Loss: the ultimate philosophical problem

Abstract

This paper draws on Jan Zwicky’s claim in Lyric Philosophy that loss is the ultimate philosophical problem and Wittgenstein’s attitude to philosophy in his Culture and Value that: ‘philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition’. This paper will enter the difficult territory of loss using poetry and reflections to engage loss as a spiritual challenge and perhaps one of the major forces shaping cultural ways. Death inescapably brings loss into life for those who remain after a death but loss has many other forms and is a persistent experience in living that touches every stage of the life journey. It is a philosophical problem rooted in common human experience from childhood on that has been addressed in a multitude of forms, conceptualizations, rituals, belief systems and religions. As a method, poetry is a way of inquiry that allows one to enter experience and meet the intensity of events, particularly loss. In her essay ‘Entering the Bird Cage: Poetry and Perceptibility’, Jane Hirschfield says that poetry allows us ‘to understand the world beyond the narrow self’ and to do so ‘it is necessary to be available to the unknown’ and loss moves experience into the unknown.

Keywords:

• loss
• poetry as method
• philosophy

Notes

1. All of the poems in the paper are the work of the author and are published in Daniel G. Scott (2012) black onion except for the following: my feet will always be wet, he will always be lost; the sorrow of mothers; the hardest thing letting go; and leave the dead to the dead. All of the poems are used with permission of the author.