Skip to content
ContemporaryIntermediateBook

Old Age

Simone de Beauvoir

Social philosophy / aging

It extends existentialist and feminist social philosophy to a neglected dimension of human life.

Synopsis

A wide-ranging study exposing how societies marginalize the elderly and treat aging as a social, not merely biological, condition.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

How a society treats its old reveals its true values, and modern societies largely discard the aged as useless and invisible.

It makes aging a political and ethical scandal rather than a private fate to endure quietly.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice.

Reading note

Read it as a sweeping work combining history, biology, and social critique under a moral lens.

Best paired with

Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice

Find this book

More by Simone de Beauvoir