Grief’s Badness and the Paradox of Grief

Abstract

In this paper, I focus on the points of disagreement between Cholbi and myself about the nature of grief. More precisely, I am first going to provide reasons to reject Cholbi’s positive account of grief, specifically the condition that grief necessarily brings about a change in our practical identity. Then I am going to discuss the so-called Paradox of Grief, raising a few concerns I have about Cholbi’s solution and suggesting there is more to be said in favour of an existing solution (i.e., Pain as a Cost) he dismissed. My main goal is to raise these issues for discussion, rather than to prove my favoured view is true. I’m not quite sure what the correct account of grief is, though I am sure that Cholbi gets at least much of it right.