Aging and the art of living / Jan Baars.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baars, Jan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aging--Social aspects.

Aging.

Aging--Philosophy.

Longevity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (298 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Gerontologists, philosophers, and students will find Baars' discussion to be a powerful, perceptive conversation starter.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Chronocratic Emperor Has No Clothes

Overview

1 Chronometric Regimes: The Life Course, Aging, and Time

1.1 Historical Backgrounds of the Chronometric Life Course

A Biographical Sandglass

Age in Social Legislation

Late Modern Systemic Worlds and Life Worlds

1.2 Chronometric Life Courses: Beyond Standardization and De-standardization

The Continuing Importance of Chronometric Age

Chronometric Regimes

1.3 Care and Its Chronometric Regimes

Chronometric Care and Its Acceleration

Time-efficient Lives

1.4 Chronometric Aging: Exactly Arbitrary

Intrinsic Time and Intrinsic Malleability

The Heisenberg Principle of Aging

Conclusions

2 Exclusion, Activism, and Eternal Youth

2.1 From Natural Passivity to Activating Activities for Older People

From "Idleness with Dignity" to Being as Being Busy

Stay Active: "Use It or Lose It"

2.2 The Emergence of an Anti-aging Culture

"Don't Call 'em Old, Call 'em Consumers!"

"Take Years Off Your Looks and Add Them to Your Life"

2.3 The Much-desired Long and Invulnerable Life: Magic and Magic Technology

A Fundamental Vulnerability

3 A Passion for Wisdom and the Emergence of an Art of Aging

3.1 Early Greek Thought about the Life Course

Solon's Untraditional Views

3.2 The Search for Wisdom and the Emergence of an Art of Life

Plato's Academy

Aristotle's Lyceum

The Garden of Epicurus

The Stoics

Wisdom, Aging, and Old Age

3.3 Cicero and the Stoic Art of Living in Old Age

Cicero

Cato Maior de Senectute: On Old Age

Cicero's Defense of Old Age against Four Complaints

A Statesman's View of Old Age

4 Modern Science, the Discovery of a Personal History, and Aging Authentically.

Introduction

4.1 Aging in a World of Meaningful Repetition

4.2 (Ir)reversible Time and the Senescing of Organisms

Does Nature Repeat Itself Eternally?

Nature Changes and Time Is Irreversible

Senescing, Irreversible Time, and the Organism

4.3 The Idealization of Science and the Epistemological Reduction of Time

4.4 The Struggle for a Fuller Experience of Time

Augustine: A Threefold Present

Bergson: Time as Creativity

Husserl: The Phenomenological Experience of Time

Heidegger: Authentic Temporal Being in the Face of Death

Time Is Lived in Constitutive Life Worlds

5 Aging and Narrative Identities

5.1 Embedding Aging in Narratives

Narratives and Narrative Identity

Narrative Integration as a "Good Life"

Life Plans

"Real Stories" and Textual Issues

5.2 A Modest Necessity of Stories

Changes, Themes, and Phases

Stories: Intertwining the Past, the Present, and the Future

Institutional Narrative Practices

Narratives of the Life World and the Systemic World

6 Perspectives-Toward an Art of Aging

6.1 Interhuman Vulnerability and the Dignity of "Unsuccessful" Aging

The Vulnerability of the Interhuman Condition

Aging and Increasing Vulnerability

The Dignity of "Unsuccessful" Aging

Autonomy and Structural Paternalism

6.2 Toward an Art of Aging: Beyond Conventional Wisdom

Older and Wiser?

6.3. Toward an Art of Aging: Living in Different Times

A Multi-layered Present

Kairos: A Sensitivity for Changing Temporal Qualities

Activism and Receptivity

Memories Have Their Own Times

Actions Constitute Time

Life Events and Life's Periods

The Times of Life Are Finite

A Last Question about the Beginning of Time

6.4. Toward an Art of Aging: Beyond Longer Lives.

Aging as Finitization: A Deepening of Unique Lives

Unique Lives: Empirical and Ethical

Contingent and Existential Limitations

Why Do We Age? How Can Aging Be Meaningful?

Is It Good to Live Longer?

References

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [253]-274) and index.

ISBN:

1-4214-0709-4

OCLC:

813286355