Building on the results of the first funding period, this subproject focuses on the significance of intergenerational relations for the interplay between a good life in older age and the possibilities offered by geriatric medicine and elder care. In doing so, we draw on the developmental psychological and gerontological concept of generativity, which emphasizes the increasing relevance—particularly in later life—of perspectives of self-transcendence and concern for subsequent or future generations.

On this basis, the project investigates how generative motives such as care, legacy, or the assumption of responsibility for the future of descendants and successors open up horizons of meaning in older age that are relevant for the evaluation of medical and nursing options in this phase of life—for example with regard to the use of medical resources or the acceptance of nursing support. At the same time, engaging with debates on queer temporalities and with critiques of heteronormative conceptions of temporality oriented toward biological reproduction and the continuity of genealogies and generations, the project also takes into account the diversity of future perspectives in older age, including alternative, unsuccessful, or even refused forms of generativity.

Methodologically, and in line with an empirically and hermeneutically informed approach to medical ethics, we combine ethical analyses of striving and flourishing that address the temporal conditions of a good life in older age with empirical studies and media-cultural analyses on the significance of intergenerational aspects in the context of geriatric medicine and elder care. On the one hand, the subproject draws on philosophical reflections on supra-individual—and in particular generative—temporal perspectives developed in SP-A (Philosophy), as well as on analyses of biographical and generative (dis)continuity in the Center for Medical Ethics (ZIP), in order to concretize them from a medical-ethical perspective with regard to later life and geriatric or care-related contexts. On the other hand, we analyze both self-collected qualitative data from intergenerational group discussions and relevant empirical and media-cultural studies of lifeworld narratives and media narratives from SP-B (Film/Television), SP-C (Psychocardiology), and SP-E (General Practice) from the perspective of medical ethics.

In this way, considerations of the individual temporal structure of a good life and of aging in the context of modern medicine are to be complemented by an empirically informed ethical perspective that is better able to take into account the significance of supra-individual horizons of meaning, and especially intergenerational relations, in the context of medicine and healthcare.

The subproject is based in the Division of Ethics in Medicine at the Department of Health Services Research at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.

Senior Researcher:

Prof. Dr. Mark Schweda

Research Assistant: 

Julia Demirdizen M.A.