Our goal is to provide a comprehensive list of philosophical works that either focus on grief or include a substantial amount of material on grief. This bibliography is a work in progress and will be added to over the course of the project. Please email us with any suggestions for additional sources. 

Download Philosophy of Grief: A Bibliographical Resource as a PDF 
Grief: A Bibliographical Resource
Phenomenology
Presence & Absence
Epistemology of Mind
​Rationality, desires and judgments Rationality and temporal orientation Self-knowledge Resilience
Philosophy of Emotion ​
  • ​Gustafson, D. (1989). Grief. Noûs, 23(4), 457–479.
  • Lyons, W. (1980) Emotion. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
  • Nussbaum, M. (2001) Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Grief and Narrative
  • Goldie, P. (2011). Grief: a narrative account. Ratio, XXIV(2), 119–137.
  • Goldie, P. (2012.) The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion, and the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Higgins, K. (2012) Bob on Meaning in Life and Death. In K. Higgins and D. Sherman (Eds.) Passion, Death, and Spirituality: The Philosophy of Robert C. Solomon (pp. 259-267). Dordrecht: Springer.
  • Higgins, K. (2013). Love and death. In J. Deigh (Ed.), On emotions: Philosophical essays (pp. 159–178). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Ingerslev, L. R. (2018). Ongoing: On Grief’s Open-Ended Rehearsal. Continental Philosophy Review, 51(3), 343-360.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (2017). Grief and the Unity of Emotion. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XLI, 154-174 https://doi.org/10.1111/misp.12071
  • Solomon, R. (2008). True to Our Feelings. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). pp. 76–77.
Social painAnticipatory grief
  • Cholbi, M. (2017). Grief and End-of-life Surrogate Decision Making. In J. K. Davis (ed.), Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments. New York: Routledge. pp. 201-217
  • Varga, S. & Gallagher, S. (2020). Anticipatory-Vicarious Grief: The Anatomy of a Moral Emotion. The Monist, 103(2), 176–189. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onz034
The expression and perception of grief
  • Stout, R. (2012). What someone's behavior must be like if we are to be aware of their emotions in it. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 11(2), 135–48.
Interpersonal experience
​Grief and Social Cognition
  • ​Ratcliffe, M. (2016) Relating to the Dead: Social Cognition and the Phenomenology of Grief. In T. Szanto & D. Moran, (Eds.), Phenomenology of Sociality (Chapter 12). New York: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315688268
Continuing Bonds
  • Køster, A. (2019). Longing for concreteness: how body memory matters to continuing bonds. Mortality, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2019.1632277
  • Køster, A. (2020). The felt sense of the other: contours of a sensorium. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
  • Scrutton, A. P. (2017). Grief, Ritual and Experiential Knowledge: A Philosophical Perspective. In D. Klass and E. M. Steffen (Eds.), Continuing Bonds in Bereavement: New Directions for Research and Practice. The Series in Death, Dying and Bereavement (pp. 214-226). Routledge.
Attachment & Grief
  • Wonderly, M. L. (2016). On being attached. Philosophical Studies, 173(1), 223-242.
Breakups
  • Lopez-Cantero, P. (2018). The Break-Up Check: Exploring Romantic Love through Relationship Terminations. Philosophia, (46), 689–703.
Categorising Grief
Disenfranchised Grief
  • Rinofner-Kreidl, S. (2016). On Grief’s Ambiguous Nature. Quaestiones Disputatae, 7(1), 178-207.
Grief and mental illness
  • Austin, E. A. (2016). Plato on Grief as a Mental Disorder. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 98 (1), 1-20.
  • Cooper, R. (2012) Complicated Grief: Philosophical Perspectives. In Stroebe, M., Schut, H., Boelen, P. & van den Bout, J. (eds.), Complicated Grief: Scientific Foundations for Health Care Professionals (pp. 13-26). Routledge.
  • Kopelman, L. M. (1994). Normal Grief: Good or Bad? Health or Disease? Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 1(4), 209–220.
  • McCracken, J. (2005). Falsely, Sanely, Shallowly: Reflections on the Special Character of Grief. International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 19(1), 139-156.
  • Wilkinson, S. (2016). Is ’Normal Grief ’ a Mental Disorder? The Philosophical Quarterly, 50(200), 289–304.
Grief and Mourning
  • Bilimoria, P. (2011). On Grief and Mourning: Thinking a Feeling, Back to Bob Solomon. Sophia, 50, 281–301.
Ecological Grief
  • Albrecht, G.A. (2020). Negating Solastalgia: An Emotional Revolution from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene. American Imago, 77(1), 9-30.
  • Clark, T. (2020). Ecological Grief and Anthropocene Horror. American Imago, 77(1), 61-80.
  • Stolorow, R. D. (2020). Planet Earth: Crumbling Metaphysical Illusion*. American Imago, 77(1), 105-107.
Metaphysics
Composition as Identity
