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
Philosophy of Mind

  • Atkins, A. (2022). On Grief's Wandering Thought: A Philosophical Exploration. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 103 (1):95-117.
  • Baxter, D. L. M. (2005). Altruism, Grief, and Identity. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 70(2), 371–383.
  • Bilimoria, P. (2011). On Grief and Mourning: Thinking a Feeling, Back to Bob Solomon. Sophia, 50, 281–301.
  • Brady, Michael S. (2015). Feeling Bad and Seeing Bad. Dialectica 69 (3):403-416.
  • Cholbi, M. (2022). Grief as Attention. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 63–83.
  • Cholbi, M. (2022). Grief: A Philosophical Guide. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Cholbi, M. (2017). Grief’s Rationality, Backward and Forward. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XCIV(2), 255-272.
  • Debus, D. and Richardson, L. (2022) 'Rather than Succour, My Memories Bring Eloquent Stabs of Pain' On the Ambiguous Role of Memory in Grief'. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 36–62.
  • Fullarton, C. (2020). Grief, Phantoms, and Re-membering Loss. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 34, 284–296.
  • Garland, C. E. (2020). Grief and Composition as Identity. Philosophical Quarterly 70 (280):464-479.
  • Gilbert. K. R. (2002). Taking a Narrative Approach to Grief Research: Finding Meaning in Stories. Death Studies, 26, 223–239.
  • Goldie, P. (2012.) The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion, and the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Goldie, P. (2011). Grief: a narrative account. Ratio, XXIV(2), 119–137.
  • Gustafson, D. (1989). Grief. Noûs, 23(4), 457–479.
  • Higgins, K. (2022). Music’s Role in Relation to Phenomenological Aspects of Grief. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 128–149.
  • Higgins, K. (2013). Love and death. In J. Deigh (Ed.), On emotions: Philosophical essays, 159–178. 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.
  • Kamp, K. S., E. M. Steffen, B. Alderson-Day, P. Allen, A. Austad, J. Hayes, F. Larøi, M. Ratcliffe, and P. Sabucedo. (2020). Sensory and Quasi-Sensory Experiences of the Deceased in Bereavement: An Interdisciplinary and Integrative Review. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 46, 1367–1381.
  • Krueger, J & Osler, L (2022). Communing with the Dead Online: Chatbots, Grief, and Continuing Bonds. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 222–252.
  • Markovic, Jelena (2022). Unchosen transformative experiences and the experience of agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21 (3):729-745.
  • Marušić, B. (2018). Do Reasons Expire? An Essay on Grief. Philosophers’ Imprint, 18(25), 1-21.
  • Mehmel, C. (2021) Grief, disorientation, and futurity, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
  • Millar, B. (2021). Grief’s Impact on Sensorimotor Expectations: An Account of Non-veridical Bereavement Experiences. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
  • Moller, D. (2016). Love and Death. The Journal of Philosophy, 104(6), 301–316.
  • Nussbaum, M. (2001) Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 19–88.
  • Olberding, A. (1997). Mourning, Memory, and Identity: A Comparative Study of the Constitution of the Self in Grief. International Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1):29-44.
  • Pender, S. (2010). Rhetoric, grief, and the imagination in early modern England. Philosophy and Rhetoric 43 (1):pp. 54-85.
  • Price, C. (2010). The Rationality of Grief. Inquiry, 53(1), 20–40.
  • Radden, J. (2022). The ‘Pain’ of Grief. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 13–35.
  • Ratcliffe, M., Millar, B. & Richardson, L. (2022) 'Introduction: Understanding Grief: Feeling, Intentionality, Regulation, and Interpretation'. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 7–12.
  • Ratcliffe, M., Richardson, L., Millar, B. (2022). On the appropriateness of grief to its object. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, pp. 1–17.
  • Read, R. (2018). Can There Be a Logic of Grief? Wittgenstein and Phenomenology, (June), 176–196.
  • Richardson, L. (2022). Absence experience in grief. European Journal of Philosophy (on-line first).
  • Richardson, L., Ratcliffe, M., Millar, B., Byrne, E. (2021). 'The Covid-19 Pandemic and the Bounds of Grief'. Think, 20(57), pp. 89–101.
  • Rinofner-Kreidl, S. (2016). On Grief’s Ambiguous Nature. Quaestiones Disputatae 7 (1):178-207.
  • Roberts (2019). Feeling nothing: Numbness and emotional absence. European Journal of Philosophy, 27, 187–198.
  • Shardlow, J (2022). Temporal Perspectives and the Phenomenology of Grief. Review of Philosophy and Psychology (Online first).
  • Slaby, J (2022). Intentionality’s Breaking Point: Lessons From Grief. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 105–127.
  • Solomon, R.C. (2004). On Grief and Gratitude. In In Defense of Sentimentality (Chapter 4, pp. 75–101). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 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.
  • Taylor, C.C.W. (1986). Emotions and wants. In J. Marks (Ed.), The Ways of Desire, pp. 217–231 (Chicago, IL: Precedent Publishing). (See particularly pp. 221-223).
  • Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical Investigations, (Part II), 3rd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
 
