Finding the Good in Grief: What Augustine Knew that Meursault Could Not

Cholbi, Michael

doi:10.1017/apa.2017.15

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…I nonetheless suspect that disorientation is likely to always occur in at least those profound cases that I am concerned with here. 5 The recent work of Cholbi (2017Cholbi ( , 2019 provides a useful starting point. Cholbi's primary concern is with the complex process of grief as a whole, rather than the self-regarding component of disorientation that is (often) involved in, and one specific emotional component of, grief.…”

Section: Disorientation and Habitual Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grief, disorientation, and futurity

Mehmel

2021

Phenom Cogn Sci

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This paper seeks to develop a phenomenological account of the disorientation of grief, specifically the relationship between disorientation and the breakdown in practical self-understanding at the heart of grief. I argue that this breakdown cannot be sufficiently understood as a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space that leaves the bereaved individual at a loss as to how to go on. Examining the experience of losing a loved person and a loved person-to-be, I instead propose that this breakdown should be understood primarily in relation to a distinctive kind of futurity operative in disorientation, irrespective of the extent to which there is a breakdown of formerly shared practices and habitual patterns of navigating lived-in space. Drawing on the resources afforded by Heidegger’s phenomenology, I argue that it is a core characteristic of the experience of disorientation in grief that the grieving person can no longer meaningfully press ahead into a specific futural self. This view comes with certain advantages over existing accounts of the temporality of grief for making sense of the disorientated relationship to futurity, which the appeal to Heideggerian resources makes possible.

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Section: Disorientation and Habitual Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grief, disorientation, and futurity

Mehmel

2021

Phenom Cogn Sci

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“…Grief may appear to be an experience focused on endings: the ending of a loved person's life, the ending of a relationship, the ending of expectations about a shared life together. However, the "continuing bonds" approach to grief, which is widely accepted among psychologists and has in recent years been endorsed by various philosophers of grief (e.g., Higgins 2013;Norlock 2017;Cholbi 2019), tells us that rather than grief involving the severing of one's relationship with a loved one, it instead often involves the continuation of it in an adjusted form. This approach builds upon the idea that grief is in some sense a continuation of love (e.g., as has been expressed by Solomon [2004]), and the framework is made plausible by first-person accounts that indicate feelings of continuation of one's relationship as well as behavioral evidence that people engage in activities aimed at sustaining one's relationships with the dead.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grief, Continuing Bonds, and Unreciprocated Love

Millar¹,

Lopez-Cantero²

2022

The Southern J of Philosophy

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The widely accepted "continuing bonds" model of grief tells us that rather than bereavement necessitating the cessation of one's relationship with the deceased, very often the relationship continues instead in an adapted form. However, this framework appears to conflict with philosophical approaches that treat reciprocity or mutuality of some form as central to loving relationships. Seemingly the dead cannot be active participants, rendering it puzzling how we should understand claims about continued relationships with them. In this article, we resolve this tension by highlighting two fundamental aspects of paradigmatic loving relationships that can, and often do, continue in an adapted form following bereavement: love and mutual shaping of interests, choices, and self-concepts. Attention to these continuing features of relationships helps to capture and clarify the phenomenological and behavioral features of continuing bonds. However, love and mutual shaping must also change in important ways following bereavement. Love becomes unreciprocated, and although the dead continue to shape our interests, choices, and self-concepts, we predominantly shape their legacies

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“…And, more generally, neither do I want to suggest that whenever the bereaved subject experiences the loss of a possibility previously sustained by the deceased, they experience a part of themselves as missing. Even if Cholbi is correct that grief is invariably for those with whom we have “identity constituting relationships” (Cholbi, 2017, p. 99) not every possibility previously sustained by someone who we have lost will be central to our self‐conception. For instance, Amy might have thought of herself as sociable and friendly, but not as especially competent at everyday tasks and thus feel diminished by her experience at the party in case 2, but not by her trip to the supermarket in case 1.…”

Section: A Structural Account Of the Profound Absence Experiences Of ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, Cholbi argues that the good of the grief process is that, in disclosing “aspects of our personalities and practical identities” it can yield self‐knowledge. (Cholbi, 2017, p. 102) and Goldie argues that it is in virtue of the narrative structure of the grief process that its heterogenous elements hang together. (Goldie, 2012, p. 69).…”

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confidence: 99%

Absence experience in grief

Richardson

2022

European J of Philosophy

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In this paper, I consider the implications of grief for philosophical theorising about absence experience. I argue that whilst some absence experiences that occur in grief might be explained by extant philosophical accounts of absence experience, others need different treatment. I propose that grieving subjects' descriptions of feeling as if the world seems empty or a part of them seems missing can be understood as referring to a distinctive type of absence experience. In these profound absence experiences, I will argue, the absence of a person as a condition on various possibilities is made manifest in the structure of experience over time. Thus, by paying close attention to grief, we can see that even accounts of absence experience that are presented as in competition with one another may not be so, and that to explain all kinds of absence experience we sometimes need to appeal to something overlooked in other accounts, and which is neither straightforwardly perceptual or cognitive. I also suggest that we would have good reason to take such experiences to be part of and not merely psychological effects of grief.If there is any time in a life when we might expect experiences of absence to occur, it is during a period of grieving.After all, grief is a response to loss. Thus, we might hope that a philosophical account of absence experiences will be able to accommodate those that occur in grief. The philosophical debate about absence experience is primarily between perceptual and non-perceptual theorists. Focussing on cases in which a particular entity is saliently missing from the subject's surrounding environment, there has been disagreement about whether one can perceptually experience such an absence or whether instead the absence is experienced in virtue of having some other cognitive

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Finding the Good in Grief: What Augustine Knew that Meursault Could Not

Cited by 7 publications

References 15 publications

Grief, disorientation, and futurity

Grief, disorientation, and futurity

Grief, Continuing Bonds, and Unreciprocated Love

Absence experience in grief

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