ARTICLE

The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief

Bryanna Moore

ABSTRACT: The moral status of the emotion of grief has garnered little
recognition in philosophical literature. Existing inquiry has consisted for the
most part of deontological and virtue ethical approaches to evaluating grief.
In my paper I build upon established understandings of the morality grief
and move beyond them, towards an understanding of what I call “eros-
transformative grief” as a gateway or intermediary emotion that enables a
powerful reassessment and revaluation of the self’s relation to the world.
This fundamental moral revaluation is a result of the phenomenological
absence of the relational self. The nature of grief reveals something vital
about the way in which we relate to those around us—it is a fundamental
reaffirmation of the inescapable separateness of the self, which can never
truly be accepted without experiencing deep loss, but it is also a fundamental
reaffirmation of the relationship that existed, and ultimately, of love. In eros-
transformative grief, part of the grieving process involves accepting the
permanency of our loss and moving past it through assimilating an
intangible part of the lost loved one into the self. Thus, in addition to
strengthening deontological and virtue ethical normative understandings of
grief, I provide an account of eros-transformative grief that links it to the
concept of love, allowing for a positive reading of an oft-neglected emotion.

KEYWORDS: grief, love, morality, virtue

Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique 34 (2017): 24–42. https://doi.org/10.4225/03/5a2fac4724aee

© 2017 Bryanna Moore. Distributed by Monash University under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
 The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief 25

I. INTRODUCTION

In the gamut of human emotion, grief can be a singularly transformative experience.

Whilst there exists a rich philosophical literature on grief and mourning, surprisingly
little of this focuses on the morality of grief. Situated within his wider oeuvre
concerning the philosophy of emotions, Robert Solomon’s (2004) paper “On Grief
and Gratitude” lays the groundwork for establishing an underlying moral structure to
grief—a task that is continued by Purushottama Bilimoria (2012) in his paper “Grief
and Mourning: Thinking a Feeling Back to Robert Solomon.”1 Solomon focuses upon
establishing grief as morally obligatory and, to a lesser extent, morally excellent,
examining grief from primarily deontological and virtue ethical perspectives. Being
morally obligatory and being morally excellent are the first two moral dimensions of
eros-transformative grief.2 However, Solomon fails to recognise a third moral
dimension to grief: that of grief as a powerful, morally evaluative, transitional
emotional activity. My contribution to the philosophical literature on grief will be to
develop grief’s second and third moral dimensions, by strengthening the role of
suffering, the relational self, and love, in the grieving process.3
Eros-transformative grief is an evaluative emotional activity that is by its
nature a fundamentally moral undertaking. Vital to this activity is the
phenomenological absence of the bereaved’s relational self, resulting from the absence
of the departed. By a fundamentally moral undertaking, what is meant is that the
grieving process prompts the bereaved to ask questions about their place in the world,
the value of their life, and what it means to live well in light of their loss—and this is
precisely the task of ethical inquiry. I am working here with an understanding of
morality and ethics derived from the Ancient Greek ethika, a conception of morality
that is concerned with questions regarding the good life and what it means to live
well. This task of grief is moral in the sense that it centres on a moral relation (an
interpersonal relationship of love), but peculiarly so, insofar as one half of that
relationship, the deceased, no longer exists, and so the relation is constrained by a
kind of solipsistic reality. I am not here defending the premise that grief necessarily
makes one a better or more moral person. Grief’s third moral dimension is an
intermediate space, a moral activity that involves rebuilding one’s self neither
necessarily for the better or worse. Despite the destructive nature of some forms of
grief, and aspects of pain and suffering inherent to eros-transformative grief, grieving
is a reaffirmation of the relationship that existed and, ultimately, of love. By
strengthening grief’s ties to love—something also neglected in the philosophical
literature—grief’s third moral dimension becomes more apparent.
26 Bryanna Moore

Before beginning, a number of disclaimers to the ensuing discussion must be

made. Firstly, it should be noted that discussion here is concerned only with a central
variety of grief, or what I call eros-transformative grief: emotionally disruptive
grieving processes prompted by the loss of a loved one.4 I acknowledge the complex
and varied nature of grief, that not everyone has the same experience of grief, and that
grief is not necessarily this kind of evaluative activity for every individual, particularly
in many non-Western cultures. What of joyous or comparably peaceful grief?
Acceptance, relief, revelry, celebration—grief can take all of these forms, and
sometimes includes both these lighter and more melancholic elements. Similarly,
what of grief that “breaks” or does not ultimately benefit the bereaved in some way? I
do not wish to deny that this is grief. Not everyone grieves in the manner I describe,
but it is not within the scope of this paper to give an account of all of these different
forms of grieving.
It seems that much of the murk and vagueness in the literature on grief stems
from precisely this worry; writers on grief have sought to analyse the phenomenon
while demonstrating due sensitivity to the unique, highly personal experiences of the
bereaved. In The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us,
George Bonanno addresses a number of mistaken assumptions made by grief experts.5
In their treatment of grief, many writers characterise it as, or make the assumption
that it is, a lengthy process that necessarily involves prolonged expressions of pain (or
imply this is the case).6 Acute grief is not a sharp, passing feeling the same way
stubbing one’s toe is, but neither is it necessarily protracted. It is also not necessarily
the case that eros-transformative grief is melancholic, though I maintain this is more
paradigmatic—experiences of grief can be quite joyful and involve a relatively quick
return to one’s baseline wellbeing and prior functioning. I am not contending that
some forms of grief that are less emotionally disruptive, briefer, do not follow
paradigmatic stages of grieving, and from which the bereaved emerges quite
unchanged from the experience, should not be understood as real grief or met with
moral condemnation.7
Section IV of this paper will examine the relationship between love and grief.
A second concern that might be raised with regard to the argument I have presented
here is that it is possible to grieve over something or someone we did not love. Prima
facie this claim appears to be true. When someone dies, it is not the case that only
those who loved that person experience reactions to their death. Ex-partners,
estranged friends and relatives, abusive family members—emotional reactions to the
loss of any of these relationships are frequently labeled expressions of grief. The
 The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief 27

