Abstract

Together with the experience of time, finiteness and death, age is among the crucial, though neglected, topoi of existentialism. Its early representative Kierkegaard already emphasized the fundamental role of ageing as a basic condition of human existence which finds orientation in projections of the future. Similarly, Camus, who presupposes that human beings are afflicted with the experience of absurdity, incorporates the ambivalent phenomenon of ageing in his anthropological reflections. Latently following stoic ideas and with recourse to aesthetical considerations of nature, Camus develops an autobiographically imbued philosophy of ageing that dwells on the immanent conditio humana and clearly refrains from speculative transcendental assumptions. He inspires us to a critical analysis of established stereotypes of age beyond the options of striking demotion and uncritical euphemization of later periods of life.