In works on philosophy and psychology, when considering the phenomenon of loneliness, along with this concept, the terms isolation, alienation, solitude, abandonment are used. Some researchers use these concepts as synonymous, others differentiate them. From the point of view of the author’s position on the influence of loneliness on a person, we can talk about at least three different approaches. The first group consists of works that place a greater emphasis on the tragedy of loneliness and its connection with anxiety and helplessness. Another group includes works that unconditionally attribute to loneliness a painful, but still creative function, leading to personal growth and individuation. And, finally, works whose authors distinguish between loneliness, solitude and isolation according to the impact these phenomena have on a person. According to the ancient philosopher Epictetus, “lonely in its concept means that someone is deprived of help and left to those who wish to harm him.” But at the same time, “if someone is alone, this does not mean that he is thereby lonely, just as if someone is in a crowd, this does not mean that he is not alone” [16, p.243 ]. The prominent thinker of the twentieth century, Erich Fromm, among other existential dichotomies, highlights the isolation of a person and at the same time his connection with his neighbors. At the same time, he emphasizes that loneliness stems from the awareness of one’s own uniqueness, not being identical to anyone [13, p.48]. “This is the awareness of oneself as a separate entity, the awareness of the brevity of one’s life path, the awareness that one was born regardless of one’s will and will die against one’s will; < > awareness of his loneliness and alienation, his helplessness before the forces of nature and society - all this turns his lonely, isolated existence into real hard labor" [12, p. 144 – 145]. Fromm calls the deepest human need the need to overcome one's alienation, which he associates with the inability to defend oneself and actively influence the world. “The feeling of complete loneliness leads to mental destruction, just as physical hunger leads to death,” he writes [11, p. 40]. Arthur Schopenhauer is one of the prominent representatives of the philosophical position that defends the positive role of loneliness in a person’s life: “A person can be completely himself only as long as he is alone...” [15, p. 286]. Tracing the age-related dynamics of the development of the need for solitude, the philosopher rightly notes that for an infant, and even a young man, loneliness is a punishment. In his opinion, the tendency to isolation and loneliness is the native element of a mature man and an old man, a consequence of the growth of their spiritual and intellectual powers. Schopenhauer is deeply convinced that loneliness weighs down empty and empty people: “Alone with himself, a wretched person feels his wretchedness, and a great mind feels all its depth: in a word, everyone then recognizes himself as what he is” [15, p. 286]. Schopenhauer considers the attraction to isolation and loneliness to be an aristocratic feeling and arrogantly remarks: “Every rabble is pitifully sociable” [15, p. 293]. Loneliness, according to the philosopher, is the lot of all outstanding minds and noble souls. The German philosopher F. Nietzsche, in Zarathustra’s speech “The Return,” sings a tragic hymn to loneliness: “O loneliness! You are my homeland, loneliness! I have lived too long wild in a wild foreign land so as not to return to you with tears!” There he contrasts two hypostases of loneliness: “One thing is abandonment, another is solitude...” [6, p.131]. A piercing note of loneliness is heard in the reflections of the Russian philosopher and writer V.V. Rozanov about the inappropriateness of man: “No matter what I do, no matter who I see, I cannot merge with anything. < >The person is “solo”. Rozanov’s feeling of loneliness reaches such a degree of acuteness that he notes bitterly: “... a strange feature of my psychology lies in such a strong feeling of emptiness around me - emptiness, silence and non-existence around and everywhere - thatI barely know, I barely believe, I barely admit that other people are “contemporaries” with me” [7, p.81]. Confessing his love for human unity, V.V. Rozanov, however, concludes: “But when I am alone, I am complete, and when I am with everyone, I am not complete. I’m still better off alone” [8, p.56]. From the point of view of the domestic religious philosopher N.A. Berdyaev, the problem of loneliness is the main problem of human existence. He considers the source of loneliness to be the emerging consciousness and self-awareness. In his work “Self-Knowledge” N.A. Berdyaev admits that loneliness was painful for him and, just like Nietzsche, adds: “Sometimes loneliness brought joy, like returning from an alien world to one’s native world” [1, p.42]. And in the reflections that “I felt loneliness most in society, in communication with people,” “I am not in my homeland, not in the homeland of my spirit, in a world alien to me,” one can also hear the intonations of Nietzsche. According to N.A. Berdyaev, loneliness is associated with rejection of the world given, with disharmony between “I” and “not-I”: “In order not to be lonely, you need to say “we” and not “I.” Nevertheless, the thinker emphasizes that loneliness is valuable, and its value lies in the fact that it is “the moment of loneliness that gives birth to the personality, the self-awareness of the individual” [2, p.283]. In unison with Berdyaev, the lines of Ivan Ilyin sound, whom experts consider one of the most insightful Russian thinkers: “In solitude a person finds himself, the strength of his character and the holy source of life” [5, p. 86]. However, the experience of one’s personality, one’s peculiarity, uniqueness, one’s dissimilarity with anyone and nothing in the world is acute and painful: “In my loneliness, in my existence within myself, I not only acutely experience and realize my personality, my own specialness and uniqueness , but I also yearn for a way out of loneliness, I yearn for communication not with an object, but with another, with you, with us” [2, p. 284]. The French philosopher and writer J.