NOV 10 Dark 3, MoL 3 (Rec)
Presentations: Bella-Dark. Jacquez-Dark. Caroline-Dark [Please coordinate among yourselves to avoid redundancy... or perhaps one of you can do MoL?]
- Seems like our discussion Thursday largely anticipated this chapter. We can go back and discuss earlier material, if you've already had enough grief. (But of course, in this life we almost always get more than we bargained for, don't we?!)
- Any comment on William James's letter to his dying father that I referenced in class Thursday?*
- And for something completely different: Following up the last question, last time: "Douglas Adams chose 42 as a completely arbitrary, ordinary, and mundane number to create a humorous bathos—contrasting a serious, grand search for the meaning of life with a totally unremarkable number..." (says AI) Is humorous bathos the right attitude, in response to the "ultimate question"? **
- Is our "pathologization of grief" driven too much by the business/productivity/consumer culture? 76
- What are the worst examples of "toxic masculinity" you've encountered (or heard of... and surely not committed)? 80
- Is the Stoics' memento mori good advice? Does it spark gratitude in you? Or in others, when you remind them of their own mortality? Should it?
- "As a New Yorker, I loved Epictetus." 81 Comment? How would you fill out that sentence if it began "As a Nashvillian..."? (Or substitute your preferred alternate locale.)
- Was Montaigne's "capsized" grief excessive, or self-indulgent, or in any other way problematic? Or do you also, with Mariana, find it beautiful? 82-3
- Do you agree with Cicero about "getting a hold" of oneself? What does that mean to you? Can you do it? Does philosophy help you do it? 87
- Are you with Burton, or Freud? How do you distinguish grief from depression, or both from "the human condition"? 88
- Do we too frequently "medicalize normality"? 89 If so, how can we stop doing that?
- Do you keep your blinds closed? Do you think it's healthy to do so? 90
- Has anyone ever told you a loved one had gone to "a better place"? How did you respond? (Or how did you want to respond?) 92
- Have you read or seen A Grief Observed? Did it make you think well (or better) of C.S. Lewis? 93
- Do you ever experience Cicero's "gulf" or a rift between thinking and feeling? How do you cross the gulf or heal the rift?
- Do you have an additional example of a "botched condolence" or "unhelpful platitude"? 97
- Do you agree that Colbert canb "see in the dark"? How do you imagine you'd have handled his tragic family situation? Can you name other examples of night vision? 100
- Has Kubler-Ross been misunderstood?
- [MoL ch3] What's the difference between the world's being "absurd all the way through" and its being "pointless"? 57
- Was the world ever just "story-shaped"? Has it ever really enjoyed a universally-shared "grand narrative"? Does it need one? Is it not in fact multi-story-shaped? And isn't that kind of pluralism preferable to a monolithic conformist story that does not brook dissent? 58
- Is a nihilist just a disillusioned metaphysician? What does that mean? 59
- Is history empty? Or just people's knowledge and understanding of history? What does it mean to say the world may be redeemed but not saved? 61
- Is "perhaps" the right attitude when combatting fascism? 62 Consider Yeats ("The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity") and Russell ("the stupid are cocksure, the intelligent are full of doubt").
- How can life be neither meaningful nor meaningless? Must there be a Meaning of meanings? 64-5
- What do you think of Freud's view that death is the meaning of life? 66
- Is Nietzsche's approach ot meaning narcissistic? 67
- Is the universe "appallingly shoddy"? 68
- Are we puppets according to Schopenhauer but not to Sophocles? 70 Was Troilus an existentialist? 71 Was Euthyphro as anti-essentialist? 73
- Are you more exhilarated or alarmed about the absence of a "given" meaning of life? 74
- Why must the Protestant spirit "grope fearfully in the dark"? 75
Bolton St., London, Dec. 14, 1882.
Darling old Father,—Two letters, one from my Alice last night, and one from Aunt Kate to Harry just now, have somewhat dispelled the mystery in which the telegrams left your condition; and although their news is several days earlier than the telegrams, I am free to suppose that the latter report only an aggravation of the symptoms the letters describe. It is far more agreeable to think of this than of some dreadful unknown and sudden malady.
