Abstract
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.
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Notes
- 1.
I have translated Améry’s German more literally than does John Barlow in his English edition of Améry’s book. The German reads: ‘dann bricht plötzlich das Entsetzen auf, daß wir Ich und Nicht-Ich sind und als Ich-Nicht-Ich das gewohnte Ich in Frage stellen können’. Barlow (1994, p. 29) translates as: ‘then we are suddenly confronted with the horror that we are both ego and non-ego and as this hybrid can call our customary ego into question’. To my mind, Barlow’s English softens the deliberately hard edges of Améry’s German, while also making the thought sound more theoretical than it does in the original, for example, by translating ‘Ich’ as ‘ego’, which, of course, follows common practice in the case of Freud. All further translations from Améry are mine, and I follow the same practice of providing, where possible, a more literal translation than does Barlow. I give, in the references, first the page(s) of the German edition, then of Barlow’s translation.
- 2.
Note, however, the dissimilarities between old age and illness that Simone de Beauvoir (1985 [1970], p. 316ff) mentions, specifically that illness is more apparent to the sick person than it is to others, while old age is more apparent to others than it is to the aged person, or ageing person. That is surely true in many cases, especially when ageing is not itself expressed, or does not announce itself, through illness.
- 3.
I have explored this at further length in Hamilton 2009.
- 4.
I have explored this theme further in Hamilton 2016.
- 5.
Arendt is quoting from Auden’s poem ‘The Capital’.
- 6.
Very many thanks to Geoffrey Scarre for encouragement with, and helpful comments on, an earlier version of this paper.
References
Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from French and German are my own.
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Hamilton, C. (2016). ‘This damnable, disgusting old age’: Ageing and (Being) One’s Body. In: Scarre, G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Aging. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39356-2_18
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