 
Phenomenology

  • Attig, T. (2000). The Heart of Grief: Death and the Search for Lasting Love. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Attig, T. (2011). How We Grieve: Relearning the World. Revised Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Brinkmann, S. (2020). Grief: The Price of Love. Trans. T. McTurk. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Brinkmann, S. (2019). The body in grief. Mortality, 24, 290–303.
  • Byrne, E. A. (2022). Grief in Chronic Illness: A Case Study of CFS/ ME. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 175–200.
  • Cole, J. and Ratcliffe, M. (2022). 'Illness, Injury, and the Phenomenology of Loss: A Dialogue'. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 150–174.
  • Fuchs, T. (2018). Presence in absence. The ambiguous phenomenology of grief. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 17(1), 43–63.
  • Godley, J. A. (2018). Infinite grief: Freud, Hegel, and lacan on the thought of death. Angelaki 23 (6):93-110.
  • Hughes, E. (2022). ‘The Depths of Temporal Desynchronization in Grief’. Psychopathology (on-line first).
  • Ingerslev, L. R. (2018). Ongoing: On Grief’s Open-Ended Rehearsal. Continental Philosophy Review, 51(3), 343–360.
  • Keeping, J. (2014). The Time Is Out of Joint: A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Grief. Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 18 (2), 233-255.
  • Kelly, M. R. (2016). Grief: Putting the Past before Us. Quaestiones Disputatae, 7(1), 156–177.
  • Køster, A. and Kofod, E.H. (eds.) (2021). Cultural, existential and phenomenological dimensions of grief experience. London, Routledge.
  • Køster, A. (2022). A Deeper Feeling of Grief. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 84–104.
  • Køster, A. (2020). Bereavement and the Meaning of Profound Feelings of Emptiness: An Existential-phenomenological Analysis. In Tewes, C. and Stanghellini, G. (eds.) Time and Body: Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Køster, A. (2020). The felt sense of the other: contours of a sensorium. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
  • Køster, A. (2019). Longing for concreteness: how body memory matters to continuing bonds. Mortality, 1-13.
  • Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phenomenology of Perception. (D. A. Landes, Trans.) London: Routledge.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (forthcoming). ‘The Underlying Unity of Hope and Trust’. The Monist.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (2022). Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (2021). Sensed Presence without Sensory Qualities: A Phenomenological Study of Bereavement Hallucinations. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 20, 601–616.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (2021). 'Trauma, Language, and Trust'. In Anna Bortolan and Elisa Magri. Eds. Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and the Social World: The Continued Relevance of Phenomenology. De Gruyter, pp. 323–342.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (2020). Towards a Phenomenology of Grief: Insights from Merleau-Ponty. European Journal of Philosophy, 28, 657–669.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (2019). Grief and Phantom Limbs: A Phenomenological Comparison. New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 17, 1–25.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (2018). The Phenomenological Clarification of Grief and its Relevance for Psychiatry. In G. Stanghellini, M. Broome, A. Raballo, A. V. Fernandez, P. Fusar-Poli, & R. Rosfort (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (2017). Grief and the Unity of Emotion. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XLI, 154–174
  • 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.
  • Ratcliffe, M. and Byrne, E. A. (2022). ‘Grief, Self, and Narrative’. Philosophical Explorations (on-line first).
  • Ratcliffe, M. & Byrne, E. A., (2022). The Interpersonal and Social Dimensions of Emotion Regulation in Grief. In Allan Køster & Ester Holte Kofod. Eds. Grief Experience: Cultural, Existential and Phenomenological Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 84–98.
  • Ratcliffe, M. (2022). Phenomenological reflections on grief during the COVID-19 pandemic. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-20.
  • Romanyshyn, R. (1999). The Soul in Grief: Love, Death and Transformation. Berkeley CA: North Atlantic Books.
  • Slaby, J. (2008). Affective Intentionality and the Feeling Body. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 7, 429–444.
  • Stolorow, R. D. (2020). Planet Earth: Crumbling Metaphysical Illusion. American Imago, 77(1), 105–107.
  • Throop, J. (2022). The Gift of Grief. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 253–272.
  • Walters, D.A. (2008). Grief and loss: towards an existential phenomenology of child spirituality. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 13, 277–286.
 
