Daily Dialectic

The person who flees is not yet free, for in fleeing [s]he is still determined by the very thing from which [s]he is fleeing
– G.W.F. Hegel

Ageing is, in many senses, a relatively new phenomenon. Life expectancy has increased radically in the past century or so, to the point where more and more people are surviving to greater ages. Where illness used to be seen as a natural consequence of ageing, medical technologies and cultural shifts have combined to medicalise the experience of ageing as something that can be at the very least postponed.

In Western societies the prevailing culture of liberal individualism posits invulnerability as a human ideal. Under this proposition, the antidote to vulnerability is control. This has resulted in a proliferation of ‘healthy ageing’ products and lifestyle accoutrements with which consumers can allegedly preserve, and even perfect, their health for increased longevity, alongside an increasing medicalisation of the ageing process. It has even been argued that we have a moral imperative to do all we can to achieve mastery over such vulnerability. Whilst I do not dispute the potential benefits of healthy living for increased quality of life (throughout the lifespan – not merely in the twilight years!) I contend that the very fact of our embodiment ultimately renders us vulnerable regardless of our choices as consumer or patient.

Drawing on works by Beauvoir, Butler, Gadamer, and Hegel, I intend to show that turning away from the inevitability of our own ageing does not free us from it as our potentiality. By acknowledging and accepting it – by reconciling ourselves to it – we gain the freedom to live our lives in a richer and fuller way, unencumbered by fear. An acceptance of our inherent vulnerability as embodied beings can assist in the extension of empathy to others. Thus reconciling ourselves to the future possibility of our own status as ‘aged’ can provide impetus for a paradigmatic change in how our culture views, and consequently treats (or mistreats?), the elderly.