The Long Life

The Long Life invites the reader to range widely from the writings of Plato through to recent philosophical work by Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams, and others, and from Shakespeare's King Lear through works by Thomas Mann, Balzac, Dickens, Beckett, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, to more recent writing by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and J. M. Coetzee.Helen Small argues that if we want to understand old age, we have to think morefundamentally about what it means to be a person, to have a life, to have (or lead) a good life, to be part of a just society. What did Plato mean when he suggested that old age was the best place from which to practicephilosophy - or Thomas Mann when he defined old age as the best time to be a writer - and were they right? If we think, as Aristotle did, that a good life requires the active pursuit of virtue, how will our view of later life be affected? If we think that lives and persons are unified, much as stories are said to be unified, how will our thinking about old age differ from that of someone who thinks that lives and/or persons can be strongly discontinuous? In a just society, what constitutes afair distribution of limited resources between the young and the old? How, if at all, should recent developments in the theory of evolutionary senescence alter our thinking about what it means to growold? This is a groundbreaking book, deep as well as broad, and likely to alter the way in which we talk about one of the great social concerns of our time - the growing numbers of those living to be old, and the growing proportion of the old to the young.

Winner of Winner of the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize 2008 Winner of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism 2008 TLS Christmas Pick 2007.

“"This is a pleasant book to read.... the most enjoyable aspect of the book was simply the exposure to the writings of those I hadn't read, or whose writings on old age in particular I hadn't paid sufficient attention to. Small is able, too, to bring our attention to parallels we might not otherwise ponder, and which historical analysis per se would not normally yield.... the book is pleasant to read, informative, and thought-provoking.... I recommend it for anyone interested in wandering the literary maze of old age."--Sarah Conly, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews”

Helen concludes that we will understand old age best when we view it not as a problem apart but always connected into larger philosophic and, I may add, moral considerations. She opened my eyes: I was blind and now I see. Peter H. Millard, Age and Aging a book philosophers, among others, should read, for it contains deftly handled engagements with some of the most formidable figures in their canon... But it also moves confidently among the classics of literature showing throughout how close reading is inseparable from hard thinking. Stefan Collini, Times Literary Supplement This is an ambitious, subtle and highly original study. The Scotsman The Long Life is an accessible, ground-breaking book and one likely to alter the way in which we talk about one of the great social concerns of our time - the growing numbers of those living to be old and the growing proportion of old to young. Helen Peacocke, The Oxford Times Small...deserves to feel good, for she has argued tirelessly, written an impressively researched book, and commanded the interest of sceptics more than twice her age. Frank Kermode, LRB

Helen Small was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and studied at Victoria University of Wellington and at the University of Cambridge. She taught English Literature at the University of Bristol from 1993 to 1996, and since 1996 has been Fellow in English at Pembroke College, Oxford. From 2001 to 2004 she held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, and was a Visiting Scholar at New York University. The Long Life was primarily written during that period.

The Long Life invites the reader to range widely from the writings of Plato through to recent philosophical work by Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams, and others, and from Shakespeare's King Lear through works by Thomas Mann, Balzac, Dickens, Beckett, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, to more recent writing by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and J. M. Coetzee.Helen Small argues that if we want to understand old age, we have to think more fundamentally about what it means to be a person, to have a life, to have (or lead) a good life, to be part of a just society. What did Plato mean when he suggested that old age was the best place from which to practice philosophy - or Thomas Mann when he defined old age as the best time to be a writer - and were they right? If we think, as Aristotle did, that a good life requires the active pursuit of virtue, how will our view of later life be affected? If we think that lives and persons are unified, much as stories are said to be unified, how will our thinking about old age differ from that of someone who thinks that lives and/or persons can be strongly discontinuous? In a just society, what constitutes a fair distribution of limited resources between the young and the old? How, if at all, should recent developments in the theory of evolutionary senescence alter our thinking about what it means to grow old? This is a groundbreaking book, deep as well as broad, and likely to alter the way in which we talk about one of the great social concerns of our time - the growing numbers of those living to be old, and the growing proportion of the old to the young.

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