 
Philosophy of Psychiatry

  • Austin, E. A. (2016). Plato on Grief as a Mental Disorder. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 98 (1), 1-20.
  • Brinkmann, S. (2018). Could Grief be a Mental Disorder? Nordic Psychology, 70, 146–159.
  • Drożdżowicz, A. (2020). The difficult case of complicated grief and the role of phenomenology in psychiatry. Phenomenology and Mind, 18, 98–109.
  • Kopelman, L. M. (1994). Normal Grief: Good or Bad? Health or Disease? Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 1(4), 209–220.
  • Kopelman, L. M. (1994). Rejoinder: If Grief Is Not Bad, Is It Good? Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 1 (4):225-226.
  • Wakefield, Jerome C. (2021). Can One and the Same Instance of Grief Be Both Normal and Disordered? Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 28 (4):341-346.
  • Wilkinson, S. (2016). Is ’Normal Grief ’ a Mental Disorder? The Philosophical Quarterly, 50(200), 289–304.
  • Wise, Thomas N. (1994). Commentary on" Normal Grief: Good or Bad? Health or Disease?". Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 1 (4):223-224.
 
 
Aesthetics

  • Albrecht, G.A. (2020). Negating Solastalgia: An Emotional Revolution from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene. American Imago, 77(1), 9–30. 
  • Bell, E. (2014). Grief Time: Feeling Philosophy in Inception. Film and Philosophy, 14, 19-35.
  • Burley, M. (2015). Possibilities of Grieving. Philosophy and Literature, 39(1), 154–171.
  • 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.
  • Clark, T. (2020). Ecological Grief and Anthropocene Horror. American Imago, 77(1), 61-80.
  • Gilmore, J. (2013). Grief and Belief. British Journal of Aesthetics 53 (1):103-107.
  • Higgins, K. M. (2020). Aesthetics and the Containment of Grief. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 78(1), 9-20.
  • Hix, H. L. (1993). Postmodern Grief. Philosophy and Literature 17 (1):47-64.
  • Millar, B. & Lee, J. (2021). 'Horror Films and Grief.' Emotion Review, 13(3), pp. 171–182.
  • Minkin, L. & Summers, F. (2016). How to accommodate grief in your life. Philosophy of Photography 7 (1):83-113.
  • Stradella, A. (2011). On Grief: an Aesthetic Defense. Philosophical Practice: Journal of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (American Philosophical Practitioners Association) 6 (2). 
  • Willett, C. & Willett, J. (2020). The Comic in the Midst of Tragedy's Grief with Tig Notaro, Hannah Gadsby, and Others. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78 (4):535-546.
  • Wilson, C. (2013). Grief and the Poet. British Journal of Aesthetics 53 (1):77-91.
 
 
Comparative Philosophy
           
  • Foust, M. A. (2009). Grief and Mourning in Confucius’s Analects. Journal of Chinese Philosophy 36 (2):348-358.
  • O’Hagan, E. (2021). Grief, Love, and Buddhist Resilience. Journal of Value Inquiry 55 (1):41-55.
  • 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.
  • Seachris, J. (2008). Yan Hui's death as a threat to confucius' expression of virtue: A further look at the master's grief. Asian Philosophy 18 (2):105 – 122.
  • Tsai, Y. (2016). Neither Bereavement nor Grief: Coping with the Death of a Cherished Person in the Cunda-sutta. Contemporary Buddhism 17 (2):357-368.
 
