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Do We Need an Anthropology of the Aging Person and What should it Look Like?

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Ethics, Health Policy and (Anti-) Aging: Mixed Blessings

Part of the book series: Ethics and Health Policy ((EHP,volume 1))

Abstract

The classical Greek philosophers called human beings ‘mortals’ as opposed to ‘immortals’ who were gods and angels. All individual life—including human life—has limited duration and passes from growth through maturity into a phase, especially in higher forms of life, in which biological functions gradually deteriorate. This is the process that we call aging. Aging is generally considered to be a biological process that is beyond our control. Aging just happens.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A fine example of an older person who accepts his bodily decline is Emperor Hadrian as described by Marguerite Yourcenar in her book Memoirs of Hadrian, written in the form of letters to Hadrian’s adopted grandson and later emperor Marcus Aurelius. In a pictorial way Hadrian depicts the deterioration of his body—he suffers from weakness of the heart—and his longing for death. After considering suicide and assisted suicide he finally decides to accept his bodily decay and all other “real ailments” of life: “death, old age, incurable diseases, unrequited love, rejected friendship, the poverty of a life that is less grand than our plans and more faded than our dreams: All the misery caused by the divine nature of things” (Yourcenar 1995, p. 107; translation WD).

  2. 2.

    Pascal seems to specifically refer here to the Cartesian dichotomy of res extensa and res cogitans.

  3. 3.

    Sometimes ‘vulnerability ’ and ‘frailty’ are used interchangeably. Tulle, for example, writes: “Human beings are inherently at risk of frailty: A universal condition of the human species […] Any manifestation of frailty, from injury, illness or biological aging, threatens to disrupt our sense of self” (Tulle 2008, p. 5). Most often, however, these two terms refer to different things: frailty then is considered the physical aspect of a more encompassing vulnerability.

  4. 4.

    Also the Royal Dutch Medical Association recently published a report about medical care for the elderly with a focus on vulnerability (RDMA 2010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nijmegen Medical Centre, IQ healthcare, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Wim Dekkers

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  1. Wim Dekkers
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  1. Room AE 340, Rotterdam, 3000 CA, Netherlands

    Maartje Schermer

  2. , Medical Ethics and Philsophy, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, 's-Gravendijkwal 230, Rotterdam, 3015 CE, Netherlands

    Wim Pinxten

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Dekkers, W. (2013). Do We Need an Anthropology of the Aging Person and What should it Look Like?. In: Schermer, M., Pinxten, W. (eds) Ethics, Health Policy and (Anti-) Aging: Mixed Blessings. Ethics and Health Policy, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3870-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3870-6_4

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