The Evening of Life: The Challenges of Aging and Dying Well 2020

Today, ageing is often seen as a problem to be solved and death as a harsh reality to be masked. In part, the cultural confusion is rooted in an inadequate conception of the human person that is based on the idea of absolute individual autonomy, which can fail in the face of the dependency that comes with ageing and decline at the end of life. To help redress the ethical impoverishment that lies at the heart of our contemporary social confusion, this book provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the challenges of ageing and dying well. It calls for a re-imagining of cultural concepts, practices and virtues that embrace rather than stigmatise decline, dependency and finitude. This collection of essays proposes a positive understanding of development 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 applied to create a medical system that better meets our contemporary needs. This position paper will be of interest to bioethicists, physicians, clinicians and others involved in the care of the elderly and dying.