Brief Eternity - The Philosophy of Longevity - The Philosophy of Longevity

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.

Table des matières

Introduction: The Unfrocked Priests of the Cult of Youth Notes
Part I The Indian Summer of Life
1 Giving Up on Giving Up
The swinging door
Cold shower
Wisdom or resignation?
Notes
2 Staying in the Dynamics of Desire
Retreat or disaster?
The philosophical age
What shall we do with our twenty years (of additional life)?
Notes
Part II Life Always Begun Again
3 The Saving Routine
"It is enough to be" (Madame de Lafayette)
The splendor of the trivial
Here begins the new life
The two natures of repetition
The eternal rebirth
Swan song or dawn?
Notes
4 The Interweaving of Time
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
Notes
Part III Late Love Affairs
5 Desire Late in Life
Asymmetries and expiry dates
The yoke of concupiscence
Indecent requests
Notes
6 Eros and Agape in the Shadow of Thanatos
Devotees of the twilight
The tragedy of the last love
The chaste, the tender and the voluptuous
Notes
Part IV Fulfill Oneself or Forget Oneself?
7 No More, Too Late, Still!
Lost opportunities
The round of regrets
Kairos, the god of timeliness
On the blank page of your future lives
Notes
8 Make a Success of One's Life, and Then What?
I am I, alas
The three faces of freedom
A door opening on the unknown
Succeed, but not entirely
Not everything is possible
Notes
Part V What Does Not Die in Us
9 Death, Where is Thy Victory?
Monsieur Seguin's Goat
Eternity in love with time
The luck to die someday?
"Love what will never be seen twice"?
The martyrs of endurance
The zombie in us
Notes
10 The Immortality of Mortals
What do bodily ills teach us?
The hierarchy of pains
Poor consolations
Just a moment, Mr Executioner
Eternity is here and now
Notes
Conclusion: Love, Celebrate, Serve

A propos de l'auteur

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

Résumé

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.

Commentaire

'In this excellent essay Pascal Bruckner does not limit himself to exploring the multiple existential questions raised by the recent lengthening of human life or to showing how, in the course of modernity, the third age has become "the philosophical age par excellence": he constantly and rightly emphasizes the ambiguities, equivocations and ambivalences of this new situation.'
Le Monde
 
'A Brief Eternity is an ode to desire, to the passion for life, to the warm glow of human discoveries, immense or small.'
L'Express
 
"Human beings have invented a new epoch in their lives: Indian summer, as Pascal Brucker calls it in his thoughtful meditation on life after 60. No longer just an anteroom to death or a fantasied Neverland of blissful retirement, it has distinct challenges and novel satisfactions that one appreciates better after reading A Brief Eternity. Written with verve and a joyful irony, it is a stimulating travelogue for that journey we all hope to make."
Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities, Columbia University
"Pascal Bruckner's most personal essay to date, A Brief Eternity deploys the writer's remarkable erudition and culture to respond to a very recent and important question: how to live our extended 'middle age,' our prolonged 'Indian Summer,' wisely and to the fullest. Steeped in Bruckner's usual wit, verve, and delight in paradox, A Brief Eternity is also, surprisingly, a bracing reminder of life's limitations as well as its possibilities in the Age of Covid 19. A very timely book."
Richard J. Golsan, University Distinguished Professor Senior Scowcroft Fellow, the Bush School, Texas A & M University
 
"Pascal Bruckner is the philosopher of the new, always alert to the moment, always capable of identifying the unexpected turn that modern culture is taking, always two steps ahead of everyone else in describing these things, always deft, always brilliant, sometimes deep. Read any two pages, and you will see it."
Paul Berman, author of Power and the Idealists and other books

Détails du produit

• Auteurs: P Bruckner, Pascal Bruckner, Lisa Neal, Steven Rendall
• Collaboration: Lisa Neal (Traduction), Steven Rendall (Traduction), Rendall Steven (Traduction)
• Edition: Polity Press
• Langues: Anglais
• Format d'édition: Livre Relié
• Sortie: 30.11.2020
• EAN: 9781509544325
• ISBN: 978-1-5095-4432-5
• Pages: 180
• Catégories: Littérature spécialisée > Philosophie, religion > Philosophie: de l'Antiquité à nos jours; Sciences humaines, art, musique > Philosophie > Général, dictionnaires; Literaturwissenschaft, Soziologie, Philosophie, Literature, Sociology, Familiensoziologie, Philosophy, Literatur- u. Kulturtheorie, Literary & Cultural Theory, Allg. Philosophie, Sociology of the Family