Abstract
The paper considers various ruminations on the aftermath of the death of a close or loved one, and the processes of grieving and mourning. The conceptual examination of how grief impacts on its sufferers, from different cultural perspectives, is followed by an analytical survey of current thinking among psychologists, psychoanalysts and philosophers on the enigma of grief, and on the associated process of mourning. Robert C. Solomon reflected deeply on the ‘extreme emotion’ of grief in his extensive theorizing on the emotions, particularly in his essay ‘On Grief and Gratitude’, commenting that grief is ‘often described as a very private, personal emotion, characterized by social withdrawal and shutting oneself off from the world’ (Solomon RC, On grief and gratitude. In: In defense of sentimentality. Oxford University Press, New York, 2004: 73). While dialoguing with the spirit of Solomon by way also of a tribute to his immense insights, the paper engages in critical reflections on recent thinking in this area elsewhere—notably, in Heidegger, Freud, Nussbaum, Casey, Gustafson, and Kristeva—and offers a refreshing critique toward an alternative to the received wisdom.
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Notes
- 1.
Here I have been greatly assisted (indeed guided) by very helpful and poignant responses (virtual summaries) to the read draft version from Edward S. Casey, to whom I am most grateful. Some of the paragraphs in the theoretical reflections are cited verbatim, in places without quotation marks, if in a talking-paper of this nature one can assume and exercise this indiscretion. (See note 2.)
- 2.
The quotations here are the response (plus personal communication of Edward Casey to the first draft of my paper, presented at the Stony Brook-Manhattan conference on ‘Living with Grief: Coping with Public Tragedy’ in 2003).
- 3.
Witness, for example, self-grieving of dog Devi, and grief on the face of Rasa, baby-dog, and their carers, honored with canine last rites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGBsWllRep4; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d0iN4COY78; and www.pbilimo.com
- 4.
See Solomon’s comment in his review of Nussbaum (poignant for his critical retraction, siding with the so-called Adversary): ‘…can you make all of the evaluative judgments that supposedly constitute the emotion and nevertheless not have that emotion? I have come to the conclusion after many years that the Adversary (now reinforced with some powerful studies in neurobiology) must be reckoned with, and that my old, rather ruthless line between those cognitive features of emotion that are essential and those non-cognitive features of emotion that are not essential was (in the context of the time) heuristic and is no longer so. (Nussbaum insists on necessary and sufficient conditions in her study, p. 62.)’ (Solomon 2002: 900).
- 5.
This sorely woody poem (excerpted here) describing Edgar Allen Poe’s melancholia at loss of his beloved Lenore, was first published in 1845.
- 6.
This śloka summarizes the contour of this inquiry.
- 7.
This essay had its genesis in a spiel I was asked to present by Bob Solomon at the launch of the volume Thinking About Feeling, in the University of Texas, Austin; I was to speak on my chapter ‘Perturbations of Desire’ in the collection (Solomon 2003). This was circa December 2002, shortly after a personal tragedy that engaged me intensely in this hermeneutic of the raw feelings I was undergoing, which also had me re-think the hitherto abstract theorizing on the emotions. I learnt a lot discussing this essay as it evolved, with Bob Solomon and Kathleen Higgins; I am grateful to Kathleen for including it in a publication that honors Solomon’s profound legacy, in the special issue of Sophia on Robert C. Solomon and the Spiritual Passions (2011, 50/2: 281–301), which she guest edited. It is presented here with some revisions. And my gratitude also goes out to: Shannon Magree (‘Ravenswood’), Nina Rühle, Joseph Prabhu, Chris Chapple, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; the Bilimoria, Sharma, Singh, Giborees, Kelvin & Tuttle, Chauhan, Komesaroff families; Jayant Bapat, Rashmi Desai, Steffie Lewis, Rich & Denis, Peter Wong, Greg Bailey, Patrick Hutchings Esq, Joe Loizzo, Robert Thurman, John Koller, Sue Ren & Xing Xiang, Ian Weeks, Max Charlesworth, caring colleagues and staff at Deakin and Melbourne Universities, at NIAS, NIMHANS, SSRI (Bangalore); J. N. Mohanty, Shivesh Thakur, H.H. Dalia Lama, Jay Garfield, Hope & Stephen Phillips, (the late) Hazel Rowley, Ed Casey, Sridhars (Stony Brook), Sridhars (Bangalore), Brahmaputra, Mahboob, Ammas (Parthi), Chris Zvokel, Patrick Olivelle, David Carr, Laurie Patton, Thee Smith and friends in Emory, Ganga-Vidya-Vikram, Tinara Benson, Devi-Rasa, Maya, Lisa; Sophia workers: Natassia Kaufman, Serena O’Meley, Amy Rayner, Sherah Bloor, Sara Kerr,; Maxine Therese, Panayiota Karnis, Maureen Voicer, (late) Selva Raj, (late) Jagdish Sharma, Surabhi, Elizabeth Ann Kaplan, Hugh Silverman, Peter Smith; and last not least (presentia in absentia) Renuka M. Sharma also contributed to my understanding and coming to terms with this more challenging of creaturely emotions. Of course, there have been other interlocutors, support-givers, and carers, in parts of the world, too numerous to name here, whose insights, questions and wisdom, have added succor to the arduous journey. To be sure, an inner journey that never does really have an end-point: one is always ‘On The Way’, as Heidegger reminded us poignantly in the context of Dasein’s ontic-ontological quest for meaning of being, non-being and self-actualizing authenticity. I have journeyed through this ‘thrownness’ that I found myself unwittingly confronted by, with the same philosophical-cum-spiritual passion that I have and despite all do remain engaged in my other intellectual pursuits.
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Bilimoria, P. (2012). Of Grief and Mourning: Thinking a Feeling, Back to Robert Solomon. In: Higgins, K., Sherman, D. (eds) Passion, Death, and Spirituality. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4650-3_12
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