Grief

 

A robot cannot grieve. Stoics want to limit our dispositions to grieve. In this posting I want to examine grief. This examination was prompted by John Danaher’s examination of coping with grief , my examination not a direct response to that of Danaher. The purpose of my examination is threefold. First is grief a useful emotion? Secondly how grief is related to love and does this point to the emotions being connected. Lastly I will consider how much grief is appropriate. I will conclude that to be fully human someone must be prepared to accept vulnerability and with vulnerability comes grief. Prior to my examination we must define grief. Roughly speaking grief is distress caused by someone’s death. Grief has a focus, the death of a loved one and as such is a genuine emotion as opposed to depression and sadness which have no real focus and are perhaps better described as moods.

In the past if someone ventured into the forest at night her fear might have kept her safe provided of course it wasn’t over excessive. Other emotions such as guilt, shame and perhaps even anger can be useful emotions. Can grief also be a useful emotion? I would argue it can’t. For someone venturing into the forest at night her fear focusses her attention on danger and this focus benefits her by helping keep her safe. In a similar way someone’s anger is focussed on some perceived injustice and this focus might help her right this perceived injustice. The focus of someone’s grief is the death of another and it is hard to see how this focus can be useful her. It might be objected that grief is not just an emotion but a social construct and that an appropriate display of grief is useful in demonstrating that someone is part of that social order. Someone who celebrated the death of her spouse would become a social outcast. However displaying grief is not the same as experiencing grief and in this posting I am only concerned with the latter. Consider Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday on their desert island. Let us accept Crusoe loves Friday, not in an erotic way, but cares about him. Let us assume Friday dies and Crusoe grieves for him, does his grief serve any useful purpose? Clearly Crusoe’s grief serves no useful purpose by displaying that he is part of the social order. I would also argue that Crusoe’s grief because of Friday’s death doesn’t benefit Crusoe in any way. Indeed his grief might harm him by lessening his focus on important needs such as obtaining food and maintaining his shelter. It would appear that in answer to my first question is that grief is not a useful emotion.

Guilt and shame are negative emotions but might help focus our attention on doing something useful. Grief doesn’t focus our attention on anything useful. In the light of the above it might be concluded that because grief is a negative emotion serving no useful purpose that we should seek to eliminate it. I am reluctant to accept such a conclusion. I have argued that grief has a specific focus and that considered in isolation grief isn’t a useful emotion. Let us accept if we grieve about someone that we must have cared about or loved the person we grieve about. Wantons and psychopaths can’t grieve because they don’t care. Grief is not the same as sorrow. I may be sorry I’ve broken the cup by dropping it but I don’t grieve about it because even if it was my favourite cup I didn’t care enough about it, I didn’t love it. Grief and love are connected and grief cannot be considered in isolation. The reason why we grieve is love. Some animals appear to grieve, see Jessica Pierce . Grieving animals seem to support the above conclusion. For why should animals grieve for it would seem grief serves no evolutionary purpose? Any mother’s love serves an evolutionary purpose if grief and love are connected and this connection might help explain why animals grieve. If grief and love are connected then other emotions might be connected. Can someone said to be brave if he recklessly defends something he doesn’t care about? Some virtue ethicists believe the virtues are connected by practical wisdom (1). Perhaps the emotions are connected by loving as defined by caring about. I will not pursue this suggestion further here.

Let us consider my last question, how much grief appropriate. Perhaps because grief serves no useful purpose we should seek to eliminate or reduce our grief as much as possible. Let us accept that loving is part of leading a flourishing life. I have argued above that grief are love are connected. The question we must now try to answer is this, would seeking to eliminate or limit our grief damage our capacity to love? Psychopaths don’t feel grief and don’t care about others and it might suggested that this means if we can’t grieve that we can’t love. However this is only a suggestion and it might be pointed out psychopaths don’t seem to feel most emotions. In order to answer the above question I want to consider one aspect of love. Can anyone love something without making himself vulnerable to the fate of what he loves? A stoic might argue someone can I would suggest he can’t. If someone is indifferent when bad things happen to something he loves then he cannot be said to love that thing. What does it mean to be vulnerable to something’s fate? It means if the something is harmed the vulnerable person is also harmed. This harm isn’t physical, it involves a negative mental affect. I would further suggest that if someone suffers negative mental affect focussed on the loss of his beloved that he is grieving. If we accept the above definition of grief then it is perfectly possible to grieve for something which isn’t a person. It seems to me to make sense to say that someone can grieve over the death of much loved dog. It follows from the above that grief is inextricably linked to our capacity to love and that any attempt to limit our grief will also mean limiting our capacity to love. In response to the above it might be objected that when the object of our love dies our love should cease and that love gives us no reason not to try to limit our grief. In response to the above I would firstly suggest that love cannot just be simply switched off and on. Perhaps in special circumstance, such as a child on learning his father has murdered his mother, love might be abruptly terminated but not in normal ones. Secondly I would suggest that when we become vulnerable due to love that we don’t simply become vulnerable to the beloved, whatever that might mean, but specifically to harm befalling the beloved or the loss of beloved. When someone dies this loss is ongoing. It would appear that the answer to my second question is that accepting some grief is the price we pay for loving

Let us accept we should be prepared to accept some grief. However how grief is appropriate? Let us also accept that even if we can’t abruptly stop loving love can fade. If love fades over time then we have no reason based on our former love to continue grieving as our vulnerability decreases. As our love fades so should our grief. Accepting the above then might explain why even if the reasons for our grief don’t expire over time our grief diminishes nor because the reasons change but because we change. Human have a continuing need to love and be loved and what we love helps define us. In the light of the above it might be argued even if someone’s beloved has deceased the lover can satisfy his need for love by loving her memory. Derek Parfit seems to support this objection with his example of a Russian nobleman asking his wife to be true to his former self if he changes. (1) In response to this objection I would suggest that loving the memory of someone is an incomplete form of love. Loving isn’t purely passive the lover seeks ways to benefit his beloved over time, love is a bit like gardening. It follows if someone’s grief is based on the memory of a deceased beloved that his love is incomplete in some way because he cannot actively try to benefit his beloved. Let us accept that a more complete form of love is preferable to an incomplete form. It follows that if obsessive grief damages our ability to love our friends who remain in a more complete way that we should seeks ways to diminish and over time eliminate this grief.

 

1. Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue, Oxford University Press, 2011, page 94
2. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, page 327