The Ache We Are Asked To Keep - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

The Ache We Are Asked to Keep: Grief, Art, and the Refusal to Resolve

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

Watching Song of the Sea with my young children, I was undone by a grief I didn’t know I was still carrying. This episode is not a review, nor a warning—it is a meditation on the ache that art sometimes lets us keep. Drawing from Aristotle, Kierkegaard, and Levinas, we explore how the most powerful stories refuse to resolve grief—and in doing so, offer something more radical than closure: fidelity to the fracture.

This is not about catharsis. It is about consecration. About letting sorrow stay unspoken and still be honoured. The episode traces how grief becomes a private language, how film can dismantle rather than console, and how rupture—not recovery—might be art’s most truthful offering.

For those who have ever cried in the dark and not known why, this episode is a companion. It asks: what if healing was not the goal? What if the ache is not what needs fixing—but what deserves fidelity?

Why Listen?

• Explore the emotional and philosophical depth of grief that resists resolution
• Understand the ethical refusal to narrate pain into meaning or closure
• Encounter ideas from Aristotle, Kierkegaard, and Levinas on tragedy, despair, and rupture
• Learn how art can bear witness without translating or resolving suffering

Listen On:

• YouTube
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Bibliography

• Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by Malcolm Heath. London: Penguin Classics, 1996.
• Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Translated by Alastair Hannay. London: Penguin Books, 2004.
• Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.

Relevance

• Aristotle: Frames tragedy through pity and fear—not to resolve emotion, but to deepen it
• Kierkegaard: Treats despair as an intimacy with our irreconcilable condition
• Levinas: Offers rupture as the foundation of ethical encounter, not recognition

What if grief doesn’t need a narrative arc—but a place to breathe?

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