Philosophy and Personal Loss

Dunston, Susan

doi:10.1353/jsp.2010.0007

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Nevertheless, a common theme is the revelation of an indeterminacy that lurks beneath the world of everyday experience and is seldom explicitly acknowledged . As the philosopher Susan Dunston (, p. 166) writes, reflecting on her own experience of grief, we are “immersed in a fluid world that fixed, representative, and codified facts scarcely touch.”…”

Section: Grief and The Phenomenological Reductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a phenomenology of grief: Insights from Merleau‐Ponty

Ratcliffe

2019

European J of Philosophy

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This paper shows how phenomenological research can enhance our understanding of what it is to experience grief. I focus specifically on themes in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in order to develop an account that emphasizes two importantly different ways of experiencing indeterminacy. This casts light on features of grief that are disorienting and difficult to describe, while also making explicit an aspect of experience upon which the possibility of phenomenological inquiry itself depends. 1 | INTRODUCTION Following the sudden death of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in 1961, Jean-Paul Sartre writes in his memorial essay "Merleau-Ponty vivant" that "Merleau is still too much alive for anyone to be able to describe him." Instead, he opts to "approach" Merleau-Ponty by reflecting on their friendship and the course of events that shaped it (Sartre, 1998, p. 565). How should we understand Sartre's remark? In what follows, I will interpret it as pointing to some elusive but central aspects of the phenomenology of grief: an interplay of presence, absence, and indeterminacy that pervades the world of the bereaved and includes-sometimes at least-an enduring sense of connection with the deceased. These aspects of grief can, I will suggest, be illuminated by drawing on some central themes in Merleau-Ponty's own work. One could maintain that death involves the extinction of a person's life-possibilities and, in addition, that it is experienced as such by those who grieve for that person and fully comprehend the fact of her death. This is where Claude Lefort places the emphasis in his foreword to Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible. He writes of how the sudden death of a friend or relative "opens an abyss before us," as we are confronted with the silence of a voice that seemed "destined to speak always" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, xi). However, the recognition of absence is just one feature of grief. In addition, there is usually some sense of continuing connection with the deceased. In what follows, I seek to illuminate both these aspects of grief, by focusing specifically on the relationship between two importantly

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Section: Grief and The Phenomenological Reductionmentioning

confidence: 99%