Responsive Aging. An Existential View

Abstract

Old age can be considered a radicalization of the human condition. In this phase of life, its fundamental relationality is experienced in its extremes; in its dependency and loneliness as well as in the intensification of personal relationships of love and friendship. In dominant discourses of modernity, relationality competes with – or is at the most additional to – autonomy, understood as individual independence. By contrast, this chapter develops a responsive understanding of human life which comprises both individual agency and dependency in their dynamic interplay.