AGING AND PHILOSOPHY

When does old age begin? Will it never happen if we refuse to think about it and never talk about it? Rather paradoxically, many people seek a long life but do not want to be old.  Instead, we often see old people as ‘other,’ unattractive in appearance and limited in physical and mental competence. How can we generalize about ‘seniors’, ‘elders’, or ‘retired people’ or ‘over 65s’ when there is so much variety within these groups? Is gender a significant factor in experiences of old age and our attitudes to it? 

Older people are often credited with wisdom. What is wisdom and how can we acquire it? If we indeed acquire wisdom, how, if at all, can we communicate it to younger people?  

How can we work towards respect for the dignity and humanity of older people?  What values should we seek in later life? How may conceptions of death affect our lives in our later years? How might the inevitability of death impact us as we grow older, especially when we face the prospect or reality of deaths of similar-age friends, neighbours, and family members?

In this interest group we will consider these and related questions, working from the views of selected philosophers in the western tradition. These will include Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Hildegard von Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Christine de Pizan, Michel de Montaigne, Anne Therese de Lambert, Immanuel Kant, and Simone de Beauvoir. Readings will be selected from materials available on the internet.