Conference
Philosophy Colloquium “The Land of Old Age” Boredom versus Alienation
- Date
- Wednesday 19 March 2025
- Time
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.33
The Institute for Philosophy is pleased to announce a lecture by Kathy Behrendt, associate professor at the Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario.
Abstract
Simone de Beauvoir once collaborated on a documentary called A Walk Through the Land of Old Age. It displays some familiar clichés of aging people, including their complaint that many things are getting worse. Call this the curmudgeonly attitude to change. This attitude is often directed at minor changes that don’t interfere with the curmudgeon’s well-being or autonomy. And so, we often don’t take it very seriously. But I think we should; doing so can give insight into the long-lived self and its relation to the future. Insight here, however, requires separating curmudgeonliness from boredom. Boredom gets more attention in the literature on longevity thanks in part to Bernard Williams’ influential paper, “The Makropulos Case,” in which boredom is presented as the fatal problem for the long-lived person. However, a closer look at that paper reveals another problem for longevity: alienation in the face of a changing world. Williams sets up this problem but does not pursue it. I pursue it on his behalf. I connect alienation to the curmudgeonly attitude to seemingly minor changes. And I discuss ways in which curmudgeonly alienation is distinct from boredom but, like boredom, can become terminally debilitating for the long-lived self.
About
Kathy Behrendt is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. She received her D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, where she taught for several years before returning to Canada. Behrendt has published work on personal identity theory, narrative views of the self, death, emotion, illness, poetry, post-Holocaust literature and intergenerational trauma, and meaning in life. She is co-founder of the International Association for the Philosophy of Death and Dying, and is currently working on two projects: the concept of wasted time, and a book manuscript, The Rented World: How We Fear Death.
All are welcome!