ABSTRACTThis article addresses the question of whether certain experiences that originate in causes other than bereavement are properly termed ‘grief’. To do so, we focus on widespread experiences of grief that have been reported during the Covid-19 pandemic. We consider two potential objections to a more permissive use of the term: grief is, by definition, a response to a death; grief is subject to certain norms that apply only to the case of bereavement. Having shown that these objections are unconvincing, (...) we sketch a positive case for a conception of grief that is not specific to bereavement, by noting some features that grief following bereavement shares with other experiences of loss. (shrink)

Grief is often described as characterized by a particular emotional response to another person’s death. While this is true of paradigm cases, we argue that a broader notion of grief allows accommodating forms of this emotional experience that deviate from the paradigmatic case. The bulk of the paper explores such a nonparadigmatic form of grief, anticipatory-vicarious grief, which is typically triggered by pondering the inevitability of our own death. We argue that AV-grief is a particular moral emotion that serves a (...) unique function and is indissolubly linked to the practical identities of human agents. An agent’s AV-grief is about the harm that occurs to individuals whose practical identities depend on the agent. (shrink)

Suppose we suffer a loss, such as the death of a loved one. In light of her death, we will typically feel grief, as it seems we should. After all, our loved one’s death is a reason for grief. Yet with the passage of time, our grief will typically diminish, and this seems somehow all right. However, our reason for grief ostensibly remains the same, since the passage of time does not undo our loss. How, then, could it not be (...) wrong for grief to diminish? Or how are we to make sense of the diminution of grief? Do reasons expire? —The paper clarifies the puzzle and then considers four responses. It argues that all of them are inadequate and that there are principled reasons why this should be so: In experiencing grief we are apprehending a loss. Yet in our effort to understand the diminution of grief, we must apprehend ourselves. But because grief is not about ourselves, our apprehension of the diminution of grief is at odds with our apprehension of the object of grief. This gives rise to a kind of double-vision, which is why the puzzle eludes a solution. (shrink)

Our reluctance to demystify grief is a sign of the distinctive obligation and discomfort that people feel towards those who have died. These feelings, however, are instructive about the nature of grief. As a vehicle of a living person’s relation to the dead, grief is mysterious—and we are rightly reluctant to take that mystery away. But grief is not to be avoided by philosophy on that account. I defend a less Romantic view of grief, in which a grieving person’s experience (...) of “normal” grief: 1) is felt to require an objectively recognized loss; 2) is felt to be dedicated to that lost object; 3) seems to most people to be something that she ought to feel; and 4) probably ought not to be medicalized, nor consequently medicated. This view of grief affords an understanding and appreciation of this rather special and important emotion without reducing its mystery. (shrink)

In this paper we adopt Sterelny's framework of the scaffolded mind, and his related dimensional approach, to highlight the many ways in which human affectivity is environmentally supported. After discussing the relationship between the scaffolded-mind view and related frameworks, such as the extended-mind view, we illustrate the many ways in which our affective states are environmentally supported by items of material culture, other people, and their interplay. To do so, we draw on empirical evidence from various disciplines, and develop phenomenological (...) considerations to distinguish different ways in which we experience the world affectively. (shrink)

Grief is not a kind of feeling, or a kind of judgement, or a kind of perception, or any kind of mental state or event the identity of which can be adequately captured at a moment in time. Instead, grief is a kind of process; more specifically, it is a complex pattern of activity and passivity, inner and outer, which unfolds over time, and the unfolding pattern over time is explanatorily prior to what is the case at any particular time. (...) The pattern of a particular grieving is best understood and explained through a narrative account, and not merely through a causal account, for narrative accounts in such cases have powerful explanatory, revelatory, and expressive powers which causal accounts lack. Although I will not argue for it here, I believe that this view of grief can be generalised to other kinds of emotion. If this is so, then many philosophical accounts of emotion are at fault in identifying emotion with a kind of mental state or event. (shrink)

