Fyrirlestur í heimspeki: Hans-Georg Eilenberger

Vorið 2023 stendur Heimspekistofnun Háskóla Íslands fyrir röð rannsóknarfyrirlestra í heimspeki. Hans-Georg Eilenberger flytur fyrirlestur í stofu 220 í Aðalbyggingu HÍ, þriðjudaginn 16. maí kl. 15:00-16:30. Hann fer fram á ensku. Öll velkomin.

Um fyrirlesturinn

Fear of Ageing: Making Sense of Un-becoming 

Hans-Georg Eilenberger 

Fear of ageing is a widespread phenomenon in Western societies. It drives the burgeoning anti-ageing industry and fuels prejudices against older people.[1] When it comes to their own ageing, people fear losses of various kinds: losses of bodily abilities, autonomy, economic stability, and close relationships, among other things.[2] The psychological literature treats fear of ageing as a set of emotional states that can be measured and correlated using quantitative scales. In this framework, fear of ageing is unequivocally presented as a threat to the health and wellbeing of older people. The affective experiences of older people are decontextualised as a result and there is no attention to the ways in which fear of ageing discloses crucial aspects of late life. 

In my paper I want to take an alternative approach by examining how fear of ageing makes sense. I will consider the findings of an interview study that involved sixteen participants from the Netherlands, aged between 65 and 93. While the participants’ fears reflected many items of established psychological scales, these feelings would always connect to a person’s lived experience as a whole. Fears of ageing were embedded in stories that linked them to hopes, concerns for other people, and practical arrangement around death and dying. These affective entanglements will serve as the starting point for a critical phenomenological investigation.[3] I will argue that fear of ageing is not a private feeling but disclosive of the participants’ engagement with the cultural narrative of un-becoming—ageing as decline.[4] 

Hans-Georg Eilenberger is a PhD candidate at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Science working on the NWO-funded research project "Age and Existence: An Empirical-Philosophical Investigation of Late Life". Before training as a philosopher (BA from KU Leuven, MA from Radboud University Nijmegen) he completed a law degree at the University of Vienna. The aim of his research project is to conceptualize ageing in a way that does justice to the lived experience of older people. To this end, he draws on the philosophies of Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty while also conducting ethnographic fieldwork at different sites in Tilburg.