Social Philosophy, Age & Aging

This book attempts to unravel the fundamental assumptions of social philosophy and how its different concepts and theories make sense of human aging. The book explores how biomedical ageing dominated thoughts on ageing until social understandings from different disciplines came about that highlighted that ageing could be understood in terms of social class, gender and ethnicity. A key debate in recent years has been the critical approach versus positive approach. The final two chapters of the book explore Foucauldian philosophy applied to instances of the ageing process; whilst the final chapter advocates a focus on personhood and self-actualisation.