180061 SE The Nature of Grief: Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2016S)

Content:
Grief is one of the most profound, distressing and challenging experiences that people face. Yet it remains poorly understood and has been neglected by philosophers. This course will involve students in the preliminary stages of a major, cooperative research project. The aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive philosophical analysis of grief, one that also draws on insights from several other disciplines. The course is divided into two parts:

Part 1: Students will attend a three-day research workshop on grief, involving ten lectures by invited speakers. The workshop will explore variants of grief from a range of different philosophical and interdisciplinary perspectives, in order to identify the principal themes, issues, and problems that a comprehensive account of grief will need to address. An interdisciplinary, phenomenological approach will be adopted throughout, one that acknowledges and engages with cross-cultural similarities and differences. During the workshop, the example of grief will also be employed to reflect upon a range of more general philosophical issues concerning the nature of emotion and feeling, interpersonal experience, time-consciousness, self-narrative, and belief.

Part II: Following the workshop, seven seminars will examine and critically discuss a selection of philosophical (and other) writings on grief. The emphasis of these seminars will be upon identifying (a) shortcomings in the existing literature, and (b) central questions that a philosophical treatment of grief should address.

Methods:
Students will:
* attend a three-day research workshop as full participants
* take notes on workshop presentations and then write a detailed account of the workshop
* give an individual or joint seminar presentation
* read texts and critically discuss them in seminars
* write an essay

Aims:
Students will:
* become fully involved in the early stages of a research process, giving them insight into how major, cooperative philosophical projects develop
* gain an understanding of (a) philosophical issues concerning the nature of grief, and (b) how the topic of grief is relevant to wider philosophical concerns
* relate philosophical issues to research in other disciplines
* give structured presentations
* write a scholarly essay
* write a detailed workshop report
* summarize and critically discuss the work of others
* identify the philosophical questions and issues that should be most central to a project on grief