  • Baxter, D. L. M. (2005). Altruism, Grief, and Identity. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 70(2), 371 - 383.
  • Garland, C. E. (2019) Grief and composition as identity. The Philosophical Quarterly, 0(0), 1-16.
Ethics and Political Philosophy
  • Butler, J. (2009). Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: Verso.
  • Cholbi, M. (2017). Grief and End-of-life Surrogate Decision Making. In J. K. Davis (ed.), Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments. New York: Routledge. pp. 201-217.
  • Friedrich, A. B. (2019). More Than “Spending Time with the Body”: The Role of a Family’s Grief in Determinations of Brain Death. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 16(4), 489-499.
  • Kristjánsson, K. (2015). Grief: An Aristotelian Justification of an Emotional Virtue. Res Philosophica, 92(4), 805-828.
  • Tomasini, F. (2009). Is post-mortem harm possible? Understanding death harm and grief. Bioethics, 23(8), 441-449
Grief and moral obligation
  • Blustein, J. (2008). The Responsibility of Remembrance. In The Moral Demands of Memory (pp. 240-300). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511818615.006
  • Higgins, K. (2013). Love and death. In J. Deigh (Ed.), On emotions: Philosophical essays (pp. 159–178). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • McCracken, J. (2005). Falsely, Sanely, Shallowly: Reflections on the Special Character of Grief. International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 19(1), 139-156.
  • Solomon, R.C. (2004). On Grief and Gratitude. In In Defense of Sentimentality (Chapter 4, pp. 75–101). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Varga, S. & Gallagher, S. (2020). Anticipatory-Vicarious Grief: The Anatomy of a Moral Emotion. The Monist, 103(2), 176–189. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onz034
Aesthetics
  • Higgins, K. M. (2020). Aesthetics and the Containment of Grief. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 78(1), 9-20.
Philosophy of Film & Grief
  • Bell, E. (2014). Grief Time: Feeling Philosophy in Inception. Film and Philosophy, 14, 19-35.
  • Carel, H. (2011). In the Grip of Grief: Epistemic Impotence and the Materiality of Mourning in Shinya Tsukamoto’s Vital. In H. Carel & G. Tuck (Eds.), New Takes in Film-Philosophy (pp. 240 – 255). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Philosophy of Religion
  • Saint Augustine. (397-400 AD/2006) Confessions. F. Sheed, trans., Michael P. Foley, ed. Indianapolis: Hackett. Original composition.
Eastern Philosophy
  • Olberding, A. (2007) Sorrow and the Sage: Grief in the Zhuangzi. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 6 (4), 339-359.
  • Olberding, A. (2004) The Consummation of Sorrow: An Analysis of Confucius' Grief for Yan Hui.  Philosophy East and West, 54(3), 279-301.
  • Tsai, Y. M. (2016). Neither Bereavement nor Grief: Coping with the Death of a Cherished Person in the Cunda-sutta. Contemporary Buddhism, 17(2), 357-368.
Practical Philosophy
  • Attig, T. (1996). How We Grieve: Relearning the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Philosophy as a tool for managing grief
  • Diaz-Waian, M. (2014) How Philosophy Can Help Us Grieve: Navigating the Wake(s) of Loss. International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 28(1)
Other Philosophical Works 
  • ​Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical Investigations, (Part II), 3rd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
We are also interested in other current and recent research projects into grief. Please get in touch if you are working on grief and want your project to be added to this page. 

  • Martin House Research Centre: A collaboration between Martin House Children's Hospice and researchers at the University of York and University of Leeds. Research includes The Early Days Project, which examines parents’ experiences of the early days of bereavement and the support they receive from children’s hospices, particularly with regards the use of cold bedroom/cooling blanket/cuddle cot facilities.

  • 'End Of' or 'Start Of' life? Visual Technology and The Transformation of Traditional Post-Mortem: An ESRC-funded project at the University of Sheffield exploring early-life loss and the impact of medical imaging on paediatric post-mortem. Researchers collaborated with artists to put together an exhibition titled 'Remembering Baby'.

  • Improving communication with parents or carers who have lost a child: A research project at the University of Birmingham investigating the experiences of parents and carers who have lost a child. It aims to help healthcare practitioners, registrars and funeral directors to better provide support. ​

  • Centre for Death & Society: This research centre at the University of Bath focuses on the interdisciplinary social aspects of death, dying and bereavement. Researchers are engaged in a number of research projects relating to grief. 

  • Cemetery Research Group: Based at the University of York, this research group is exploring current and past burial culture