Book: Aging in an Aging Society
Chapter: 2. The Other within Us: Reframing, with Spinoza, the Self’s Relationship to Disability and Aging
Blurb:
“The Other within Us: Reframing, with Spinoza, the Self’s Relationship to Disability and Aging” by Iva Apostolova and Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril adapts the philosopher Baruch Spinoza's anti-dualist theory of the conatus to the question of aging. The authors argue that since we always conceptualise ourselves in relation with others, the cultivation of compassion is a moral attitude that asks from each of us an effort to negotiate between our own interests and those of others.