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Commentary
C. E. Garland
The University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, CA
Garland, C. E. 2022. “Vicarious Grief, Mental Health, and the Duty to Grieve.”
Journal of Philosophy of Emotion 4, no. 1: 6-12. https://doi.org/10.33497/2022.summer.2.
Abstract: In Grief: A Philosophical Guide, Michael Cholbi presents a compelling account of the nature of grief. To further illustrate how fruitful the philosophical study of grief, and Cholbi’s account of it is, I present three sets of comments. The first regards the extent to which Cholbi’s account of grief also provides an account of vicarious grief. The second concerns the paradox of grief and the good of grief, and suggests one reason we may recommend grief is that grieving is healthy. The final set of comments pertains to the duty to grieve, and whether this duty may extend to other emotionally rich activities, such as falling in love.
Keywords: vicarious grief, practical identity, mental health, falling in love
Michael Cholbi’s (2021) book, Grief: A Philosophical Guide, was a pleasure to read. Grief is a topic that Cholbi rightly notes is of great philosophical interest, though one would not guess by the amount of philosophy that has been written on it. Cholbi also correctly, though perhaps too modestly, notes that his book just scratches the surface of what work could be done on the philosophy of grief. As much as this is true, I take each set of comments that follow to further illustrate a number of interesting philosophical questions that grief, and perhaps Cholbi’s account of it, raises.
The first set of comments regards the extent to which Cholbi’s account of grief—quasi-grief, in particular—provides an understanding of vicarious grief. The second set of comments concerns the paradox of grief and the good of grief, and suggests one reason we may recommend grief is that grieving is healthy. The final set of comments pertains to the duty to grieve, and whether this duty may extend to other emotionally rich activities, such as falling in love.
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QUASI-GRIEF AND VICARIOUS GRIEF
One question Cholbi seeks to answer is for whom it is that we grieve. While we may mourn a great number of people, according to Cholbi we grieve for those in whom we have invested our practical identities (31). The object of grief is the pre-mortem, identity invested relationship the survivor had with the deceased (56-7). The grief that results from the loss of that relationship I will call personal grief.
Vicarious grief stands in contrast to personal grief. It seems that we can grieve for what another has lost, even if we did not experience that loss ourselves. When not close to the deceased you sometimes experience grief-like responses—distress, anxiety, and the like—if you are close to someone who was close to the deceased. I will focus for now on cases of vicarious grief in which we have invested our practical identities in the bereaved, who in turn had invested her practical identity in the deceased. For instance, when your best friend’s parent passes away.
Here I would like to explore the extent to which Cholbi’s account of grief can be extended to such cases of vicarious grief. Is vicarious grief grief proper, of the same kind as personal grief? Or is it something different? If it isn’t grief proper, then perhaps to capture vicarious grief’s grief-like nature, we could appeal to Cholbi’s notion of quasi-grief. However, as I will explain below, that is inconsistent with what Cholbi identifies as the material cause of grief. On the other hand, if it is grief proper, then vicarious grief, like personal grief, is egocentric. But that does not seem correct, for in vicarious grief we are concerned primarily for our friends rather than ourselves.
It seems vicarious grief could not be grief proper (though I will revisit this shortly). For the object of grief—the identity-invested relationship with the deceased—is often absent. In many cases of vicarious grief we have no relationship with the deceased, but instead with someone who did. This does not strike me as wrong, there certainly seems to be a difference between personal grief and vicarious grief. Yet, given the grief-like emotional responses we experience when we grieve vicariously, it would be natural to expect vicarious grief to also be grief-like, if not grief proper. This is where Cholbi’s notion of quasi-grief may be useful:
We quasi-grieve when we respond to the death of another with one or more of the phenomenological features of grief—distress and the like—but fail to direct attention at what I have argued is grief’s object, the relationship transformed by the death of the deceased. Quasi-grief can arise when grief attends to some other object or when grief fails to attend to any object at all. (117)
This description of quasi-grief looks as though it can be applied to cases of vicarious grief. In vicarious grief, I respond to the death of my friend’s parent with some of the phenomenological features of grief. However, my attention is not directed at grief’s object—my (nonexistent) relationship with the deceased. It is instead directed at my friend and their loss. When I turn my attention to grief’s object, some of the phenomenological features subside. Why? Because once I do, I realize that I have nothing to grieve over, having had no significant relationship with the deceased. If we understand vicarious grief as an instance of quasi-grief, we can both capture the idea that there is something genuinely grief-like in vicarious grief and its phenomenology, and explain why vicarious grief is not grief proper. .
