Aging and the maintenance of dignity
pp. 225-245
in: Geoffrey Scarre (ed), The Palgrave handbook of the philosophy of aging, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
The first section presents three ways of conceiving dignity ontologically: as a natural property, as a nonnatural property, or as a conferred social status. It is then argued that, regardless of which ontology of dignity one adopts, if one wants to address practical issues of how our actions affect or accord with dignity, dignity must be discussed in terms of some set of natural properties. In the second section it is suggested that the natural properties corresponding to human dignity should be seen as our capacities to create meaningful lives for ourselves. In the remaining sections, three challenging conditions associated with aging are discussed – dependency, dementia, and dying – along with the obstacles and opportunities each presents for the creation and expression of meaning.