Project Details
Projekt
The Temporal Structure of the Good Life and the Significance of Generative Perspectives in the Context of Geriatric Medicine and Care
Applicant
Professor Dr. Mark Schweda
Subject Area
Practical Philosophy
Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 424883170
Based on results of the first funding period, the subproject focuses on the significance of generative perspectives for the interrelationship between a good life in old age and the possibilities of geriatric medicine and care. Employed in developmental psychology and gerontology, the concept of generativity emphasizes the relevance of self-transcendence and concern for future generations in later life. The project explores how generative motives of care, legacy or responsibility for descendants and successors open perspectives of meaning in old age that are relevant for the evaluation of medicine and nursing care in this phase of life, e.g. of the use of medical resources or nursing support. At the same time, we take up Queer studies’ critique of a heteronormative conception of temporality based on the model of biological reproduction and on the continuity of genealogies and generations in order to take into account the diversity of future perspectives in old age, including alternative, failed or even denied generativity. In the spirit of empirically and hermeneutically informed medical ethics, the project combines ethical analyses of the temporal conditions of a good life in old age with empirical explorations of the significance of intergenerational aspects in the context of geriatric medicine and geriatric care. On the one hand, it draws on the philosophical considerations on trans-individual and generative time perspectives in subproject A (philosophy) as well as on aspects of biographical and generative (dis)continuity in the central and integrative project (CIP, medical ethics) in order to specify them with regard to medical ethical discussions of old age and geriatric medicine and care. On the other, own qualitative data as well as the relevant empirical analyses of lifeworld narrations and media narratives in subproject B (film/tv), subproject C (psychocardiology) and subproject E (general practice) will be evaluated from a medical ethics perspective and thus interpreted within an ethical frame of reference. In this way, considerations on the temporal structure of the individual life can be supplemented by an empirically informed ethical approach that takes into account the significance of trans-individual horizons of meaning and intergenerational relationships in the context of medicine and health care.
DFG Programme
Research Units
