Benefactors or burdens?
the social role of the old
pp. 401-424
in: Geoffrey Scarre (ed), The Palgrave handbook of the philosophy of aging, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
This chapter addresses the notion of "active ageing" and sets out how important the available opportunity structures are for the maintenance of physical, emotional, intellectual and social activity. Developing from this, central psychological constructs are discussed – these serve to emphasise the importance of openness to new ideas, the self-critical and, at the same time, accepting life review, the caring about young people and, finally, a co-responsible lifestyle for the quality of life and well-being in old age.Support for the theoretical claims advanced in the chapter is supplied by the description of an empirical study in which very old people were interviewed in detail about their central life issues. Besides highlighting and clarifying the diversity of life issues in old age, this study also showed that the experience and willingness to care about young people constitutes a central theme and is a major concern of old and very old people. The results challenge much of the conventional negative discourse about "age" by looking at the individual and social potentials of old age and demonstrating the social and cultural contributions that old people make. The author concludes that the negative images of age, which are primarily focused on the physical processes of ageing, need to change considerably.