-P. Sartre, taking as the starting point of existentialism the idea that “if there is no God, then everything is permitted,” put in by F.M. Dostoevsky, in the mouth of one of the Karamazov brothers, connects the concepts of loneliness and freedom: “... if God does not exist, and therefore a person is abandoned, he has nothing to rely on either within himself or outside. < > We are alone and we have no apologies. This is what I express in words: man is condemned to be free” [9, p.327]. The famous American psychotherapist Irwin Yalom uses the concepts of isolation and loneliness interchangeably and distinguishes interpersonal, intrapersonal and existential isolation. “Interpersonal isolation, usually experienced as loneliness, is isolation from other individuals,” writes I. Yalom [17, p. 398]. He considers the reasons for interpersonal isolation to be a wide range of phenomena from geographical and cultural factors to the characteristics of an individual experiencing conflicting feelings towards loved ones. Intrapersonal isolation, according to Yalom, “is a process through which a person separates parts of himself from each other” [17, p. 399]. This happens as a result of an excessive focus on various kinds of oughts and distrust of one’s own feelings, desires, and judgments. Yalom figuratively calls existential isolation the valley of loneliness, believing it to be the separation of the individual from the world. Following the existential philosophers, he connects this type of loneliness with the phenomena of freedom, responsibility and death. Heidegger’s “The world of presence is a shared world” [14, p. 118] inspires optimism and reassurance. But literally after a few paragraphs you stumble over lines that at first perception sound paradoxical, dissonant with the previous thesis: “The loneliness of presence is also an event in the world” [14, p. 120]. Heidegger's attribution of the phenomenon of loneliness to a defective mode of co-existence puts everything in its place. Without a shadow of regret, regret or reproach, the philosopher states that “presence is usually and most often maintained in defective modes of care. To be for each other, against each other, without each other, to pass by each other, not to care about each otherare possible ways of caring” [14, p.121]. The fact that “a second instance of a person, or perhaps ten of them, happened next to me” is by no means a guarantee of salvation from loneliness, Heidegger believes. Nietzsche wrote about it this way: “...you were more abandoned in the crowd than you ever were alone with me” [6, p.159]. Thoreau literally echoes both authors: “We are often lonelier among people than in the quiet of our rooms” [10, p. 161]. It seems self-evident that “loneliness in a crowd” becomes possible precisely because co-presence occurs “in the mode of indifference and alienation.” “This is loneliness in the world of objects, in the objectified world,” N. Berdyaev writes about this [2, p. 286]. Indifference or defectiveness in everyday life with each other becomes an obstacle to eliminating loneliness. However, the basis of presence according to Heidegger is still the everyday being-in-the-world of people [14, p.177]. In the view of M. Buber, “there are two types of loneliness, in accordance with what it is addressed to.” There is loneliness, which Buber calls a place of purification and believes that a person cannot do without it. But loneliness can also be “a stronghold of disunity, where a person conducts a dialogue with himself not in order to test and explore himself before meeting what awaits him, but in self-indulgence contemplates the formation of his soul, then this is a real fall of spirit, his sliding into spirituality” [4, p.75]. To be lonely means to feel “alone with a world that has become... alien and unpleasant,” says M. Buber. In his opinion, “in every era, loneliness becomes colder and harsher, and it is more and more difficult to escape from it” [3, p. 200]. Describing the modern state of man, Buber poetically characterizes it “as an unprecedented in its scale fusion of social and cosmic homelessness, fear of the world and fear of life in a life-sensation of unprecedented loneliness” [3, p.228]. Buber thinks of salvation from the despair of loneliness, overcoming the tearing feeling of being both a “foundling of nature” and an “outcast among the noisy human world” in a special vision of the world on which the concept of “Between” is based - “the true place and bearer of interhuman existence.” “When a loner recognizes the Other in all his otherness as himself, i.e. as a person, and will break through to this Other from the outside, only then will he break through his loneliness in this direct and transformative meeting” [3, p.229]. LIST OF REFERENCES Berdyaev N.A. 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