![[Past Event] Living in the Midst of Death: Theological Reflections on Ageing and Technology with Dr. Michael Mawson](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/594177a115d5db3fbb9999bc/1611597339003-SRVF0NYKIL7H4CURC2W3/Mawson.jpg)
Online Lecture, April 9th, 2021 at 12:30pm Pacific Standard Time
Michael Mawson, Charles Sturt University, Australia, draws upon the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Austrian born philosopher Jean Améry to reflect upon the phenomenon of human ageing. In particular, he explores how Bonhoeffer and Améry might help us to better understand and attend to the ambiguities and complexities of our experiences of ageing. In the first part, Mawson engages Bonhoeffer’s theological account of the human being as situated between life and death. In his 1933 Creation and Fall, Bonhoeffer presents human beings as existing between the two conflicting promises of the opening chapters of Genesis: God’s promise to Adam in the garden (‘if you eat from this tree you will surely die’) and the Serpent’s promise to Eve (‘you will not die at all’). These two promises together encapsulate and disclose the situation of the humanity: ‘After the fall, all human beings are suspended between these two conflicting statements—living towards death, living as those already dead.’
In the second part, Mawson turns to Améry’s phenomenological reflections in On Ageing: Revolution and Revolt (1968), wherein he provides an account of ageing as ‘death in the midst of life’. In ageing, as Améry reflects, ‘we become more alienated from ourselves and more familiar with ourselves...Day and night cancel each other out in twilight.’ Améry’s rich descriptions thus draw attention to ambiguities and tensions that are present in all experiences of ageing. Mawson concludes by demonstrating how Bonhoeffer and Améry can assist with contesting the kinds of utopianism and idealism prevalent in many standard approaches to ageing. In particular, Bonhoeffer and Amery help us to recognise the limitations of medical and technological responses to ageing. Such responses fail to address our actual human experience because they promote life as the opposite of death, and in so doing they fail to attend to the nature of aging as dying.
This lecture is part of the series Human Flourishing in a Technological Age, with lectures from John Behr, Thomas Fuchs, and others. Click here to see all the lecture titles and dates. The event series is sponsored by the Issachar Fund and presented by the Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective project, which is directed by Prof. Jens Zimmermann and Dr. Michael Burdett.
Please contact us with any questions.
See more about Prof. Mawson and read more about the Human Flourishing project.
*Note: this live lecture is only available remotely via Zoom.