A.Harry Lesser - Ageing, Autonomy and Resources

First published 1999 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge

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Copyright A. Harry Lesser 1999

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 99072599

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-60971-6 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-429-45946-7 (ebk)

My warmest thanks to all the contributors, not least for their patience with this books gestation, and their readiness to update and strengthen their contributions; to Kim Bevington for her preparation of the manuscript with such speed and accuracy: and to the members of the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy at Manchester University, who sponsored the conference in 1992 at which early versions of many of these papers were read.

The fourteen papers in this volume deal with two questions of growing practical importance in a society where the proportion of elderly people is increasing. The first is the question of how the autonomy of the elderly can be best preserved and increased. This question, or set of interrelated questions, has a conceptual element: what is autonomy and how should it be defined? It has an ethical element: when is it right to preserve a persons autonomy and when, in contrast, should autonomy take second place to the need to prevent people harming others or themselves? And it has a practical element: how is autonomy to be preserved and how are the obstacles to the elderly remaining autonomous for as long as possible to be removed?

All three of these questions are discussed in Caroline Dunns The effect of ageing on autonomy, which in many ways sets the scene for the book. Having suggested that the essence of autonomy is to be self-governing, to be able to take ones own decisions, and that therefore autonomy admits of degree, and is not all-or-nothing, and having pointed out that the process of ageing always has a tendency (though not an invariable one) to threaten a persons autonomy because of the increased likelihood of illness or weakness, she goes on to consider two socially generated threats to the autonomy of the elderly, which could be reduced. One is the widespread set of negative assumptions about, and perceptions of, old age; the other is the growth of consumerism, which, while it enhances the autonomy of the wealthy elderly, further weakens that of the less well off. The paper explores both how these threats could be reduced, and also the question of when and why the autonomy of the elderly becomes less important than their general welfare, ie. when a person becomes no longer able to act competently and autonomously. A crucial conclusion is that while this does happen not infrequently, it never happens as a result of age alone.