"This damnable, disgusting old age"
ageing and (being) one's body
pp. 305-324
in: Geoffrey Scarre (ed), The Palgrave handbook of the philosophy of aging, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to explore the way in which, in ageing, the body reclaims one. Drawing principally on the work of Jean Améry, I explore this notion, developing it in the context of the mystery of one's relation to one's body: one is one's body, but one has one's body, or so I suggest, and this fractured and puzzling relation we have to ourselves is part of what ageing makes us realize and acknowledge. I further relate ageing to our mortality, and close by exploring it in the context of the ageing of the face, drawing on some reflections on self-portraiture to help clarify the sense in which the ageing body demands a certain redemption which we can seek to respond to or refuse.
