Abstract

DOMINGUES, Rafaela de Campos  and  FREITAS, Joanneliese de Lucas. The phenomenology of the body in aging: dialogues between Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty. Rev. Subj. [online]. 2019, vol.19, n.3, pp. 1-13. ISSN 2359-0769.  http://dx.doi.org/10.5020/23590777.rs.v19i3.e8001.

This article aims to build a phenomenological reflection on the embodiment in aging through the dialogue of Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty's perspectives, starting from the works The Old Age (Beauvoir) and Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty). We also used Beauvoir's novel, Misunderstanding in Moscow, which illustrates the aging experiences of the protagonists. Beauvoir demonstrates that the body is an adjunct in the unveiling of old age, because it becomes an object for the other, denouncing our aging. This perspective is permeated by the Sartrean conception of the unrealizable, given the impossibility of synthesizing the self and the self that constitutes existence. But the philosopher goes beyond this perspective when she presents the ambiguous experience of senescence as one of the limits to freedom. Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty have in common the understanding that the body is a condition for being. In dialogue with Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, it is noted that although Beauvoir agrees with the reflection on the body lived as a power (je peux), his perspective articulates the ambiguity of what a body can and cannot. Thus, we conclude the lived constraints, given not only by the material aspect of the aging body but especially by social oppression. It is argued that Beauvoir opens an ethical dimension by thinking of old age, deepening the problem of the other and oneself, and our relationship with the stranger in ourselves. In this sense, Beauvoir's work leads us to wonder if we are prepared to grow old and experience our old age, since we always keep it at a distance, like a stranger that falls on us.

Keywords : old age; existentialism; corporeality.

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