Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
- The Evening of Life examines the contemporary challenges of old age and death by combining insights from social science, philosophy, medical practice, and ethics. - Although philosophy, religion, and civic cultures used to help people prepare for aging and dying well, this is no longer the case. - The Evening of Life demonstrates how the problems of contemporary aging are rooted in broader cultural and societal trends that have made growing old and decreasing independence a taboo. - This book offers solutions for encouraging the acceptance of aging and ensuring that the elderly can thrive and find support and friendship, instead of isolation and dependence. - For all readers who wish to fully examine their mortality, as well as for theologians, anthropologists, sociologists, and those who work with the elderly and aging.--Daniel B. Hinshaw, MD, author of Touch and the Healing of the World
Synopsis
Although philosophy, religion, and civic cultures used to help people prepare for aging and dying well, this is no longer the case. Today, aging is frequently seen as a problem to be solved and death as a harsh reality to be masked. In part, our cultural confusion is rooted in an inadequate conception of the human person, which is based on a notion of absolute individual autonomy that cannot but fail in the face of the dependency that comes with aging and decline at the end of life. To help correct the ethical impoverishment at the root of our contemporary social confusion, The Evening of Life provides an interdisciplinary examination of the challenges of aging and dying well. It calls for a re-envisioning of cultural concepts, practices, and virtues that embraces decline, dependency, and finitude rather than stigmatizes them. Bringing together the work of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, and medical practitioners, this collection of essays develops an interrelated set of conceptual tools to discuss the challenges posed today to aging and dying well, such as flourishing, temporality, narrative, and friendship. Above all, it proposes a positive understanding of thriving in old age that is rooted in our shared vulnerability as human beings. It also suggests how some of these tools and concepts can be deployed to create a medical system that better responds to our contemporary needs. The Evening of Life will interest bioethicists, medical practitioners, clinicians, and others involved in the care of the aging and dying.
Contributors: Joseph E. Davis, Sharon R. Kaufman, Paul Scherz, Wilfred M. McClay, Kevin Aho, Charles Guignon, Bryan S. Turner, Janelle S. Taylor, Sarah L. Szanton, Janiece Taylor, and Justin Mutter