multitudes of feelings evoked in such cases are reactive emotional responses that can
certainly constitute grief, but they are not the focus of this paper. This paper is
concerned with providing an account only of the distinctive experience of the
bereaved where they are grieving over the loss of an object of love. There is neither the
time nor space here to give proper attention to other forms of grief. The object of grief
is not necessarily the loss of that person at that time. There are grieving experiences
distinct from grieving over the loss of someone who one was close with and presently
loved or cared for. It is possible to grieve over the loss of someone you did not love,
but it does not seem possible not to grieve over the loss of someone you did love.
When a loved one is lost to us, grief serves to sharpen our feelings toward them and
reaffirms the love that we felt. There is a permanency and special depth to this kind of
grief that makes it the focus of this paper.
Whilst I share the concern regarding treating the experiences of the bereaved
too uniformly, I maintain that experiences of eros-transformative grief share enough
commonalities for some generalisations to be fairly made.8 Grief is certainly felt with
regard to a number of kinds of loss and presents in a multitude of different ways, but
there are features common to the experience that make it possible to write about grief
as though it were a fairly uniform phenomenon.
Secondly, this work belongs wholly to neither the analytic nor the continental
tradition; it is a hybrid. This is because I believe that by drawing upon the work of
analytic and continental theorists, in addition to literature beyond these schools of
thought, philosophy is able to paint a much richer portrait of grief.9 I believe grief to
be analytically accessible, hence I will attempt to offer some critical reflections on
grief. Thirdly, my account runs the risk of making grief fundamentally about the
griever and not about the one they grieve for, and in doing so carries discussion
further away from any moral value to be found in the process. The departed (their
identity, comportment, idiosyncrasies) is, of course, utterly essential to understanding
grief. While I share this concern, the experiences of the bereaved are all that are left to
observe after a loss. It is, ultimately, the bereaved that grieve, and it is the
phenomenology of their experience that I am concerned with. Finally, I would
mention that, like others before me, a key motivation behind my inquiry is the desire
to challenge perceptions of grief as something negative or irrational. There is
immense moral, social, and psychological value in the grieving process—as I will now
attempt to show.
28 Bryanna Moore

II. GRIEVING

For the purposes of this paper, grief will be understood as an emotional activity or
cognitive reaction to a set of affective circumstances with a specific, identifiable object.
Eros-transformative grief is best characterised as an emotional process that often
involves intense sadness, depression, mourning, melancholy, regret or sorrow felt in
response to the deep loss of someone from one’s life to whom one was emotionally
attached.10 Emotions, moods, mental states and feelings such as sadness, depression,
mourning, melancholy and sorrow are in no small part constitutive of the overarching
process of grieving. Thus it is prudent to treat grief as an emotional activity inclusive
of a number of other cognitive components.
In “On Grief and Gratitude” Solomon is concerned with establishing the
moral structure of grief, which he considers a much neglected and underappreciated
emotion “woven deeply into the fabric of our moral lives.”11 Solomon characterises
grief as a species of sadness, the depths of discomfort of which often cause it to be
analysed as an illness, and the bereaved to be treated as though they were sick. He
notes that grief closely resembles a physical injury and is one of the most physically
disruptive emotions a person can experience. It is also, for most of us, an unavoidable
aspect of the human condition if we form attachments to others. Early on Solomon
points out that a failure to grieve over the death of a loved one is met with moral
contempt, as grief is considered the appropriate and obligatory human response in
such situations.12 Solomon is primarily concerned with the normativity of grief, that
is, of grieving as an “ought.” This is grief’s first moral dimension, and where most of
Solomon’s moral analysis is directed: grief as morally obligatory.
When Solomon says grief is the morally appropriate or obligatory response,
he means that grief is both the socially appropriate or expected response that ought to
be generated by circumstances involving a serious loss. Mourning is typically
understood as grief’s public counterpart, and participation in shared or collective
mourning practices an important external expression of loss and part of the overall
grieving process.13 I hold this moral dimension of grief to be the most self-evident. To
varying extents, there are socio-cultural norms that concern responses to death and
dying.14 These generate corresponding socio-cultural expectations and obligations
regarding our reactions to loss and funeral practices, the fulfillment of which is
usually thought to show proper respect for the dead. This first moral dimension is
related to but distinct from understanding grief as a morally excellent response to loss,
as it involves shared as opposed to personal perceptions of the departed, engagement
with others, and active participation in shared lamentation and related practices.
 The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief 29

