The Political Philosophy of Grief

Wenqing Zhao (Whitman College, Duke University)

There have been sizable discussions over whether one is entitled to time off from work when becoming a parent to a child, namely the right to parental leave. However, not much has been said about whether we should be able to take time off to grieve when we lose a parent. The Confucians are against such asymmetrical attention to the beginning-of-life versus end-of-life events. To the surprise of many, as a school of thought centered on leaning into social roles, the Confucians think it is both necessary and good to withdraw from social functioning entirely and practice ritualized rumination over the deceased for an extended period. The Confucians also call for understanding grief not merely as an inner state but also as a social performance. Moreover, the society as a collective has a stake in the issue and is obligated to provide the proper structural support for extended, focused bereavement. In this talk, I reconstruct the classical Confucian arguments of grief with a focus on the following questions: What is grief? What is the normative role of grief? Why is grief a political emotion? Drawing on Martha Nussbaum’s claim that we can and should cultivate love to achieve justice, I argue that the classical Confucian perspective is particularly valuable as it sheds light on this often-neglected aspect of human life in Western political discourse.