MEANINGS OF DEATH SEEN THROUGH THE LENS OF GRIEVING

Abstract

Through the lens of grief we can discern many meanings of death, human existence, suffering, the life of the deceased, the life of the mourner, and love. This essay summarizes what the author, in part inspired by Herman Feifel, has learned about such meanings in nearly three decades of thinking, teaching, and writing about grieving as an active response to what happens in bereavement and the suffering that loss entails. It recasts his rethinking of grief within the broad categories of philosophical reflection, including meta-theory and philosophy of science, conceptual analysis, existential–phenomenological analysis, philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics.

Notes

¹ A note on the phenomenology/epistemology of memory: The discussion of the book is based in an understanding of the essential nature of memory, the principal access we have to the dead and conscious awareness of the legacies they have left us. When we remember, we bring aspects of past life into present consciousness. We remember the person who died, not an image or internal representation of him or her, just as when we perceive another with any of our senses we perceive him or her, and not an internal representation. Yes, we can misremember, but we can also misperceive in virtually all of the same ways. There is nothing especially suspect about the reliability of memory. Moreover, it is too common in the literature on grieving to mistakenly claim that access to or relationship with someone who has died can only be through inner representation, because after all, he or she is not physically present. Memory itself only infrequently involves internal imagery or representation of any kind. And beyond remembering, a great part of the abiding relationship between the living and the dead is based in identifications with the dead that the living embody in their ways of doing things and being who they are. Recognition and appreciation of these identifications may require memory, but they are part of who we are whether we remember that they are. More extensive treatment of this thinking of memory must wait for another occasion.