Grieving Our Way Back to Meaningfulness

Abstract The deaths of those on whom our practical identities rely generate a sense disorientation or alienation from the world seemingly at odds with life being meaningful. In terms put forth in Cheshire Calhoun's recent account meaningfulness life, because their existence serves as metaphysical presupposition identities, threaten to upend background frame agency against which much choice and deliberation takes place. Here I argue for dual role grief addressing this threat life's meaningfulness. Inasmuch grief's object is loss relationship deceased it was prior death, alert us that pose motivates defuse by revising reflect modification necessitated deaths. Simultaneously, emotional complexity richness episodes provides an abundance normative evidence regarding can enable re-establish thereby recover lives