However, other features of Cholbi’s account of grief prevent vicarious grief from counting as either grief proper or vicarious grief. For the cause of both grief and quasi-grief is the loss of the relationship with the deceased (56, 117). But that cannot be the cause of my vicarious grief, for I had no relationship with my friend’s parent. If grief must be caused by grief’s object, then vicarious grief is neither grief proper, nor quasi-grief. But if that is so, why is vicarious grief so grief-like?
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I began with the claim that vicarious grief could not be grief proper, because in vicarious grief the object of grief—the identity invested relationship with the deceased—is often absent. Let’s return to that latter assumption. Perhaps there is a sense in which I was invested in my friend’s parent, though indirectly. For my concern for her is concern for who she is, including the foundation of what she values in and about herself. So, my concern for my friend is entangled with concern for her practical identity. Her practical identity depends, in some sense, on her parent. And my practical identity depends on her and her practical identity.[1] My practical identity was thus invested in her parent to the extent that I was invested in her and her practical identity, and she was invested in her parent’s. So, when her parent dies she is shaken, but I am shaken too.
Vicarious grief, however, seems to lack what Cholbi calls the egocentric aspect of personal grief. Personal grief is egocentric in that we grieve “when and because the death of another person is particularly or acutely significant for us” (23). But we grieve vicariously, it seems, when and because we recognize that the death of another person is particularly or acutely significant to someone we care about, not ourselves. So, one may object that we cannot appeal to the entanglement of practical identities to account for vicarious grief. For, if my practical identity is indeed invested in the practical identity of my friend’s parent, then my vicarious grief is egocentric. Though mitigated through my concern for my friend, it is still a matter of my practical identity.
THE PARADOX OF GRIEF AND THE GOOD OF GRIEF
My next few comments concern the paradox of grief, and the good of grief. The paradox of grief stems from two apparently inconsistent observations. First, because grief feels bad, it should be lamented or avoided. Second, something about grief is valuable and so we ought not avoid it altogether (69). In fact, despite grief’s pains, in many cases we would recommend grief.
Cholbi’s solution comes in two parts. First, the identification of what makes grief valuable. Grief is valuable because it provides a remarkable opportunity for self-knowledge (or, perhaps more accurately, self-understanding). However, given the first half of the paradox, that grief is painful, this does not explain why we recommend that others grieve and want to grieve ourselves. Afterall, the pains could outweigh any good. In the second part of his solution to the paradox of grief, Cholbi explains that we inchoately view the pains of grief as an investment in self-knowledge, and thus find the pains of grief desirable (116-7, 119-20).
Beyond resolving the paradox of grief, the identification of grief’s good with the opportunity for self-knowledge has another thing to recommend it. It is an insight that non-philosophers recognize. In the latter half of 2020, my father passed away unexpectedly. Some weeks later, I was having a conversation with a close friend who had recently had a miscarriag: “You and I seem to be built in a way that we are constantly soul searching and learning, and I think that’s why we overcome so much,” she remarked. She recognized that grief provides an opportunity for the kinds of things that we would expect to lead to self-understanding. Just a few days later, the New York Times ran a piece in which wellness and lifestyle coaches explain that an openness to learning and understanding is a key factor in resilience.[2] If grief’s end is self-knowledge, which requires an openness to reflection on oneself, we should then also expect that individuals open to such learning and understanding would find that their grief resolves more easily than others.
Yet, there is one straightforward response to the paradox of grief that Cholbi does not touch on in his book. That is that we recommend grief and find it desirable because grief is healthy.[3] I want myself and my loved ones to grieve when appropriate because I am concerned that a failure to do so either reflects a current mental disturbance, or will result in mental health problems in the future. This may sound closest to the model of grief’s pains as a cost we must bear in order to achieve the good of grief, in this case, improved mental health. We
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must deal with the pain of grief to ensure that we will be better off in the future than we otherwise would have been.
