The chapter approaches philosophies of trauma from the perspective of the philosophical assumptions underlying different ways of engaging with trauma. These assumptions can take various forms depending, first, on how explicitly articulated they are and, second, on whether they emerge in the context of theoretical discourse or fiction. Drawing on these distinctions, the chapter sketches out four types of philosophies of trauma. In addition to this semantic categorization, it proposes a substantial one, suggesting that the three main philosophical paradigms of trauma that underlie contemporary trauma theory can be called empiricism, poststructuralism and hermeneutics. The chapter analyses in more detail the philosophical assumptions underlying dominant literary trauma theory particularly concerning the concepts of experience and narrative understanding. It problematizes two widely held assumptions of trauma theory: first, the assumption that trauma is not experienced when it occurs, and, second, that attempts to narratively understand trauma are doomed to be ethically and epistemologically questionable. The final part of the chapter elucidates these points through a discussion of Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life (2015).