The Meaning of Old Age and the Distribution of Health-Care Resources

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Abstract
Daniel Callahan has maintained that a common understanding of the meaning of old age and the proper role of old people in society is a prerequisite for decisions on the distribution of health-care resources to the elderly. The call for such a common understanding is traced to the writings of Thomas Cole and Harry Moody. A discussion of their ideas is followed by a philosophical analysis of communitarian accounts of meaning and the good life in general. It is concluded that viable interpretations of the meaning of old age should comply with the values of liberal individualism. Meaning should be localised less at the level of global ideas and images and more at the level of local and heterogeneous practices. The practice of distributing health-care resources cannot and should not be regulated by communitarian interpretations of the value of old age. It would seem to be sufficiently infused by liberal individualist interpretations of meaning and justice.

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