Solomon identifies two “paradoxical” pains that shape his phenomenology of

grief: the first being the persistence of the distinctly irrational and impossible desire to
have what was lost returned, the second being that grief confronts us with the
limitations of our memory. Building upon Donald Gustafson’s analysis of grief,15
Solomon contends that it is unusual for the central desire of an emotion to be
knowingly irrational or impossible, and consequently holds grief to be a non-
paradigmatic emotion. It is not clear that grief is unique in this respect. Other feelings
and emotions—lust and regret, for example—seem just as capable of sometimes
fitting this paradigm of irrationality. Characterising grief as irrational is perhaps
misleading on behalf of Solomon, as it appears quite natural to want something we
hold dear returned to us when it is lost.16 What I think Solomon is trying to emphasise
here is the extreme nature of the impossibility of the desire to have the deceased
returned. While there is always a slim chance of some hitherto unrequited love
suddenly returning one’s feelings, or a characteristically dishonest person learning
how to be truthful, we know that the dead never come back to us, and in this way the
losses of grief (and corresponding desires) are much more absolute than those of
other emotions. Solomon is emphasising the existential significance of this kind of
permanent absence.
Absence is at the heart of Solomon’s phenomenology. Beyond the
neurological or physiological sensations that accompany a feeling of grief, is an
ultimately simple recognition—that of a permanent, irretrievable, real loss. Grief is to
recognise, acutely, that someone is missing from one’s life. Solomon argues for the
importance of perceiving absence or the lack of something, asserting that “an absence
can be more poignant, more noticeable, more obsessive, than any presence.”17
Solomon supplements his phenomenology of grief with a phenomenology of memory
and a discussion of regret. Regret is more than the painful feeling of remembering the
dead; it is a lament for lost wishes. Grief is in part about the loss of imagined
possibilities, the intensity of which are determined by the nature and personal
significance of the bereaved’s relationship with the departed. These two pains are
incredibly important aspects of the grieving process. In order to move through the
process and overcome this suffering, we must first experience it. This aspect of grief
fits with Aristotelian characterisations of virtue as something that cannot be taught
but must be learned through personal experience. While grief is rarely identified as a
virtue, this is grief’s second moral dimension: grief as a morally excellent response to
the loss of a loved one.
30 Bryanna Moore

Solomon alludes to but never directly examines this second moral dimension.
Grief is not a robust disposition in the same way that honesty or compassion can be,
thus in this way it does not fit the classic Aristotelian characterisation of a virtue.
However, what is striking about eros-transformative grief from a virtue ethical
perspective is that it belongs to a small, unusual set of virtue-like emotional states or
virtues like shame, guilt and resilience that that are the morally excellent responses to
certain situations, but not virtues that we actively seek to evoke due to the
circumstances of suffering or anguish required for their manifestation. There is a
sense that suffering is important to this kind of moral learning. We do not go around
deliberately creating or maximising situations that generate grieving on the grounds
that grief is morally valuable. Where grief is authentic, however, the move to grieve
appears an essential, reflexive and morally excellent response, insofar as, where one
had a close, loving relationship with the departed, it involves directing the right
amount of the right feeling, to the right person, in the right manner, at the right
time.18 Part of this may be comprised of grief’s first moral dimension—fulfilling the
socio-culturally obligatory aspects of mourning—but this is not a necessary condition
for this second moral dimension. Grief as a virtue can be satisfied entirely by one’s
internal disposition and private feelings toward the dead.19
Solomon argues that we do not suffer from grief but rather from what the
grief is about—in other words, we suffer from the loss.20 The attribution of negativity
that should be ascribed to loss is often mistakenly ascribed to grief. Solomon holds
that emotions should not be judged purely on the circumstances that prompt them.
Emotions are often desirable, functional or valuable reactions that enable a subject to
cope with challenging situations. Like his use of the terms “appropriate” and
“obligatory,” Solomon fails to clarify exactly what he means by “desirable,”
“functional” or “valuable” reactions, but I think we can ascertain a fairly accurate
approximation of his meaning. By foregrounding the grieving process as a valuable
coping mechanism for loss, Solomon is laying the foundations for an ultimately
positive understanding of grief as a virtue, opening grief up to a discussion of love, in
light of grief’s positive value.
Solomon concludes his phenomenology with the assertion that grief is more
than suffering at the hands of loss, or the recognition of a profound absence or a
referral of one’s self to the past. Grief is more than a desire for the impossible return
of someone, or an obsession over lost opportunities. Where, in excess or deficiency,
and grief has not become pathological, there is nothing thought to be wrong with
 The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief 31

someone who is grieving over the loss of a loved one; grief is a normal reaction,
something we ought to feel. This, Solomon says:

[Should] tell us that there is something special about grief, that grief is not
just a form of suffering or illness, and that neither depression nor sadness nor
sorrow alone constitutes grief. Grief has a moral dimension. As Janet
McCracken points out, “We want a world in which grief is valued.”21

III. GRIEF’S THIRD MORAL DIMENSION

I have shown that obligation is central to Solomon’s understanding of grief as moral.

