The Cambridge Handbook of the Ethics of Ageing
The Cambridge Handbook of the Ethics of Ageing
We're all getting older from the moment we're born. Ageing is a fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of life. Yet in ethics, not much work is done on the questions surrounding ageing: how do diachronic features of ageing and the lifespan contribute to the overall value of life? How do time, change, and mortality impact on questions of morality and the good life? And how ought societies to respond to issues of social justice and the good, balancing the interests of generations and age cohorts? In this Cambridge Handbook, the first book-length attempt to stake this terrain, leading moral philosophers from a range of sub-fields and regions set out their approaches to the conceptual and ethical understanding of ageing. The volume makes an important contribution to significant debates about the implications of ageing for individual well-being, social policy and social justice.
- A conceptually rigorous, but accessible and interesting set of explorations of ethical theory
- New essays by leading ethicists from a range of sub-fields from bioethics to political theory and applied economics
- Gives the philosophical context of significant debates about age-related well-being, policy, and justice
Reviews & endorsements
‘Wareham’s forward-looking concern to develop a differentiated ethics of life-historically varying aging processes in all their breadth is of great importance.’ Hartmut Remmers, Ethik in der Medizin
‘Each contribution in this volume demonstrates the authors' profound ethical reflections as well as their intensive engagement with central questions of aging and old age … the proximity to theoretical and empirical lifespan and life course research, and ultimately to cultural-anthropological research, is evident throughout. And this proximity constitutes a special potential of the volume, for it opens up the possibility of integrating central moral and normative questions into the context of more comprehensive aging research. This is achieved in a very convincing and engaging way. The contributions are written in a highly stimulating and inspiring manner.’ Andreas Kruse, Zeitschrift für medizinische Ethik
Product details
August 2022Paperback
9781108817042
380 pages
245 × 170 × 15 mm
0.5kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Part I. Ageing and the Good Life:
- 1. Old age and the preference for the future Jeff McMahan
- 2. Ageing and the temporality of the good life Mark Schweda
- 3. Children's prudential value Anthony Skelton
- 4. The ethics of ageing in Frank Perry's The Swimmer Christopher Hamilton
- 5. Is ageing good? Christine Overall
- 6. Mental health in old age Simon Keller
- 7. In defense of a semi-stoical attitude about ageing and death David De Grazia
- Part II. Ageing and Morality:
- 8. Personhood across the lifespan Søren Holm
- 9. African and East Asian perspectives on ageing Thaddeus Metz
- 10. Special obligations in long-standing friendships Diane Jeske
- 11. Forgiveness and ageing Geoffrey Scarre
- 12. Life-extending treatments for people with dementia Nancy S. Jecker
- 13. 'Half in love with easeful death': Rational suicide and the elderly L. W. Sumner
- Part III. Ageing and Society:
- 14. 'To Grandmother's house we go': On Women, Ethics, and ageing Samantha Brennan
- 15. Ageing, Unequal longevities and intergenerational justice Axel Gosseries
- 16. Ageing, Justice, and Work: Alternatives to mandatory retirement Daniel Halliday and Tom Parr
- 17. Age and well-being: Ethical implications of the U-curve of happiness Christopher S. Wareham
- 18. The desirability and morality of life extension John K. Davis.
