Towards a phenomenology of grief: Insights from Merleau‐Ponty

Abstract

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

Grief, disorientation, and futurity

“…As widely noted, with the loss of a loved person, the bereaved undergoes a disturbance of a world of shared practical meaning insofar as it was bound up with and dependent on the deceased in a range of ways (cf. Fuchs, 2018;Ratcliffe, 2015aRatcliffe, , 2019Ratcliffe, , 2020. The more time George spends with Jim and the longer they live together, the more profound the effects on George's beingin-the-world.…”

Grief’s impact on sensorimotor expectations: an account of non-veridical bereavement experiences

“…The claim that bereavement involves the violation of sensorimotor expectations relates to complementary research highlighting the important ways in which one is habituated towards the presence of others (e.g., Fuchs, 2018;Køster, 2020Køster, , 2021Ratcliffe, 2020aRatcliffe, , 2020b and the role that this plays in bereavement phenomenology. Køster (2020Køster ( , 2021 outlines how one's bodily memories of the deceased play a role in the sensing the continued presence of the deceased.…”

“…A further way in which bereavement's disruption is distinctive is that, as researchers have highlighted elsewhere, the intelligibility of one's projects, activities and routines can hinge upon another person so that when that person dies, these ways of engaging with the world cease to make sense altogether (e.g., Maclaren, 2011;Ratcliffe, 2020a). 13 For example, as Ratcliffe (2020a, p. 659) highlights, one's activities and projects may be for the other person, thus ceasing to be comprehensible if that person dies.…”

Loneliness, Love, and the Limits of Language

“…Although existential loneliness is a background attunement toward the world of others that as such concerns our being‐in‐the‐world as a whole, it nonetheless can be caused or fostered by specific experiences, most importantly the loss or failure of a love. The death of a beloved person may leave us behind all alone, not only confronting us with the irretrievability of the specific other whom we have lost but also with the painful awareness that we never will be able to love and be loved (like this) again (Ratcliffe 2020). The failure of a love through which we have hoped to become ourselves may leave us not only as having failed in this specific relationship but also as incapable or undeserving of love from now on.…”