A problem Cholbi identifies with the “pains as a necessary cost” explanation of the paradox of grief is that the bereaved often finds the pains of grief desirable in their own right (111-2). We wouldn’t minimize the cost in exchange for the good (108-9), and we are drawn to the pains of grief (110). Cholbi argues that the bereaved find the pains of grief desirable because “they grasp, however inchoately, that these pains are an investment in the good of grief” (113-4). Recognizing the pains as an investment in the good goes beyond considering them a cost. We think they are valuable “because of the integral causal relationship they stand to the good we seek” (114). For Cholbi, the good of grief is self-knowledge, but perhaps the same could be said for our mental health. We are, however inchoately, also invested in our mental health, and also have some inchoate understanding that the pains of grief are causally integral to improving or preserving our mental health. And so, we find the pains of grief desirable.
I find the omission of this response surprising, as it seems to me one of the answers that anyone might give to the question of “Why should we grieve?” (alongside other responses such as “To honour the dead, etc.). Some of Cholbi’s remarks in the text suggest a close connection between self-knowledge and our well-being. For instance he writes, “Grief that culminates in self-knowledge thus enables us to avoid alienation or fragmentation of our sense of self” (100), that the knowledge achieved through grief is “primarily knowledge of our own good, of the ends that serve as elements of our evolving practical identity” (158), and it “clarifies what matters to us and this renders our ends, and our lives as a whole, more rationally transparent to us” (159, emphasis added). As our well-being seems closely connected to our mental health, here I would like to invite Cholbi to expand on these remarks. What is the connection, if any, between the self-knowledge grief provides us, our mental health, and our well-being more broadly?
THE DUTY TO GRIEVE
What I was perhaps most unsure of was the duty to grieve. I don’t disagree with Cholbi’s suggestion that we have an imperfect duty to acquire self-knowledge (155-6). Nor do I disagree with Cholbi’s claim that grief provides a distinctive opportunity for self-knowledge. However, I don’t quite understand how that generates a duty for us to grieve, in particular. Cholbi writes that “Because grief is a rich opportunity for such self-knowledge, and we have a duty to pursue such self-knowledge, there is therefore a duty to grieve” (155). Yet in life we find many opportunities for self-knowledge, and I would like to know more about what it is about grief, in particular that generates this duty. For, as I explain below, there are surprising but notable similarities between grieving and falling in love. And while I am sympathetic to the idea that we have a duty to grieve, I do not think we have a duty to fall in love.
Before I continue, let me note a few assumptions. First, when I refer to falling in love, I mean love in the romantic sense. Second, falling in love with someone is not the same as loving them. Falling in love seems to run its course in two ways: either you end up loving someone, or the process “fizzles out” before full-fledged love emerges. Falling in love also seems to be an activity or process. It involves not just love-like feelings of affection, but also action: making plans, perusing the object of your affection’s social media, seeking their company, taking steps to learn about them.[4]
In many cases there does not seem to be a duty to fall in love. Suppose my local coffee shop has hired a new barista. I find them charming, funny, and handsome. What started as feelings of friendliness slowly begins to change. I have butterflies in my tummy when I see them, I make excuses to visit the coffee shop more often than usual, I am overly excited when they remember my name. Oh no, I am falling in love with them! Well, falling in
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love—with all the time and emotional energy it takes—would be inconvenient for me right now. So, rather than let it run its natural course, I intervene. I start going to a different coffee shop and keep myself distracted. I eventually forget about my handsome, charming barista. Here I do not seem to have violated any duty, to myself or anyone else. I had no duty to fall in love with my barista.[5] Yet, unlike falling in love, were I to choose to cut my grief short before it runs its natural course, I would violate the duty to grieve.
What generates the duty to grieve from the imperfect duty to acquire self-knowledge is that grief, at least in its most paradigmatic instances, is accompanied by emotions, feelings, and the like that make it a rich opportunity for the kind of reflection leading to self-knowledge. However, like grieving, falling in love is an emotionally rich activity. If you’ve fallen in love, you know this to be true. As Brogaard (2015, 12-16) points out, falling in love involves feelings of anxiety and stress, pleasure, and self-confidence.
