Feeling one's age
a phenomenology of aging
pp. 207-224
in: Geoffrey Scarre (ed), The Palgrave handbook of the philosophy of aging, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstrakt
This chapter aims to describe structural aspects of the experience of aging, in particular, the temporality of experience, our dependency on others, the nature of human action, and the conditions of mutual understanding and conversation. Aging is an essential aspect of personal life: experience is qualitatively different as we age and as we build a past. Age is intrinsic to personal identity, since we locate ourselves in generations, and our sense of age is formed in relation to others and through dependency on others. If old age is separated out from the other phases of aging, the shape of life becomes distorted, and the elderly may become isolated from the rest of society and distanced from the people and environments that make life worth living.