Initial Considerations

This chapter offers context for the volume by situating the two essays that anchor this slim book. It highlights the manner in which COVID amplified a concern with death and the challenges of living well in a context of uncertain safeguards for health. What does it mean to live well in a context of such profound disruption and demise? For those who are theists, such misery is addressed through theological claims that use faith as a guiding force in the face of existential crisis. Yet, what of those who are non-theists, who are humanists? In this context, the question of living well, of productive aging, raised by Peter Derkx gains an amplified significance. It is in response to this question that Peter’s framing of a meaningful life as connected to a productive process of change over time—i.e., aging—offered in his essay marks a significant contribution to humanism. Pinn’s essay seeks to account for Derkx’s contributions while raising questions concerning the cultural context for aging and assumptions concerning what it means to age well within our social world.