 
Moral/Political Philosophy

  • Atkins, A. (2022). On grief's sweet sorrow. Wiley: European Journal of Philosophy 30 (1):3-16.
  • Blustein, J. (2008). The Responsibility of Remembrance. In The Moral Demands of Memory (pp. 240-300). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Butler, J. (2009). Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? London: Verso.
  • Carter, M. (2021). Grief, trauma and mistaken identity: Ethically deceiving people living with dementia in complex cases. Bioethics 35 (9):850-856.
  • Cholbi, M. (2021). Grieving Our Way Back to Meaningfulness. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 90:235-251.
  • Cholbi, M. (2019). Holding On and Letting Go: Anticipatory Grief and Surrogate Choices at the End of Life. American Journal of Bioethics 19 (12):42-43.
  • Cholbi, M. (2018). Regret, Resilience, and the Nature of Grief. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 1–23.
  • 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.
  • Cholbi, M. (2017). Finding the Good in Grief: What Augustine Knew that Meursault Could Not. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 3(1), 91-105.
  • Diaz-Waian, M. (2014) How Philosophy Can Help Us Grieve: Navigating the Wake(s) of Loss. International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 28(1)
  • 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.
  • Gillespie, K. (2016). Witnessing Animal Others: Bearing Witness, Grief, and the Political Function of Emotion. Hypatia 31 (3):572-588.
  • Koggel, C. M. (2017). Remembering and Loving in Relationships Involving Dying, Death, and Grief. Hypatia 32 (1):193-198.
  • Kristjánsson, K. (2015). Grief: An Aristotelian Justification of an Emotional Virtue. Res Philosophica, 92(4), 805-828.
  • Lopez-Cantero, P. (2018). The Break-Up Check: Exploring Romantic Love through Relationship Terminations. Philosophia, (46), 689–703.
  • López, Roger G. (forthcoming). The Ethical Import of Grief. Journal of Value Inquiry:1-23.
  • Mason, C. & Dougherty, M. (forthcoming). Mourning and the Recognition of Value. In Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode (ed.), Meanings of Mourning: Perspectives on Death, Loss and Grief. Lexington Books.
  • McCracken, J. (2005). Falsely, Sanely, Shallowly: Reflections on the Special Character of Grief. International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 19(1), 139–156.
  • McIvor, D. W. (2012). Bringing Ourselves to Grief. Political Theory 40 (4):409-436.
  • Millar, B., Lopez-Cantero, P. (2022). Grief, continuing bonds, and unreciprocated love. The Southern Journal of Philosophy​ (on-line first).
  • Moller, D. (2018). Love and the Rationality of Grief. In A. Grau, C.; Smuts (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Love (pp. 1–15).
  • Moore, B. (2017). The Three Moral Dimensions of Grief. Colloquy 34:24-42.
  • Nelkin, Dana Kay (2019). Guilt, grief, and the good. Social Philosophy and Policy 36 (1):173-191.
  • Preston-Roedder, R. & Preston-Roedder, E. (2017). Grief and Recovery. In Anna Gotlib (ed.), The Moral Psychology of Sadness. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
  • Radomska, M.; Mehrabi, T. & Lykke, N. (2019). Queer Death Studies: Coming to Terms with Death, Dying and Mourning Differently. An Introduction. Women, Gender and Research 2019 (3-4):3-11.
  • Rangel, J. C.; Holmes, D.; Perron, A. & Miller, G. E. (forthcoming). Biopower under a state of exception: stories of dying and grieving alone during COVID-19 emergency measures. Medical Humanities:medhum-2021-012255.
  • Rinofner-Kreidl, S. (2016). On Grief’s Ambiguous Nature. Quaestiones Disputatae, 7(1), 178-207.
  • Roberts, R.C. (2003)  Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology  (pp. 235–240; pp. 325–326). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Saint Augustine. (397-400 AD/2006) Confessions. F. Sheed, trans., Michael P. Foley, ed. Indianapolis: Hackett. Original composition.
  • Scherz, P. (2017). Grief, Death, and Longing in Stoic and Christian Ethics. Journal of Religious Ethics 45 (1):7-28.
  • Schönherr, J. (2021). Two problems of fitting grief. Analysis 81 (2):240–247.
  • Scrutton, T. (2022). Interpretation and the Shaping of Experience: Theology of Suffering and C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29 (9–10), pp. 201–221.
  • Stokes, Patrick (2021). Digital Souls: A Philosophy of Online Death. London, UK: Bloomsbury.
  • Tomasini, F. (2009). Is post-mortem harm possible? Understanding death harm and grief. Bioethics, 23(8), 441–449.
  • Varga, S. & Gallagher, S. (2020). Anticipatory-Vicarious Grief: The Anatomy of a Moral Emotion. The Monist, 103(2), 176–189.
  • Willox, (2012). Climate Change as the Work of Mourning. Ethics and the Environment 17 (2):137-164.
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