Seeking wisdom in death's shadows : collected writings on how we grieve / Thomas Attig.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Attig, Thomas, 1945- (author).

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Standardized Title:

Works. Selections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grief.

Death--Psychological aspects.

Death.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"A natural companion volume to the author’s How We Grieve: Relearning the World and The Heart of Grief: Death and the Search for Lasting Love, this volume’s fourteen previously published and nine new pieces trace significant developments in the author’s nearly fifty years of reflection. As a philosopher, he is a seeker of wisdom. The dying and bereaved and their helpers seek wisdom, too, not science, about how to live and how to care. The book captures the author’s best thinking about the nature of the self (weblike, inherently grounded, social, and interdependent); ego, soul, and spirit; spirituality and religion; suffering, brokenness, and sorrow; loss of assumptive world; grieving as relearning the world; anticipatory grieving; loving in separation; hope and resilience; ethics in care of the dying and bereaved; rational suicide among the terminally ill; criticism of evidence-based practice as a model for grief-counseling; a wisdom-based model for grief-counseling; and sorrow-friendly practices for self-care." -- Publisher's description.

Contents:

Part I: My Search for Wisdom Begins. Introduction: Searching for Wisdom about Death and Dying ; Grief and Personal Integrity ; Relearning the World: On the Phenomenology of Grieving ; The Importance of Conceiving of Grieving as an Active Process ; Coping with Mortality: An Essay on Self-Mourning

Part II: Contemporary Discussions. Relearning the World: Making and Finding Meanings ; Relearning the World: Always Complicated, Sometimes More Than Others ; Questionable Assumptions about Assumptive Worlds ; Anticipating the Transition to Loving in Absence ; Disenfranchised Grief Revisited: Discounting Hope and Love

Part III: Aspects of Self and Grieving. Spirituality in Self and Grieving ; Existential Suffering: Anguish Over Our Human Condition ; Beyond Pain: The Existential Suffering of Children ; Brokenness and Resilience ; Hope in Mortality, Dying, and Grief

Part IV: Caregiving in Death's Shadows. Perspectives on the Ethics of Caring for the Dying and the Bereaved ; Rational Suicide in Terminal Illness: The Ethics of Intervention and Assistance ; Is Evidence-Based Practice an Appropriate Model for Grief Counseling? ; Self-Care through Sorrow-Friendly Practices ; Wisdom-Based Grief Counseling

Part V: Harvesting Wisdom. A Dozen Good Things about Grieving ; Meanings of Death Seen through the Lens of Grieving ; My Years of Living Mortally.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on October 15, 2025).

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0197776116

0197776124

0197776108

9780197776100

0197776094

9780197776117

9780197776124

9780197776094

OCLC:

1545512773