Various claims have been made concerning the role of narrative in grief. In this paper, we emphasize the need for a discerning approach, which acknowledges that narratives of different kinds relate to grief in different ways. We focus specifically on the positive contributions that narrative can make to sustaining, restoring and revising a sense of who one is. We argue that, although it is right to suggest that narratives provide structure and coherence, they also play a complementary role in disrupting (...) established structure and opening up new possibilities. We add that both of these roles point to the importance of interpersonal, social and cultural factors in shaping the trajectory of grief. We conclude by briefly considering the implications for distinguishing between typical and pathological forms of grief. (shrink)

An engaging and illuminating exploration of grief—and why, despite its intense pain, it can also help us grow Experiencing grief at the death of a person we love or who matters to us—as universal as it is painful—is central to the human condition. Surprisingly, however, philosophers have rarely examined grief in any depth. In Grief, Michael Cholbi presents a groundbreaking philosophical exploration of this complex emotional event, offering valuable new insights about what grief is, whom we grieve, and how grief (...) can ultimately lead us to a richer self-understanding and a fuller realization of our humanity. Drawing on psychology, social science, and literature as well as philosophy, Cholbi explains that we grieve for the loss of those in whom our identities are invested, including people we don't know personally but cherish anyway, such as public figures. Their deaths not only deprive us of worthwhile experiences; they also disrupt our commitments and values. Yet grief is something we should embrace rather than avoid, an important part of a good and meaningful life. The key to understanding this paradox, Cholbi says, is that grief offers us a unique and powerful opportunity to grow in self-knowledge by fashioning a new identity. Although grief can be tumultuous and disorienting, it also reflects our distinctly human capacity to rationally adapt as the relationships we depend on evolve. An original account of how grieving works and why it is so important, Grief shows how the pain of this experience gives us a chance to deepen our relationships with others and ourselves. (shrink)

This paper argues for an understanding of emotion based upon Merleau-Ponty's conceptions of embodiment and passivity. Through a critical assessment of cognitive theories of emotion, and in particular Solomon's theory, it argues (1) that there is a sense in which emotions may be judgments, so long as we understand such judgments as bodily enactments of meaning, but (2) that even understood in this way, the notion of judgment (or construal) can only account for a subset of emotions which I call (...) "emotional clichés," and not for authentic passions. In contrast with Solomon's account which conceives the subject as constituting, this account of emotion requires us to understand subjectivity as moved by meanings in the world, and as sometimes, in an authentic passion, dispossessed by those meanings. (shrink)

The philosophy of grief has directed little attention to bereavement’s impact on perceptual experience. However, misperceptions, hallucinations and other anomalous experiences are strikingly common following the death of a loved one. Such experiences range from misperceiving a stranger to be the deceased, to phantom sights, sounds and smells, to nebulous quasi-sensory experiences of the loved one’s presence. This paper draws upon the enactive sensorimotor theory of perception to offer a phenomenologically sensitive and empirically informed account of these experiences. It argues (...) that they can be understood as deriving from disruption to both sensorimotor expectations and perceived opportunities for action, stemming from the upheaval of bereavement. Different facets of the enactive sensorimotor approach can help to explain different types of post-bereavement perceptual experience. Post-bereavement misperceptions can be accounted for through the way that alterations to sensorimotor expectations can result in atypical ‘amodal completion’, while bereavement hallucinations can be understood as ‘appearances’ that fail to form part of the usual patterns of sensorimotor contingency. Quasi-sensory experiences of the presence of the deceased can be understood as resulting from changes to perceived affordances. This paper aims to demonstrate the explanatory value of key aspects of the sensorimotor approach by highlighting how they can help to explain the phenomenology of post-bereavement experiences. However, it also illuminates certain areas in which the sensorimotor approach ought to be supplemented, especially if it is to account for tight connections between perception, affect, and intersubjectivity that are salient in grief. (shrink)

This paper shows how phenomenological research can enhance our understanding of what it is to experience grief. I focus specifically on themes in the work of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, in order to develop an account that emphasizes two importantly different ways of experiencing indeterminacy. This casts light on features of grief that are disorienting and difficult to describe, while also making explicit an aspect of experience upon which the possibility of phenomenological inquiry itself depends.