We have been so long accustomed to the hypothesis of your being taken away from us, especially during the past ten months, that the thought that this may be your last illness conveys no very sudden shock. You are old enough, you've given your message to the world in many ways and will not be forgotten; you are here left alone, and on the other side, let us hope and pray, dear, dear old Mother is waiting for you to join her. If you go, it will not be an inharmonious thing. Only, if you are still in possession of your normal consciousness, I should like to see you once again before we part. I stayed here only in obedience to the last telegram, and am waiting now for Harry—who knows the exact state of my mind, and who will know yours—to telegraph again what I shall do. Meanwhile, my blessed old Father, I scribble this line (which may reach you though I should come too late), just to tell you how full of the tenderest memories and feelings about you my heart has for the last few days been filled. In that mysterious gulf of the past into which the present soon will fall and go back and back, yours is still for me the central figure. All my intellectual life I derive from you; and though we have often seemed at odds in the expression thereof, I'm sure there's a harmony somewhere, and that our strivings will combine. What my debt to you is goes beyond all my power of estimating,—so early, so penetrating and so constant has been the influence. You need be in no anxiety about your literary remains. I will see them well taken care of, and that your words shall not suffer for being concealed. At Paris I heard that Milsand, whose name you may remember in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" and elsewhere, was an admirer of the "Secret of Swedenborg," and Hodgson told me your last book had deeply impressed him. So will it be; especially, I think, if a collection of extracts from your various writings were published, after the manner of the extracts from Carlyle, Ruskin, & Co. I have long thought such a volume would be the best monument to you.—As for us; we shall live on each in his way,—feeling somewhat unprotected, old as we are, for the absence of the parental bosoms as a refuge, but holding fast together in that common sacred memory. We will stand by each other and by Alice, try to transmit the torch in our offspring as you did in us, and when the time comes for being gathered in, I pray we may, if not all, some at least, be as ripe as you. As for myself, I know what trouble I've given you at various times through my peculiarities; and as my own boys grow up, I shall learn more and more of the kind of trial you had to overcome in superintending the development of a creature different from yourself, for whom you felt responsible. I say this merely to show how my sympathy with you is likely to grow much livelier, rather than to fade—and not for the sake of regrets.—As for the other side, and Mother, and our all possibly meeting, I can't say anything. More than ever at this moment do I feel that if that were true, all would be solved and justified. And it comes strangely over me in bidding you good-bye how a life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note. It is so much like the act of bidding an ordinary good-night. Good-night, my sacred old Father! If I don't see you again—Farewell! a blessed farewell! Your
WILLIAM.
The elder Henry James died on the nineteenth of December…
**
3) Largely, yes. Bereavement leave is typically only a few days, and we’re expected to be “back to normal” on a work schedule rather than a healing one. When grief that outlasts that window gets labeled a disorder, the “problem” is partly that the mourner is no longer productive. Diagnosis can still help people who are truly incapacitated, but the pressure to treat sorrow as a malfunction to fix quickly serves the economy more than the griever.
ReplyDelete9) I lean toward Freud’s distinction: grief has an object, a specific loss, while depression is more diffuse and tends to attack one’s sense of self-worth. In practice the line is blurry, and I’d say grief becomes depression when it stops being tied to the loss and starts crowding out the ability to function over a long period. Both also shade into the human condition, since awareness of loss and mortality is built into being human. Not every dark mood needs a cure.
12) It’s usually well meant, but it tends to shortcut the grief rather than honor it. If the place is better, the mourner is implicitly told not to be sad, when what they need is permission to feel the loss. The better response, whether I’m receiving or giving it, is simple presence: “I’m so sorry. I’m here.” (If you have a real moment you can point to, swap it in here. It will be stronger in your own words.)
Your first response appears to be to #4, your second to #10, and the last to #13. Points all well taken. But I hope that last parenthetical phrase only SOUNDS like the voice of AI. "Stronger in your own words" indeed.
Delete6. I have a challenge coint with 'memento mori' etched on it. When I first got it, I wanted to carry it around it all the time. I really like the idea of a healthy reminder to cherish the time we have. I think if the concept is not paralyzing in its magnitude then it can promote a "if I wanted this to go the best way it possibly could right now" kind of attitude. Which can be hard to bring to the table as often as we should.
ReplyDelete21. Yes, but the nihilist would be better to do with seeing a landscape of meaninglessness as a fertile playground for meaning creation.
25. I agree with Becker ("The Denial of Death") that instead of the Freudian notion that sex is lurking behind every motivation, instead we are probably more motivated by repressing an acute realization that life is fragile and death is inevitable. Freud's life itself is a great support for Becker's thesis, that is to transcend our creaturely nature the terror of death compels us to create immortality projects (i.e. careers, legacies, romantic dependencies, and so on...).
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