Berislav Marusić, "On the Temporality of Emotions: An Essay on Grief, Anger, and Love" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Summary

When someone close to us dies, intense grief is an expected and reasonable response. But while the reason for our grief – the loss of the person who is the object of our grief – doesn’t change, our grief itself diminishes. This diminishment is also expected, but how can it be reasonable if the reason for the grief hasn’t changed? 

In On the Temporality of Emotions: An Essay on Grief, Anger, and Love (Oxford UP, 2022), Berislav Marusic articulates this puzzle of accommodation as a general feature of our mental lives, and considers a number of different to attempts to resolve it. Marusic, who is senior lecturer of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, defends the idea that the puzzle can’t be satisfactorily dissolved – while the diminishment is reasonable, it is so in a way that we can never fully grasp.

Carrie Figdor is professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa.

Your Host

Carrie Figdor

Carrie Figdor is professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa.

View Profile