He returns again and again to the idea that we are obliged to grieve, and where
someone is incapable of demonstrating grief or of grieving, they are seen to be cold-
hearted and lacking sentimentality. He says that we are rarely morally obligated to
have emotions, and what meets a lack of grief is a type of moral indignation. He writes
that “not to feel grief when one has lost a loved one is to be not only insensitive but
also inhuman, inviting moral censure.”22 Solomon takes the morality of grief no
further than the domain of obligation. Whilst stemming in part from socio-cultural
ideas about what is contextually appropriate, an important element that informs both
our individual morality and broader ethical systems, grief’s morality also stems from
something more intrinsic to the emotion. There are two points Solomon touches
upon briefly that could strengthen grief’s moral standing with just a little further
development.
The first is suffering. In “On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing,” (1992) Max
Scheler devotes a chapter to the meaning of suffering. He compares the experience of
a death with the experience of growing pains—a notion which is interesting to a
discussion of grief. Grief would arguably belong to the set of emotions said to be able
to incite emotional growing pains. Central to this idea is the belief that suffering can
engender greater moral fibre in people.23 Scheler writes, “[one] cannot have the
sweetness, unison, and community of love, nor the higher development and growth of
life, without sacrifice, death, and pain.”24 In addition to grief itself appearing morally
excellent, grief provides us with the opportunity to morally develop in other ways due
to the uniquely challenging circumstances of suffering it entails.
Suffering is intrinsic to the kind of grief being examined here, an essential
part of the experience that contributes to the mode of deep reflection, evaluation and
judgment that makes grief such a powerfully affective experience. The paradoxical
pains associated with eros-transformative grief that are identified by Solomon, enable
us to change as individuals insofar as they enable evaluation. The depth of upheaval
32 Bryanna Moore

experienced in grief makes its reflective and evaluative structure quite peculiar.25 The
type of evaluative activity bred by grief is fundamentally moral, as it is concerned with
values and judgment. Later, Scheler writes that “pain brings the existence or non-
existence of things factually under control of our mental powers.”26 The suffering and
pain produced by the grieving process typically generate a period of intense reflection,
evaluation and judgment.27 This feature of grief does not make it distinct from other
emotions, nor does grief’s ability to serve as a transformative emotion. There is a
strong case for many emotions possessing a similar ability. Most emotions have the
power to change us, to influence our character and perspective as we respond to
stimuli. I wish to contend that, when it comes to the ability to alter us on some deep,
personal level, emotions possess differing capacities. Eros-transformative grief, like
love, is particularly special in this regard, as the extent of evaluation and potential
change that it entails is particularly powerful.
The second notion that could strengthen Solomon’s account is the relational
self. Solomon draws his thoughts back to the idea that what one really loses when a
loved one dies, is part of one’s self. He holds that our relationships are not fissile and
consequently we do not easily detach from one another. The depth and complexity
with which we form relationships makes disentangling the self from the relationship
and from the other extremely difficult. As Solomon writes, “thus grief is a personal
loss not only in the minimal sense that the loss is personal but also in the profound
sense that it constitutes something of a loss of personal identity.”28 While Solomon
does not fully expand this idea, the idea that what we are losing in grief is not only the
other but also part of the self is developed more fully by a number of other writers,
most recently Dean Cocking (2014) in his article “Aristotle, Friendship and Virtue.”29
To highlight the existential significance of the relational self, Cocking draws on a
passage by C. S. Lewis (1960). Lewis writes:

If of three friends (A, B and C) A should die, then B loses not only A but “A’s
part in C”, while C loses not only A but “A’s part in B” … Now that Charles is
dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke.
Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is
away, I have less of Ronald.30

Whilst Lewis’s point concerns losing parts of others who were also connected with the
departed, his discussion is transferable to the loss of parts of one’s own identity
connected to the departed. In loss, we are experiencing simultaneously the absence of
the loved one and the absence of the parts of identity and self that belonged to them
and the relationship. This idea of the relational self does not entail reciprocity, as
 The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief 33

demonstrated in instances of grief such as a mother grieving over her lost newborn,
where the relevant parties did not know one another in a strict sense but the bereaved
still derived part of their identity from the relationship and what might have been.
Grief’s moral side results from something more than the socio-cultural and
personal obligations stemming from our relationships. A generous reading of
Solomon’s paper can lead the reader to an understanding of grief as a virtue, but there
is a third moral dimension to grief not fully captured by the first two dimensions.31 It
is not captured by deontological or virtue ethics because this third dimension is
neither morally obligatory, not necessarily morally excellent. There are non-reflective,
non-evaluative experiences of grief.32 Not engaging in deeply a reflective and
evaluative emotional process in grief is not met with moral censure the same way
failure to participate in collective mourning often is. Similarly, whilst this mode of
reflection and evaluation may at times appear morally excellent, it is not necessarily
so. Where this emotionally evaluative activity does occur, it is the third moral
dimension to eros-transformative grief—the species of grief that I am concerned with
in this paper.
The nature of unwanted loss is such that we are thrust into the world, against
our will but all the more active and present for it. Withdrawal is often identified as an
integral part of the grieving process, but grief is not truly a withdrawal from the
world. Goldie describes the grieving process as a “[complex] pattern of activity and
passivity… which unfolds over time.”33 Grief prompts reflection, and the seeming
withdrawal that accompanies the bereaved’s mode of reflection creates the
opportunity for a return reemergence of the self, or what Dubose (1997) calls a
“bodying-forth” of the self.34 Solomon does not satisfactorily develop the links
between grief and absence, and absence and the moral self—links that could greatly
enhance his account.
The mode of deep reflection so central to grief, where it does not become
pathological, often involves a temporary withdrawal from the external, public, moral
sphere, at least for the individual. Others may still be able to judge someone’s grief as
morally appropriate or inappropriate, genuine or inauthentic, but for the individual,
phases of withdrawal in grief often involve a suspension of the self’s usual
participation in the moral or collective moral activity. Such intermissions are brought
about by the absences identified earlier. When we lose someone we are close to, we
also lose part of the self, the part or parts whose existence were founded upon the
relationship with the other person. Such a splintering of personal identity results in a
temporary pause or shutting down of the normal moral presence of the individual. A
34 Bryanna Moore

