To become old means to become frail. The human body ages in ways that depend on genes, environmental-, and chance-factors, but if we do not end our lives as a result of a deadly accident or sudden onset of a lethal disease, we will all face a final phase of frailty before we die. Frailty may be caused by way of disease processes, but it can also consist in an increased sense of fragility, weakness, fatigue, and dizziness without a detected disease, which makes a person more likely to fall ill and make it harder to recover from illness. Neither phenomenologists nor existentialists have spent much time analysing frailty, except, perhaps, in the latter case, as a feature of human life to be avoided and resisted by way of a strong will and brave choices. The primary example would be Jean-Paul Sartre, but also Simone de Beauvoir is guilty of a certain contempt for bodily fragility. Arguably, the theories of some phenomenologists, such as Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur, do a good job of rehabilitating human vulnerability in general, but not in the sense of a specific frailty related to illness and ageing. Despite this lack of a phenomenology of frailty in phenomenological-existentialist philosophy there are resources in this tradition to be exploited in developing such a subject. A phenomenology of frailty could be of importance not only for philosophers and empirical researchers, but also for old people and their care takers in attempts to make frail lives more bearable. The chapter develops a phenomenology of frailty by making use of concepts and arguments developed by existentialist thinkers, but also by scrutinizing them further and turning them against their fathers and mothers.

Empathy is an everyday phenomenon and a basic moral capacity, and it is also the most central professional skill and ethical guiding tool of nursing care. To be empathic as a nurse means to be able to feel and see things from the point of view of the patient and act in accordance with this knowledge when caring for his/her good and attempting to relieve his/her suffering. Nurses need to be dedicated but still humble when it comes to empathy: to endeavour the step into the perspective of the patient does not mean that this is possible in any total or infallible sense; only the patient feels and knows what it is like to experience this particular suffering as this particular person at this particular time. If or when empathy is complemented by a dialogue with the patient, it becomes possible to reach a more complete and confirmed understanding of his/her predicament. The chapter offers a phenomenological theory of empathy in nursing, inspired by Edith Stein, which brings out the emotional aspects of the phenomenon in concordance with its cognitive features.

This paper explores the process of aging from a phenomenological perspective. Supplementing the model of becoming old found in Simone de Beauvoir’s work with a phenomenology of human suffering and flourishing, it asks whether it is possible to lead a good life in the process of becoming old. Is it possible to flourish while experiencing bodily waning? Is it possible to flourish while experiencing the shrinking of one’s everyday world and the passing away of close others? Aging, at least in its protracted phases, appears to become full of suffering rather than flourishing. What are the prospects of finding meaningful life projects despite old age? By making use of insight found in Heidegger and other phenomenologists the paper tries to develop a slightly different view on aging than the one found in Beauvoir, stressing the importance of embodied experiences and life choices, which not only depend upon societal oppression and being objectified by others, but also upon processes of nature and the possibilities of an intergenerational intersubjectivity. Resources for this project is found in the philosophy of affectivity developed by Heidegger and other phenomenologists of facticity, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Taylor, Helmuth Plessner and Hannah Arendt.

Objectification is a real problem in medicine that can lead to bad medical practice or, in the worst case, dehumanization of the patient. Nevertheless, objectification also plays a major and necessary role in medicine: the patient's body should be viewed as a biological organism in order to find diseases and be able to cure them. Listening to the patient's illness story should not be replaced, but, indeed, developed by the physical examination of his body searching for the causes of his complaints. Whereas phenomenologists have so far mainly been identifying the back sides of objectification in medicine, in this paper the aim is to analyze differences between detrimental objectifications and objectifications that do not deprive the patient of his subjectivity but, rather, at least in some cases, may lead the patient to feel more at home with his body.

Alltför ofta har känslorna genom historien betraktats som en förvrängning av filosofins och vetenskapens objektiva beskrivning av verkligheten. Känslorna blir då något som vi bör sträva efter att befria oss ifrån i stället för det som utgör hjärtat av vår existens. Men det är fel. Verkligheten får i själva verket sin struktur och mening genom känslor som öppnar upp en värld som vi kan dela med andra människor. Det är känslornas skapande kraft som skiljer oss från maskiner och som gör att vi kan erövra kunskap om världen i kontrast till att bearbeta information och göra beräkningar. Boken tar sig an känslornas natur genom att kombinera filosofisk analys med empirisk forskning från biologi, psykologi och antropologi. Resonemangen illustreras med hjälp av erfarenheter av känslors makt och betydelse från vardagen och samtiden. Känslans mellanmänskliga funktion får stort utrymme, alltifrån den känsla av empati och samvaro som är avgörande för ett gott liv, till de mer problematiska gruppkänslor som växer sig starka genom massan och som kan exploateras inom politiken. Vägen går från de allra första till de allra sista känslorna från födelsen till döden och på vägen passeras de viktigaste typerna av känslor i livet, inte minst sådana som är förknippade med kärlek och lycka eller lidande och sjukdom.