The grieving animal: Grief as a foundational emotion

Abstract

This article introduces the notion of foundational emotions, using grief as a central example. Unlike so-called basic emotions, some of which humans share with other animals, foundational emotions are constitutive of human selfhood and subjectivity. First, anxiety, shame, and guilt are presented as emotions that have been singled out as foundational emotions in philosophical and biblical texts. Second, grief is introduced as a foundational human emotion in the sense that it connects the human being to existential issues of love and death that are uniquely important for us. Some general implications are discussed that follow from the notion of foundational emotions.