grieving person is initially incapable of such presence, as they are preoccupied with
dealing with their loss. One does not necessarily become a better person by grieving,
but one does typically emerge changed as a result of evaluating what one values in life
and the ensuing perspective gained through this process. If withdrawal is necessary to
this reemergence into the moral sphere, then it is important that reflection is not
hindered, and ample time and space are devoted to the withdrawal process. Solomon
alludes to but never quite articulates this thought. He writes that as we overcome the
more poisonous aspects of grief and begin to gain a new sense of self, “the world
opens up again, and with it one's willingness to engage in it” and later, “once again,
the withdrawal of grief is not just withdrawal in pain but… withdrawal in order to
accomplish a critical existential task.”35
The critical existential task in question is a rebuilding of the self and the
reestablishing of personal values, made possible by first losing the part of one’s
identity that was shaped by the relationship with the departed. Despite acknowledging
the importance of both withdrawal and absence to a phenomenology of grief,
Solomon does not satisfactorily explain exactly what is it that takes place when the
individual withdraws. This withdrawal is not only due to recognising the absence of
the other person. There is a second level to the absence that transpires. It is also an
absence of the self, the extent of which is determined by the nature and intimacy of
the loss. Not a physical absence, but the absence of the parts of one’s identity that one
derived from the relationship that existed. These two linked but distinct forms of
absence facilitate the withdrawal and resurgence of the self—a moral dimension of
grief distinct from an understanding of grief as virtuous or morally obligatory. The
initial withdrawal we experience when grieving serves to bring the bereaved, full
circle, back into a collective moral space where they are no longer isolated and lacking
identity, but have recovered the ability to judge what is valuable to them. In this way,
due to the relational self, grief’s third moral dimension is one of evaluation and
rebirth, a reconstruction of one’s identity and place in the world without the departed.
In eros-transformative grief, the relational self is the product of a loving relationship
with the dead. The following section will clarify and elaborate upon the role of love in
the grief’s third moral dimension.

IV. GRIEF AND LOVE

Where one loved the departed, grief’s third moral dimension becomes clearer. If eros-
transformative grief is entwined with love, and love contributes to one’s flourishing,
then eros-transformative grief appears an inevitable feature of a flourishingly loving
 The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief 35

life.36 The love one may still feel even after a person has died means that in some ways
the relationship does not fully cease. We see this not only in the execution of a
person’s will, but also in the way those close to the departed conduct themselves upon
their passing. Where the departed was loved and respected, people attempt to live in
such way as to honour the memory of the one they have lost, and live the way they
believe the departed would have wanted them to live. The part of one’s identity that
was a derivative of the relationship cannot ever be exactly the same. For example, it
would be troubling for a grieving husband to continue to cook dinner for his wife
each night (as was their routine) even after she is gone, but he might still buy flowers
for her on her birthday or maintain some features of his character and their life
together in an attempt to preserve and honour what they shared.
This is a central aspect of grief’s third moral dimension. I argued earlier that it
is not necessary that one emerges from the intermediary, evaluative space of grief a
better person, but it is often the case that the bereaved emerges resolved to try and live
in a manner that they consider to be better, and this element of self-cultivation is an
integral part of a flourishing life. I do not hold that this is a feature exclusive to eros-
transformative grief. Rather, I am arguing that it is a feature made particularly potent
by the unique nature of the loss experienced when a loved one dies, and this grants
eros-transformative grief distinctive moral force.
In this way, part of the departed is embraced and assimilated by the self,
integrated into one’s identity and carried beyond the circumstances of their death.
Grief serves to bring the self closer to the other on a subjective level through memory
and regret, and also on a collective level, through understandings of the deceased’s life
that we discern and share with others. This aspect of grief serves as an important link
to love. Love enriches a person’s life and character, and contributes to a flourishing
life. If love is eros-transformative grief’s precursor, and love is an integral part of a
flourishing human life, then the experience of grief should not be systematically
classified as inherently negative, as expressions of grief indicate a full and emotionally
rich and loving life.37
A number of interesting parallels can be drawn between grief and love. Both
serve to take one out of one’s self. Kelly Oliver (2012) writes, “falling in love, the
mystery of the other person is the greatest joy; and vulnerability in an encounter with
another is a sweet surrender, a gift rather than a sacrifice. The other person’s potential
to make me better than I am is the transformative power of love.”38 Grief shares this
sense of vulnerability at the hands of the other person, this transformative power.
36 Bryanna Moore

