The detachment of time as sedimentation of the consciousness of old age

Abstract

In this text we approach the process of aging from the philosophical view-point of the awareness of time. We consider this awareness of paramount importance not only in the course of the research project SABE Colombia (Survey of Health, Well-being and Aging, according to its initials in Spanish), but also because of the very structure of life. Moreover, old age in itself, as a time-related phenomenon, consists of the accumulation of time in a single body: therefore, the notion of time must be implicit in the study of aging. This article aims at revealing the sense of the time consciousness of old age or (in other words) at viewing old age in the light of time consciousness, insofar as time lets human existence come off gradually until its exhaustion reveals life as a time trace, as a time mark in the body. To achieve this goal, we propose three nodal points of reflection: first, between the latency and the presence of old age; second, between old age and the secrecy of future, and finally, the face of old age: the detachment of the body through the time consciousness of the present.