Others in My Aging (Confronting de Beauvoir, Malabou, and Heidegger to Make Sense of Aging)

Abstract

After a critical analysis of Simone de Beauvoir’s and Catherine Malabou’s accounts of aging, the paper offers an alternative to them. In contrast to de Beauvoir and Malabou, it explores the actual share of other beings, both human and non-human, in one’s aging. The paper employs the Heideggerian ontological framework and his concepts of “bodying” and gesture to argue that changes induced by others do not damage or contaminate one’s being but allow the disclosure of someone’s particularity in its undefinable character.