Love and grief both involve a shared self, the reality of which is that when we lose the
one we have shared ourself with and loved, we lose part of ourselves.39
Grief as an intermediary, evaluative emotional activity is something that
permits movement and interaction between the two moral poles of good and bad.
This third moral dimension is a transitive space that facilitates moral evaluation and
potentially development. Up until this point, the ties between grief and love have been
touched upon only briefly. In “Sorcerer Love: A Reading of Plato’s Symposium
Diotima’s Speech,” Luce Irigaray (1989) argues that love is best understood as a
gateway emotion that allows the self to move between fixed states of being.40 Irigaray
speaks of love as an intermediary that permits progression, something that is neither
good nor bad but rather necessary if we are to avoid a static life. She writes that love
must lack in order to continue to desire this movement forward. This is an
understanding that is pertinent to a reading of grief. Grief enables us to move between
two versions of the self: one belonging to the past, still fused with the Other; and a self
belonging to the present, now stripped of the Other and the part of the self tied to
them, and fundamentally changed for the experience. Grief, too, is an intermediary—
one that is reflective of how our morality works. On a very basic level, grief is about
change. Moral character, too, is necessarily changeable if we are to continue to learn
and grow as individuals. Whilst some moral lessons can be taught, individual morality
is ultimately shaped by experience. The intermediary space identified by Irigaray
allows a person to remain morally open, that is, to remain open to moral learning.
This evaluative activity generated by loss is the third moral dimension of grief. Grief is
not only a morally obligatory and excellent or virtuous response, but also something
that enables moral exercise. This third feature does not downplay grief’s normative
dimensions. Rather, it is the added assertion that eros-transformative grief is an
acutely transitional state of being. All emotions possess a transformative element but
this kind of grief is a particularly affective and powerful one. The mode of deep
reflection and evaluation a grieving individual enters into can result in a significantly
altered self.
Few who have endured the grieving process that accompanies a serious loss
emerge from the experience unchanged as a person. The nature of the bereaved’s
feelings towards the departed determines how strongly they grieve, which in turn
determines the extent and permanency of the transformative moral process that takes
place. It is not immediately obvious that this transformation must be either positive or
negative. The experience is contextually dependent. But where love is affirmed, the
grieving process should not be considered a purely negative experience. An
 The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief 37

understanding of grief coloured by an understanding of love is a crucial step in

linking a phenomenology of grief to the moral realm, as it opens grief up to the idea
that emotions need not be categorised as necessarily positive or negative, but
something in between, something that can function in this third, transitional space.
The depth of loss experienced upon the death of a loved one carries us into a
period of emotional disruption that a drastic revaluation of the self and the world
around it occurs. Grief’s modus operandi is one of questioning. The grieving
individual typically questions why they lost someone, how they felt towards that
person, what will be different about themselves and their life now that that person is
gone. This evaluative process is nothing if not a primarily moral activity, as it requires
one to confront and make judgments concerning the sort of person one is, one’s
successes and failings, and what one values at this point in one’s life. Whether the
values adopted following such a loss can be ascribed the labels of good or bad is
another question. What I am concerned with is the idea that grief opens the self up to
learning and consequently to moral development. Grief teaches us about ourself, the
other person and about the nature of the relationship that was shared. Whilst its
beginnings are often tumultuous and challenging for the afflicted, grief is ultimately
cathartic as it affirms the relationship in question, granting the bereaved the peace of
mind that accompanies a fresh understanding of what existed and what now exists,
upon reaching this stage in the process. Whilst the process may never be completed,
such perspective can be attained.
Both grief and love carry us out of ourselves; in them we are wrapped up in
the other person. Both cause one to experience a shift in identity wherein part of the
self is melded and estranged from another person respectively. This thought is
expressed beautifully by Martha Nussbaum (1997) in her paper titled “Love and the
Individual.” She describes the ruminations and realisations of a woman grieving for
the loss of the man she loved, writing, “[she] knows that some of the things she most
loves in Lytton are not in him at all; they are properties of his relation to her.”41 When
we love, we share our self with that person and are changed for and because of their
presence. We understand ourselves in terms of them and our relation to them. It is
much the same when we grieve, for even though it is now the absence of that person
that is our primary concern, our focus is still firmly upon the other. Thus grief and
love are among the most intimate of emotions within the parameters of human
experience. The intimacy that accompanies both grief and love reveals something
fundamental about the relation between the two, namely that they inform and
strengthen one another. The recognition of how painful the loss of someone close to
38 Bryanna Moore

you would be affirms the love you have for them, just as actually losing them cements
the relationship and the feelings that existed. The degree of reflection and evaluation
generated by loss and by love is unparalleled.
In Love’s Knowledge (1990), Nussbaum examines where the knowledge of
love comes from. I believe much of her account of love is transferable to a discussion
of grief. She begins with a passage from Proust’s “The Sweet Cheat Gone”:

Françoise brings him the news: “Mademoiselle Albertine has gone.” Only a
moment before, he believed with confidence that he did not love her any
longer. Now the news of her departure brings a reaction so powerful, an
anguish so overwhelming, that this view of his condition simply vanishes,
Marcel knows, and knows with certainty, without the least room for doubt,
that he loves Albertine.42

