The resilience problem for grief

Many people experience “resilient grief,” i.e. a rapid emotional recovery after bereavement, leading philosophers to ask whether grief fittingly diminishes or ends despite remaining fitting. In this paper, I argue that grief fittingly diminishes due to a revision of the griever’s projects and expectations. Grief involves attending in a way that allows us to grasp and adjust to the world after the loss. This process alters the place of the deceased in the griever’s projects, changing their agent-centered reasons and diminishing the fitting intensity of grief. Nonetheless, I will argue that grief does not altogether cease to be fitting, and that grief also rationally diminishes in accordance with our all-thing-considered reasons. Finally, I will address whether it is regrettable that we change to adjust to the loss, arguing that we may indeed regret the loss of the motivational structure that gave rise to grief, but that the perspective offered by the end of grief is accurate.