual from the collective and also with the loss of religious faith.
In an interesting analysis of the factors that have contributed to this state of affairs, Filiasi (1962) points to the importance of:
The development of individualism resulting from the convergence of humanism and the Renaissance on the one hand, and the Protestant Reformation on the other.
The empiricism and rationalism of modern philosophy which accentuate the opposition between subject and object, and the exclusive importance attributed to consciousness (whether sensory experience or reason) over against a devalued unconscious.
The development of a mechanistic science of nature, and the consequent enormous development of technique.
The persistence of an authoritative and repressive morality which, based above all on the concept of guilt, discourages spontaneity and represses the free expression of feelings.
The existence of a capitalistic economy in which free competition and the class struggle multiply occasions for friction and social conflict.
It is not difficult to see that these factors derive from the typically masculine existential pattern which we are accustomed to recognize in our present civilization. Active objectification and abstraction are its hall-marks.
Marcuse (1962, p. 99) writes: