Time of loss

We live in a time of loss – vast and subtle, obvious and ambiguous, personal and collective. With little opportunity to ignore the instability of the world, we are learning to cope with the deaths of loved ones and the constant stream of news about the deaths of strangers. German writer and journalist Daniel Schreiber rereads the works of philosophers (from Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers to Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler) and writers (from Joan Didion to Joseph Brodsky) in search of ways to cope with loss in a world that still feels familiar, but has been replaced by a more ominous version. And he finds hope in a new – cautious, less hopeful, more realistic than before – “confidence of low expectations” in relation to an uncertain future.