Virtue, ageing and Failing
pp. 425-443
in: Geoffrey Scarre (ed), The Palgrave handbook of the philosophy of aging, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
The renaissance of virtue theory in contemporary ethics has a great deal to contribute to a discussion of the values of ageing, set against the ways in which ageing is often treated as progressive incompetence. For here value is seen to reside in a whole life, and in the character of the person who lives it. Such an account of value owes us an account of the persistence of the person who lives that life and whose character may develop in ways the virtues describe. Accounts of the persistence of persons by virtue of psychological continuity through memory or through narrative may fit virtue theory well, but they also suggest that ageing may be a progressive loss of the person one once was. But this may be to underestimate the social and collaborative features of narrative, which allow the possibility that joint narratives may preserve the person even in the face of fractured memory and aphasia. The account of the virtues of old age should be set, then, in the context of a life lived with others; part of the tragedy of old age is to see the aged as failing to survive, alone.