Abstract

Ageing is basically a natural or physical phenomenon. For a human being, it belongs to the body. When this fact is noticed, a drama of oldness and life/death begins: ageing is a problem of experience. There are losses and gains in this experience. Indeed, a particular respect was paid to a rhapsodist/bard and a hermit because of their memory power and deep wisdom respectively. Since we recognize in these cases accumulation and maturation, the core subject in the experience of ageing is memory and the time structure. Vis-à-vis the hard memories such as stone monuments and IC memory, the live memory is characterised by a creativity, which vivifies our past time. I pay a particular attention to friendship, because one of the most painful experiences of ageing consists in the loss of dear friends. Recollecting creatively the time shared with them, we can vivify our past, i.e. our being: that is the appropriation of ourselves.