Grief

Despite being one of life's most disruptive, painful, and puzzling experiences, grief has been rather neglected within philosophical scholarship until recently.Michael Cholbi helps to plug this gap with this clearly written guide, which addresses many of the most important philosophical questions surrounding grief.Due to its approachable style, the book will be of interest to the general reader as well as those engaged in related philosophical enquiries.It presents a distinctive account of grief as a process of emotionally-driven attention directed at one's lost or changed relationship with the deceased, and through which one can acquire significant self-knowledge.The first four chapters are devoted to setting up this account and looking at the value of grief, while the final three turn to further questions regarding grief's normative status.This review will briefly outline each chapter's contribution before providing some more critical discussion of the role given to self-knowledge in Cholbi's account.Chapter 1 considers the scope of grief by examining who we grieve.Cholbi convincingly argues that we grieve those in whom we invest our 'practical identities'-the set of commitments, concerns and values that guide our choices and actions.Grief does not require intimacy, love, attachment, or that the deceased contributed to one's wellbeing, despite such traits often featuring in our relationships with those we grieve.Chapter 2 looks more closely at the kind of experience that grief is and its intentional object.It is widely accepted that grief is not a single emotion, but rather some kind of temporally-extended process involving wide-ranging emotional and cognitive ingredients.This chapter sets out Cholbi's novel account of the nature of this process, taking it to be best characterised as one of emotionally driven attention, directed at the relationship one had with the deceased.Chapters 3 and 4 focus on grief's value, discussing an apparent tension between grief being painful but also seemingly having something to recommend it, such that it should not be avoided altogether.

Epistemology · Grief · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Philosophy · Psychology