The departure that Proust speaks of beautifully illustrates the experience of grief, as
what is important is the absence of the other person. Their absence clarifies and
solidifies the relationship that existed. Grief, like love, alters our understanding of the
self’s relation to the other, an experience vital to morality as moral lessons are
fundamentally reassessments of how our interactions in the world should be
conducted. Love is a learning process. Aspects of loving relationships, difficult or
welcome, are identified and realised and either accepted or denied. This, too, is what
happens in the intermediary, evaluative state of eros-transformative grief.
The opportunity for learning and growth, either moral or non-moral, can be
thrust upon us in a multitude of different ways. The painful, often undesired nature of
the circumstances that generate grief does not void the lessons learnt via that type of
loss. The volatility in love of which Nussbaum speaks is also found in grief and its
phenomenology. Grief forces the self into a state of fluidity and thrusts self-learning
upon the individual. This change serves to open the moral self up to new knowledge
and new understandings of the self, and consequently one’s relation to the other
within the surrounding world.
The strong links that exist between the work of Nussbaum, Irigaray and
Solomon, enhance the account of eros-transformative grief I have presented. A final
passage from “Love and the Individual” serves to illuminate the powerful connection
that exists between grief and love, and the capability of the two to enrich the moral
fibre of an individual’s life:

For it seemed to her that it would be an excellent result for her grief if a richer
love of the individual, a love that was most truly a love of the individual, her
 The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief 39

love let us say, turned out to be based upon an acknowledgment that certain
things have intrinsic value which, being repeatable and not idiosyncratic, will
survive the death or departure of the individual. That the better one loved this
individual the more one would see that there was, in fact, something to live
for beyond that person, something connected with the commitments and
aspirations on which the love is itself based.43

Despite the irretrievable nature of such loss, in grief we do rebuild ourselves, forge a
new identity, new bonds, new loves. We find new value in and to life. And this is why
grief is so invaluable.

V. CONCLUSION
In his chapter “On Grief and Gratitude,” Robert Solomon establishes two normative,
moral dimensions to grief: grief as morally obligatory and grief as morally excellent.
In this paper I have identified and developed a third moral dimension to eros-
transformative grief, wherein it acts as an intermediary, evaluative emotional activity
that enables a powerful moral revaluation. I have argued that it is eros-transformative
grief that possesses this third moral dimension of stimulating moral evaluation and
growth. More “positive” grieving processes may still possess the third moral
dimension I have argued for, but to a lesser degree. The emotionally disruptive nature
of eros-transformative grief I have focused on means it is more effective at exciting
the moral revaluation and personal growth described. By building on the ideas of
absence and withdrawal identified by Solomon, clarifying the role of suffering and the
relational self in the grieving process, and fortifying the relationship between grief and
love, the moral value of grief becomes more apparent. Much of the dismissiveness in
the philosophical literature on grief stems from the negative value sometimes ascribed
to components of the grieving process. Grief may entail these negative aspects but it is
not limited to them. The importance of eros-transformative grief is that it carries us
beyond these painful parts of the grieving process into a space of evaluation and
potential moral development. I have argued that eros-transformative grief is
ultimately an affirmation of love, and grief, like love can contribute to a flourishing
human life as it promotes moral transformation and is an appropriate expression of
the relationship that existed. Eros-transformative grief facilitates a powerfully
transformative rebuilding of personal identity augmented by the newly obtained
knowledge of what it means to experience true loss—a fundamental reassessment of
personal values that is, at its roots, a moral undertaking.
40 Bryanna Moore

BRYANNA MOORE has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours Class I) from the University of Queensland
and is currently completing her PhD in Philosophy/Bioethics at Monash University. She is
interested in virtues ethics (particularly empirically informed approaches to the virtues), moral
psychology, the philosophy of emotions and medical ethics.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I would like to thank Associate Professors Marguerite La Caze and

Justin Oakley, and Dr. Ryan Tonkens, for their feedback on early drafts of this paper. I am also
grateful for the comments of two anonymous referees.

NOTES
1
Purushottama Bilimoria, “Grief and Mourning: Thinking a Feeling Back to Robert Solomon,”
in Passion, Death, and Spirituality: The Philosophy of Robert C. Solomon, ed. K. Higgins and D.
Sherman (New York: Dordrecht, 2012), 149–174.
2
For the purposes of this paper, I shall use “morally obligatory” in the standard deontological
sense to refer to actions, feelings and responses that conform to a moral duty or norm that
does not regard the maximisation of good. I shall use “morally excellent” to refer to actions,
feelings and responses that do not necessarily maximise good or conform to a moral duty or
norm, but which appear morally admirable or praiseworthy in nature.
3
I will focus here only on grief at bereavement. For the remainder of this paper, unless stated
otherwise, the term “grief” shall refer only to grief at bereavement or what I call “eros-
transformative grief.”
4
I do not wish to restrict eros-transformative grief to any particular kind of loving
relationship, erotic, platonic, familial, or otherwise. Any love felt between two beings satisfies
the relationship required here. As a note of interest though, the Hindi term “viraag,” which
means the emotional pain of being separated from a loved one, and the Portuguese “saudade,”
which means the intense feeling of longing for something you loved but is now gone, come
very close to what I am trying to conceptually achieve.
5
George Bonanno, The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us
(New York: Basic Books, 2009).
6
Ibid., 5-6.
7
Though I maintain that the death of a loved one that is met with no elements or moments of
sadness, participation in collective mourning, or emotional disruption, can fail to satisfy all
three moral dimensions of grief laid out in this paper, and am therefore suspicious of such
experiences being appropriately labeled ones of grief.
8
I am not alone in this belief. Peter Goldie writes, “[grief] … follows a characteristic shape,
although it will be individual and particular to the person, and will no doubt be significantly
shaped by cultural as well as biological influences.” Peter Goldie, “Grief: A Narrative Account,”
Ratio 24, no. 2 (2011): 126. Similar observations can be found in Erich Lindemann,
 The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief 41

“Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief,” American Journal of Psychiatry 151, no. 6
(1994): 155.
9
For compelling accounts on the importance of narrative and literature, and approaches
outside the analytic tradition, to understanding grief, see Mikel Burley, “Possibilities of
Grieving,” Philosophy and Literature 39, no. 1 (2015): 154–171; Goldie, “Grief,” 119–137.
10
Where loss is here understood as death and “someone includes both human and non-human
beings.
11
Robert C. Solomon, “On Grief and Gratitude,” in In Defense of Sentimentality (Oxford:
Oxford University Press 2004), 5.
12
Consider the character of Mersault from Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942), who fails to
grieve over his mother’s death and is subsequently publically condemned by the townsfolk.
13
Julie-Marie Strange, “‘She Cried a Very Little’: Death, Grief and Mourning in Working-Class
Culture, c. 1880–1914,” Social History 27, no. 2 (2002): 144.
14
Solomon considers the appropriate amount of grief to be contingent upon and dictated by a
complex combination of social, cultural and familial constructs, such as the nature of the
relationship to the deceased, the suddenness of their death, the deceased’s contribution to their
own death, the anticipation of their death and the level of blame felt by the bereaved all serve
to influence what is considered appropriate grieving (Solomon, “On Grief and Gratitude,” 2,
24).
15
Donald Gustafson, “Grief,” Noûs 23 (1989): 457–479. Gustafson’s central contention is that
grief is inherently irrational due to a conflict between the belief that the departed is dead and
the persistent desire for them to be otherwise. Gustafson, like many scholars, treats grief with a
fair amount of caution and criticism due to its non-paradigmatic, non-uniform nature, in
comparison to other complex emotional, cognitive and conative experiences.
16
A point that is the focus of, and persuasively made by, Carolyn Price in her article, “The
Rationality of Grief,” Inquiry 53, no. 1 (2010): 20–40.
17
Solomon, “On Grief and Gratitude,” 7.
18
Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 12.
19
I am taking it for granted that reflexive emotional responses can be morally excellent. Where
they involve seemingly appropriately directed feelings towards something, I see no reason for
them not to be understood in this way.
20
Solomon, “On Grief and Gratitude,” 7.
21
Janet McCracken, “Falsely, Sanely, Shallowly: Reflections on the Special Character of Grief,”
International Journal of Applied Philosophy 19, no. 1 (2005): 139–156.
22
Solomon, “On Grief and Gratitude,” 26.
23
A belief reminiscent of Irenaean theodicy.
24
Max Scheler, “Love and Knowledge” in On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 90–91.
42 Bryanna Moore

25
Bilimoria, “Grief and Mourning,” 162–165.
26
Scheler, “Love and Knowledge,” 104.
27
I say typically because it is possible (though I think unlikely) for the bereaved’s experience
not to fit this paradigm.
28
Solomon, “On Grief and Gratitude,” 9.
29
Dean Cocking, “Aristotle, Friendship and Virtue,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 1
(2014): 83–90.
30
C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960).
31
Although this third dimension arguably provides opportunities for virtue and thus quite a
complimentary supplement to grief’s other moral dimensions.
32
I am also suspicious that such an experience would satisfy many of the conditions of grieving
identified in the psychological and moral literature on grief, and therefore perhaps be better
understood as a related but distinct phenomenon.
33
Goldie, “Grief,” 119.
34
J. Todd Dubose, “The Phenomenology of Bereavement, Grief, and Mourning,” Journal of
Religion and Health 36, no. 4 (1997): 367–374.
35
Ibid., 23–24.
36
The ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia is typically translated to “human flourishing.”
37
Or as Price puts it, a flourishing life will typically involve emotional commitments to others.
Price, “The Rationality of Grief,” 20.
38
Kelly Oliver, “Robert Solomon and the Ethics of Grief and Gratitude: Towards a Politics of
Love,” Passion, Death and Spirituality 1 (2012): 130.
39
Solomon, “On Grief and Gratitude,” 76.
40
Luce Irigaray, “Sorcerer love: A Reading of Plato's Symposium, Diotima's Speech,” Hypatia:
A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 3 (1989): 32–44.
41
Martha Nussbaum, Love and the Individual: Romantic Rightness and Platonic Aspiration
(Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 7.
42
Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge (New York, Oxford University Press, 1990), 261.
43
Nussbaum, Love and the Individual, 11.