Anticipatory-Vicarious Grief: The Anatomy of a Moral Emotion
Abstract
Grief is often described as characterized by a particular emotional response to another person's death. While this is true of paradigm cases, we argue that a broader notion of grief allows accommodating forms of this emotional experience that deviate from the paradigmatic case. The bulk of the paper explores such a nonparadigmatic form of grief, anticipatory-vicarious grief (AV-grief), which is typically triggered by pondering the inevitability of our own death. We argue that AV-grief is a particular moral emotion that serves a unique function and is indissolubly linked to the practical identities of human agents. An agent's AV-grief is about the harm that occurs to individuals whose practical identities depend on the agent.
Publication Title
Monist
Recommended Citation
Varga, S., & Gallagher, S. (2020). Anticipatory-Vicarious Grief: The Anatomy of a Moral Emotion. Monist, 103 (2), 176-189. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onz034