That is not the only similarity between falling in love and grieving. In grief, one ascertains “the proper role that one’s relationship with the deceased will have in one’s practical identity, given that the relationship can no longer play the precise role it played during her lifetime” (154). In falling in love, one ascertains the role that one’s relationship with another person will have in one’s practical identity, given that it did not play that role before. At the end of grief, “[h]aving incorporated a revised relationship … into the practical identity that guides our day-to-day activities and choices, we come to know what living well by our own lights consists in and can be rationally satisfied that we are pursuing what is in fact our good” (159).[6] Suppose that had I let myself fall in love with my barista, I would have come to love them. Then I would have incorporated this new relationship into my practical identity, and arguably, through that process, could come to know what living well by my own lights, with my new love for my barista, consists in. Given these similarities, it seems that if there is a duty to grieve and let grief run its natural course, there is also a duty to fall in love and let falling in love run its natural course. I was wrong to avoid my barista.
Now, there is something naturally ruminating and inward-looking about grief that is not typically as present when we fall in love.[7] This may make grief a better tool for achieving self-knowledge than falling in love. Given that difference, while falling in love may be a rich opportunity for self-knowledge, unlike grief it may not have self-knowledge as its proper end. And perhaps that is why we have a duty to grieve but not a duty to fall in love. But if that is so, then it is not clear to me whether it is grief’s potential for self-knowledge that generates a duty to grieve. Rather, the duty to grieve seems to me to take the following form: given that you are grieving (or are in a position to grieve), you should grieve well—where grieving well terminates in self-knowledge. Here it is not the self-knowledge per se generating the duty to grieve, instead it seems required by a form of perfectionism: when doing something, do it well.
Overall, I found this book incredibly helpful and insightful. If Cholbi’s account of grief raises further questions, I think that is evidence of the philosophical value of grief.
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Notes
[1] Varga and Gallagher (2020) appeal to the entanglement of practical identities in their account of anticipatory-vicarious grief.
[2] Kelly Hannon (2020), “To Build Emotional Strength, Expand Your Brain.”
[3] Cholbi describes grief as healthy in several places in the book. Here I am not claiming that Cholbi ignores that grief is or can be healthy. Just that he does not discuss the possibility that what makes grief good is that it contributes to our health, and that this might help us resolve the paradox of grief.
[4] While courtship is also an activity, falling in love differs from courtship. Though some of the activities involved may be the same, you can court someone you are not falling in love with, and you may fall in love with someone you are not courting.
[5] If you have a duty to love a particular person, and if falling in love with them is required to love them, that may generate a duty to fall in love with them. Liao (2006a) defends the possibility of such a duty, and also argues elsewhere (2006; 2015) that children have a right to be loved. However, in the case I describe in this paragraph, I assume that the reader agrees I have no duty to love my barista, and so that could not generate a duty to fall in love with them.
[6] There are other interesting comparisons to be drawn between grieving and falling in love. Though Cholbi does not endorse the standard Kubler-Ross Five-Stage model of grief, it is interesting to note that Nozick (1989) provides a philosophical account of love according to which love also comes in stages. Jenkins (2017, 23) suggests that love within a relationship may alternate back and forth between different stages. That is also similar to how one may move between the various “stages” of the Kubler-Ross model.
[7] Refer to Price (2010) for a discussion of grief’s ruminating character.
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References
Brogaard, Berit. 2015. On Romantic Love: Simple Truths About a Complex Emotion. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Cholbi, Michael. 2021. Grief: A Philosophical Guide. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hannon, Kelly. 2020. “To build emotional strength, expand your brain.” New York Times, Sept. 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/health/resilience-learning-building-skills.html. Accessed 24/12/2020.
Jenkins, Carrie. 2017. What Love Is and What It Could Be. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Liao, Matthew. 2006a. “The Idea of a Duty to Love.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 40: 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-007-9013-8.
______. 2006b. “The Right of Children to Be Loved.” Journal of Political Philosophy 14 (4): 420-440. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2006.00262.x.
______. 2015. The Right to Be Loved. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Nozick, Robert. 1989. “Love’s Bond.” In The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations, 68-86. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Price, Carolyn. 2010. “The Rationality of Grief.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53 (1): 20-40. https://doi.org/10.1080/00201740903478384.
Varga, Somogy, and Gallagher, Shaun. 2020. “Anticipatory-Vicarious Grief: The Anatomy of a Moral Emotion.” The Monist 103 (2): 176-189. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onz034.
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C. E. Garland © 2022
Author email: arolynegarland[at]gmail.com
