Aging and the Art of Living

Introduction

Introduction Philosophy is the art of life. CICERO Do we need an art of aging? Is not aging something that happens naturally as long as you remain alive? Certainly, you continue to get older until you die, but what does that mean? One of the main messages of this book is that tracking people’s ages in order to quantify their lives is a popular but overrated —and bureaucratic—approach to classifying people. Such classifications can have many important consequences, but age contains little meaning in itself. Disease and disability are not just the result of reaching a certain age but depend also on many other factors. Conversely, becoming older will not help you to face enduring problems more effectively or open up possibilities to enjoy life more deeply. To achieve these ends, we need to explore our own potentials and limitations and learn to contribute to a culture that stimulates and supports aging people to lead full lives. Developing an art of aging can help create such a culture. As the number of aging persons grows, commercial and political entities are increasingly urging them to adopt certain lifestyles. If aging persons don’t want to be pressured into adopting such lifestyles, they need to raise their voices in refusal. The voices and visions that may come from them will be diverse, and I know that my contribution as an aging philosophy professor will be only one among many. But there is strength in numbers, and, today, aging persons have larger numbers than ever before in human history. U V 2 Aging and the Art of Living Lives have become longer in what has been called “late modern society” (the basic structure and dynamics of the more affluent Western societies of the twenty-first century), but thinking about aging has not kept up with these developments. We have made progress in many respects, and many basic needs are met more efficiently than before, as demonstrated in rising life expectancies . Although aging has benefited from the developments of science and technology, it has hardly engaged with the long tradition of the art of life; consequently, this tradition has not been developed into an art of aging. This kind of art differs from the usual forms of art. The material used is not something outside of the artist, such as marble or canvas, but his or her own life. Moreover, the product can hardly be distinguished from the process: the art of aging is a lifelong process. However, at a more profound level there is a connection with other forms of art, for the materials of art are never only outside the artist: one is highly involved in one’s artistic expressions, and if these efforts work out well, they may bring deep satisfaction. The art of aging is not something that is intended to replace science or medical technology; we need an art of aging when our questions, needs, or problems can neither be answered or solved by science or technology in a broad sense, nor can they be satisfied by buying the many things that are on offer if one can afford them. In the historical perspective of this book, it will become clear that we have lost or failed to develop important qualities as we have become more successful in exercising technological control over nature both inside and outside us. In cultures that have much less technological control and where life is much more uncertain, such as premodern cultures, there is usually more creative attention to developing ways to confront what cannot be controlled. I will not dwell here on the many spiritual or magic rituals that can be found in such cultures, but I will reread ancient Greek and Roman philosophy with special attention to those approaches that went beyond theoretical discourse and aimed at philosophy as a way and an art of life. This will also give a context to the discussion of the possible meaning of wisdom, an idea that has survived the centuries and is still, though usually vaguely, associated with aging. The ancient Greek and Roman approaches to philosophy as an art of life in search for wisdom did not evolve into an art of aging, although Cicero gave a famous first improvisation in his treatise On Old Age (Cato Maior. De Senectute ). After Cicero, there has been an abundance of thought about death, while questions about aging have been pushed to the margins. This can partly be [18...