Philosophy Speaker Series - Matthew Ratcliffe (Durham University)

Topic: The Phenomenology of Grief

Abstract: This paper offers some preliminary reflections on the phenomenology of grief. I first consider why the world as a whole often seems profoundly different following bereavement, and interpret this in terms of the effect upon habitual routines, projects, pastimes and commitments, the intelligibility of which depended upon the deceased. The bereaved person often alternates between retention and loss of habitual ways of experiencing the shared world. There are also more localised experiences of presence (including experiences of relating to and interacting with the deceased) and of absence. I then turn to another aspect of grief, which we might call a ‘second-person experience of death’. If my characterisation of this is right, it involves a distinctive and seldom recognised kind of second-person relation.