The Lonely Man of Faith

by Joseph B. Soloveitchik

But Adam the Second has different goals. To begin with, he is interested not in how things work but in why the cosmos exists at all and what message it carries. In his inner life, furthermore, he experiences loneliness, by which Rabbi Soloveitchik means an awareness of his differentness and uniqueness, which entail an inability to communicate his experience. One can be lonely (in this sense) even while not alone.

Adam the first exists in society, in community with others. He is a social being, gregarious, communicative, emphasizing the artistic aspect in life and giving priority to form over content, to literary expression over the eidos, to practical accomplishments over inner motivation. He is blessed with the gift of rhetoric, with the faculty of communication, be it the beautiful word, the efficacious machine, the socially acceptable ethic-etiquette, or the hush of the solemn memorial assembly.

Adam the second suddenly finds out that he is alone, that he has alienated himself from the world of the brute and the instinctual mechanical state of an outward existence, while he has failed to ally himself with the intelligent, purposive inward beings who inhabit the new world into which he has entered.