Grief and the limits of possibility

Recent prominent philosophical work has proposed that grief’s formal object—that which all instances of grief are directed towards, and which distinguishes grief from other emotions—is the loss of significant life possibilities. This article challenges the “lost possibilities” account by examining cases of grief where possibilities are experienced as being different, disenfranchised, or diminished prior to the loss. We argue that individuals relate to possibilities differently, as exemplified by autistic grievers; that among marginalised grievers, such as LGBTQIA+ individuals, possibilities can be experienced as inauthentic or damaging, complicating one’s sense of loss; and that the depth of one’s grief does not always correspond to the extent of the futural possibilities lost, as illustrated by elderly grievers. Some of the most profound grief is suffered by those who have few possibilities to lose. We argue that accommodating these cases requires either adopting such an expansive notion of “possibility” that the approach risks becoming uninformative, or abandoning the claim that lost possibilities are grief’s formal object and thus necessary to grief.