We are all aging at every moment. Yet many people and cultures are uncomfortable with impermanence, transitions, and “getting old.” In this conversation, we’ll consider the question: how can and do we find richness and meaning in the second half of life? It’s a question for each of us and for culture at large.
Drew Leder is a professor of Eastern and Western philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. He is the author of seven books, the latest being The Healing Body: Creative Responses to Illness, Aging, and Affliction (2023). He also has a book on cross-cultural archetypes of creative eldering, Spiritual Passages: Embracing Life’s Sacred Journey (1997).
Kirsten Jacobson is professor of philosophy at the University of Maine, specializing in Continental Philosophy and the philosophy of art. Her research focuses on using phenomenology to investigate spatiality, psychological and physiological illnesses, and issues of “existential health” - especially those pertaining to aging and mortality. She is co-editor of Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology (2017).