A Brief Eternity: The Philosophy of Longevity

by Pascal Bruckner, Steven Rendall (Translator), Lisa Neal (Translator)

Overview

There is one fundamental thing that has changed in our societies since 1950: life has got longer. Over the last few generations, 20 or 30 years have been added to the duration of our lives. But after the age of 50, human beings experience a kind of suspension: no longer young, not really old, they are, as it were, weightless. It is a reprieve that leaves life open like a swinging door. The increase in life expectancy is a tremendous step forward that upsets everything: relations between generations, patterns of family life, the very meaning of our identity and our destiny. This reprieve is both exciting and frightening. The deadlines are getting shorter, the possibilities are shrinking, but there are still discoveries, surprises and upsetting love affairs. Time has become a paradoxical ally: instead of killing us, it carries us forward. What to do with this ambiguous gift? Is it only a question of living longer or living more intensely? To continue along the same path or to branch out and start again? What about remarriage, a new career? How to avoid the weariness of living, the melancholy of the twilight years, how to get through great joys and great pains? Nourished by both reflections and statistics, drawing on the sources of literature, the arts and history, this book proposes a philosophy of longevity based not on resignation but on resolution. In short, an art of living this life to the full. Is there not a profound joy in being alive at the age when our ancestors already had one foot in the grave? 

This book is dedicated to all those who dream of a new spring in the autumn of life, and want to put off winter as long as they can.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509544325
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	02/01/2021
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Pascal Bruckner is the best-selling author of many books including The Tyranny of Guilt, Perpetual Euphoria and The Fanaticism of the Apocalyse.

Table of Contents

A Note on the Text viii

Introduction: The Unfrocked Priests of the Cult of Youth 1

Part I The Indian Summer of Life

1 Giving Up on Giving Up 9

The swinging door

Cold shower

Wisdom or resignation?

2 Staying in the Dynamics of Desire 25

Retreat or disaster?

The philosophical age

What shall we do with our twenty years (of additional life)?

Part II Life Always Begun Again

3 The Saving Routine 41

"It is enough to be"

The splendor of the trivial

Here begins the new life

The two natures of repetition

The eternal rebirth

Swan song or dawn?

4 The Interweaving of Time 65

Live as if you were to die at any moment?

The old boudoir of the past

It's always the first time

Become like children again?

Our phantom selves

Part III Late Love Affairs

5 Desire Late in Life 83

Asymmetries and expiry dates

The yoke of concupiscence

Indecent requests

6 Eros and Agape in the Shadow of Thanatos 100

Devotees of the twilight

The tragedy of the last love

The chaste, the tender and the voluptuous

Part IV Fulfill Oneself or Forget Oneself?

7 No More, Too Late, Still! 115

Lost opportunities

The round of regrets

Kairos, the god of timeliness

On the blank page of your future lives

8 Make a Success of One's Life, and Then What? 134

I am I, alas

The three faces of freedom

A door opening on the unknown

Succeed, but not entirely

Not everything is possible

Part V What Does Not Die in Us

9 Death, Where is Thy Victory? 157

Monsieur Seguin's Goat

Eternity in love with time

The luck to die some day?

"Love what will never be seen twice?"

The martyrs of endurance

The zombie in us

10 The Immortality of Mortals 176

What do bodily ills teach us?

The hierarchy of pains

Poor consolations

Just a moment, Mr Executioner

Eternity is here and now

Conclusion: Love, Celebrate, Serve 194

Notes 198