Grief

That human beings are mortal, social, and interdependent ensures that virtually everyone experiences grief during the course of their lives. While it is arguable that we experience grief in response to a wide array of losses or life‐transforming events (e.g., divorce, loss of a job or career), this entry will focus on the paradigm cause of grief, namely, the death of a loved one. Despite the ubiquity of grief in human experience, philosophical interest in the topic has waxed and waned over the centuries. Grief was a central concern of the ancient Roman philosophical schools, serving as part of those schools’ larger project of using philosophy to investigate our own mortality and to prepare us for death. In contrast, interest in grief among contemporary ethicists has been sporadic and scant. Claims about the nature or value of grief are occasionally made, but rarely are they carefully interrogated or systematically engaged. As a result, we lack at present any developed philosophical “theories of grief.” This essay will not attempt to offer such a theory; rather, it addresses several interrelated ethical questions concerning grief, concluding by highlighting their interrelations.