Grief, disorientation, and futurity

Abstract

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.

The Depths of Temporal Desynchronization in Grief

“…Further commensurate with melancholic depression, Fuchs argues that the mourner's concern with the past necessarily then impacts their relation to the future, in the sense that "the future is no longer experienced as an open horizon of possibilities and projects" ( [12] p. 51). This affirms recent accounts given by Kelly [8], Mehmel [9], and Ratcliffe [1] which emphasize the loss of futural possibilities in grief. For Kelly ([8] pp.…”

“…This is consistent with the interpretation of Solomon [28], who similarly emphasizes that grief involves the painful reckoning with the fact that the loved one is “ not there .” For Solomon ([28] p. 80), this reckoning is necessarily grounded in memory, which means that “grief refers the present to the past, the past remembered.” Further commensurate with melancholic depression, Fuchs argues that the mourner’s concern with the past necessarily then impacts their relation to the future, in the sense that “the future is no longer experienced as an open horizon of possibilities and projects” ([12] p. 51). This affirms recent accounts given by Kelly [8], Mehmel [9], and Ratcliffe [1] which emphasize the loss of futural possibilities in grief. For Kelly ([8] pp.…”

“…Exemplified by Riley's [3] influential Time Lived, without Its Flow, it is common for firstperson accounts of bereavement to stress that grief can radically affect the experience of time 1 . Indeed, there has been increasing recognition in philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology that time is often "out of joint" in grief [1,[6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. One of the most productive interpretations of this disjointed time is given by Fuchs [12] in his recent article "Presence in absence: the ambiguous phenomenology of grief."…”

Transformative grief

“…However, I would venture that, to be grief, an experience must be more than an adjustment to a loss. The loss must be valuable-this can be captured by the notion, for instance, of an investment of one's practical identity (Cholbi, 2019(Cholbi, , 2021, importance to one's flourishing (Nussbaum, 2001), inclusion in one's orientation to the future (Mehmel, 2021) or the presence of a system of possibilities associated with the lost object (Ratcliffe, 2019b. Moreover, grieving involves not only an adjustment to a loss but an avowal of its value.…”

Grief over Non-Death Losses

“…Grief is thus distinctive insofar as it involves recognising and comprehending the implications of lost possibilities for the structure of one's life or world, and -over time -coming to reorganise one's life accordingly (Attig, 2011;Ratcliffe, 2017aRatcliffe, , 2017bRatcliffe, , 2019Ratcliffe, , 2020Fuchs, 2018;Read, 2018;Mehmel, 2021;Ratcliffe and Byrne, 2022). In referring to an experiential world, life structure, or sense of identity, what we have in mind is a network of interrelated projects, commitments, relationships, and expectations, which could be loosely termed a person's distinctive "value system".…”