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Overview
In this deeply considered meditation on aging in Western culture, Jan Baars argues that, in today’s world, living longer does not necessarily mean living better. He contends that there has been an overall loss of respect for aging, to the point that understanding and “dealing with” aging people has become a process focused on the decline of potential and the advance of disease rather than on the accumulation of wisdom and the creation of new skills.
To make his case, Baars compares and contrasts the works of such modern-era thinkers as Foucault, Heidegger, and Husserl with the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Cicero, and other Ancient and Stoic philosophers. He shows how people in the classical period—less able to control health hazards—had a far better sense of the provisional nature of living, which led to a philosophical and religious emphasis on cultivating the art of living and the idea of wisdom. This is not to say that modern society’s assessments of aging are insignificant, but they do need to balance an emphasis on the measuring of age with the concept of "living in time."
Gerontologists, philosophers, and students will find Baars' discussion to be a powerful, perceptive conversation starter.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781421406466 |
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Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
Publication date: | 10/01/2012 |
Pages: | 304 |
Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
The Chronocratic Emperor Has No Clothes 7
Overview 8
1 Chronometric Regimes: The Life Course, Aging, and Time 12
Introduction 12
1.1 Historical Backgrounds of the Chronometric Life Course 16
A Biographical Sandglass 18
Age in Social Legislation 21
Late Modern Systemic Worlds and Life Worlds 22
1.2 Chronometric Life Courses: Beyond Standardization and De-standardization 24
The Continuing Importance of Chronometric Age 31
Chronometric Regimes 36
1.3 Care and Its Chronometric Regimes 38
Chronometric Care and Its Acceleration 41
Time-efficient Lives 43
1.4 Chronometric Aging: Exactly Arbitrary 47
Intrinsic Time and Intrinsic Malleability 50
The Heisenberg Principle of Aging 51
Conclusions 55
2 Exclusion, Activism, and Eternal Youth 58
Introduction 58
2.1 From Natural Passivity to Activating Activities for Older People 60
From "idleness with Dignity" to Being as Being Busy 62
Stay Active: "Use It or Lose It" 63
2.2 The Emergence of an Anti-aging Culture 66
"Don't Call 'em Old, Call 'em Consumers!" 66
"Take Years Off Your Looks and Add Them to Your Life" 69
2.3 The Much-desired Long and Invulnerable Life: Magic and Magic Technology 74
A Fundamental Vulnerability 80
Conclusions 81
3 A Passion for Wisdom and the Emergence of an Art of Aging 85
Introduction 85
3.1 Early Greek Thought about the Life Course 86
Solon's Untraditional Views 89
3.2 The Search for Wisdom and the Emergence of an Art of Life 90
Plato's Academy 94
Aristotle's Lyceum 99
The Garden of Epicurus 105
The Stoics 106
Wisdom, Aging, and Old Age 108
3.3 Cicero and the Stoic Art of Living in Old Age 110
Cicero 112
Cato Maior de Senectute: On Old Age 113
Cicero's Defense of Old Age against Four Complaints 114
A Statesman's View of Old Age 117
Conclusions 121
4 Modern Science, the Discovery of a Personal History, and Aging Authentically 127
Introduction 127
4.1 Aging in a World of Meaningful Repetition 129
4.2 (Ir)reversible Time and the Senescing of Organisms 132
Does Nature Repeat Itself Eternally? 136
Nature Changes and Time Is Irreversible 138
Senescing, Irreversible Time, and the Organism 139
4.3 The Idealization of Science and the Epistemological Reduction of Time 144
4.4 The Struggle for a Fuller Experience of Time 150
Augustine: A Threefold Present 150
Bergson: Time as Creativity 154
Husserl: The Phenomenological Experience of Time 155
Heidegger: Authentic Temporal Being in the Face of Death 157
Time Is Lived in Constitutive Life Worlds 162
Conclusions 163
5 Aging and Narrative Identities 169
Introduction 169
5.1 Embedding Aging in Narratives 171
Narratives and Narrative Identity 173
Narrative Integration as a "Good Life" 174
Life Plans 178
"Real Stories" and Textual Issues 182
5.2 A Modest Necessity of Stories 185
Changes, Themes, and Phases 186
Stories: Intertwining the Past, the Present, and the Future 189
Institutional Narrative Practices 191
Narratives of the Life World and the Systemic World 193
Conclusions 195
6 Perspectives-Toward an Art of Aging 198
Introduction 198
6.1 Interhuman Vulnerability and the Dignity of "Unsuccessful" Aging 202
The Vulnerability of the Interhuman Condition 202
Aging and Increasing Vulnerability 205
The Dignity of "Unsuccessful" Aging 206
Autonomy and Structural Paternalism 207
6.2 Toward an Art of Aging: Beyond Conventional Wisdom 212
Older and Wiser? 214
6.3 Toward an Art of Aging: Living in Different Times 223
A Multi-layered Present 224
Kairos: A Sensitivity for Changing Temporal Qualities 226
Activism and Receptivity 227
Memories Have Their Own Times 228
Actions Constitute Time 229
Life Events and Life's Periods 231
The Times of Life Are Finite 231
A Last Question about the Beginning of Time 232
6.4 Toward an Art of Aging: Beyond Longer Lives 235
Aging as Finitization: A Deepening of Unique Lives 236
Unique Lives: Empirical and Ethical 238
Contingent and Existential Limitations 243
Why Do We Age? How Can Aging Be Meaningful? 244
Is It Good to Live Longer? 246
References 253
Index 275
What People are Saying About This
There is no other book that I’m aware of that has achieved such a masterful synthesis of philosophy and gerontology.
One of the world's leading proponents of critical gerontology, Jan Baars creates a rich mosaic in Aging and the Art of Living. Deftly integrating classic texts, continental philosophy, and contemporary social theory, Baars encourages us to see how wisdom and vulnerability ripen experiences in late life.
There is no other book that I’m aware of that has achieved such a masterful synthesis of philosophy and gerontology.—Harry R. Moody, Director of Academic Affairs, AARP
One of the world's leading proponents of critical gerontology, Jan Baars creates a rich mosaic in Aging and the Art of Living. Deftly integrating classic texts, continental philosophy, and contemporary social theory, Baars encourages us to see how wisdom and vulnerability ripen experiences in late life.—W. Andrew Achenbaum, author of Older Americans, Vital Communities