https://archive.org/details/onagingrevoltres0000amry
https://www.scribd.com/document/409814218/82068119-Amery-Jean-On-Aging-Revolt-and-Resignation-1968-pdf
On Aging: Revolt and Resignation Hardcover – 22 September 1994
by Jean Amery (Author), John D. Barlow (Translator)
3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 4 ratings
"On Aging", the first of Jean Amry's books after "At the Mind's Limits", is a powerful and profound book about the process of aging and the limited, but real defenses available to those experiencing the process. Each essay covers a set of issues about growing old. "Existence and the Passage of Time" focuses on the way aging makes the old progressively see time as the essence of their existence. "Stranger to Oneself" is a meditation on the ways the aging are alienated from themselves. "The Look of Others" treats social aging - the realization that it is no longer possible to live according to one's potential or possibilities. "Not to Understand the World Anymore" deals with the loss of the ability to understand new developments in the arts and in the changing values of society. The fifth essay, "To Live with Dying," argues that everyone compromises with death in old age (the time in life when we feel the death that is in us). Here, Amry's intention, as encapsulated by John D. Barlow, becomes most clear: "to disturb easy and cheap compromises and to urge his readers to their own individual acts of defiance and acceptance."
162 pages
On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death
Jean Amery
4.2 out of 5 stars 17
Hardcover
$50.10$50.10
Product description
Review
" ... if Amery's pessimism disparages life, his humanism reaffirms it. By trying to make sense of our existence, Amery reminds us of why human life is precious." Alan Wolfe, The New Republic "The pessimistic tone of this book is provocative and should interest students and faculty involved with issues of aging." Choice "The writing challenges and searches, trying to cut beneath conventional language and expectations, seeking to delineate qualities of lived experience in their most essential dimensions." Contemporary Gerontology
Product details
Publisher : Indiana University Press (22 September 1994)
Language : English
Hardcover : 162 pages
Dimensions : 14.61 x 1.83 x 21.59 cmCustomer Reviews:
3.6 3.6 out of 5 stars 4 ratings
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Jean Améry
Customer reviews
3.6 out of 5 stars
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Almost too real view of aging.Reviewed in the United States on 8 June 2017
Verified Purchase
Excellently presented (but depressing).
Report
Dust Jacket
4.0 out of 5 stars Intense and Dense Expression of the Aging ExperienceReviewed in the United States on 5 July 2014
Verified Purchase
Very intense and dense expression of the aging experience that is not for the faint of heart. He was relativity young when he composed this work (his 50's) and knowing how he chose voluntary death a decade or so later is very revealing as one reads his words.
Some aspects were hard to follow, perhaps due to translation, but overall Jean Amery puts often elegant ways of expressing the reality of aging that often clarifys my own experience.
But I try not read to this when my mood is already low; while at other times it is communing with a kindred spirit
Report
William Davis
3.0 out of 5 stars Exceedingly DepressingReviewed in the United States on 18 March 2014
Verified Purchase
I bought this book based on a review of another book that mentioned Jean Amery. My opinion of Mr. Amery's writing is considerably less positive than that of the reviewer who led me to the book.
Report
Ted
2.0 out of 5 stars Grim and somewhat disappointingReviewed in the United States on 7 June 2010
Verified Purchase
This book is a compilation of several radio lectures that the German- or Austrian-born author (the name is a pseudonym) delivered over French radio in, if memory serves, the 1950s. I confess to have made it only through the first section and part of the second. The tone is extremely bleak, the prose is difficult (all French prose defies easy translation, IMHO, and comes out sounding imprecise and windy), and the ultimate message is pretty unrewarding: It turns out that old age is even worse than you feared! Don't pick up this book looking for any solace.
Report
====
Jean Améry
4.23
119 ratings16 reviews
"... if Améry’s pessimism disparages life, his humanism reaffirms it. By trying to make sense of our existence, Améry reminds us of why human life is precious." ―Alan Wolfe, The New Republic "The pessimistic tone of this book is provocative and should interest students and faculty involved with issues of aging." ―Choice "The writing challenges and searches, trying to cut beneath conventional language and expectations, seeking to delineate qualities of lived experience in their most essential dimensions." ―Contemporary Gerontology Five profoundly moving and courageously honest essays about the process of aging by the famous Belgian author of At the Mind’s Limits. Each essay covers a set of issues about growing old, from the way aging makes the old progressively see time as the essence of their existence to the argument that everyone compromises with death in old age (the time in life when we feel the death that is in us).
550 people want to read
About the author
Profile Image for Jean Améry.
Jean Améry
50 books72 followers
Follow
Jean Améry (October 31, 1912 – October 17, 1978), born Hanns Chaim Mayer, was an Austrian essayist whose work was often informed by his experiences during World War II.
Formerly a philosophy and literature student in Vienna, Améry's participation in organized resistance against the Nazi occupation of Belgium resulted in his detainment and torture by the German Gestapo, and several years of imprisonment in concentration camps. Améry survived internments in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and was finally liberated at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. After the war he settled in Belgium.
His most celebrated work, At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities (1966), suggests that torture was "the essence" of the Third Reich. Other notable works included On Aging (1968) and On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death (1976). Améry killed himself in 1978.
Readers also enjoyed
====
Rate this book
Write a Review
Friends & Following
No one you know has read this book. Recommend it to a friend!
Community Reviews
4.23
119 ratings16 reviews
5 stars
59 (49%)
4 stars
35 (29%)
3 stars
20 (16%)
2 stars
3 (2%)
1 star
2 (1%)
Tonkica
704 reviews
137 followers
Follow
May 22, 2024
This is a really special book, I would say, one of those stimulating... that unobtrusively makes you think. One of those that are timeless, one that has no expiration date, that will always have its same value, one that can be read over and over again and new theses can be read.
Améry gives us examples, as if he were talking to us, often giving us facts about life that are inextricably linked to death. One cannot go without the other... But he does not impose his thoughts, he spreads them out before us and lets us come to our own conclusions about life, i.e. death.
Read more about the impressions by clicking on the link: https://knjige-u-svom-filmu.webador.c...
10 likes
===
Lysergius
3,127 reviews
Follow
September 30, 2016
One finds oneself astounded at Amery's erudition, and this serves to lull one into a sort of trance while reading this book. Suddenly one awakens to discover that he has led one to the point of considering death in all its negative negation. Yes, I die makes sense only in the past tense - died.
A most stimulating book, that like youth will probably be wasted on the young. That being said, the aged while relish its quiet insights.
psychology-and-psychiatry
4 likes
====
Ion
Author
10 books
53 followers
Follow
November 4, 2022
A. feels some painful spot or stares intently, reflectively, at the rough skin on his foot. He feels vaguely, deeply ambiguously and contradictoryly, almost never managing to reach the thought formulated in words, something like this: Alas, poor foot, which carried me through a world full of streets, mountains, cobblestones and accelerator pedals! Now time and work have exhausted your strength and you can no longer cope, you are both tired, just like my heart that does not allow me to climb two steps at a time.
Sinful foot, disobedient heart, rebellious stomach: you harm me, my adversaries, precisely me, who would like to feel you, protect you, repent of you and tear you from my body and exchange you for others. It makes me dizzy to think that I am my leg, my heart, my stomach, that I am all my living cells, but which renew themselves only lazily, and yet that they are no longer them, that I become more and more alien to myself as I get closer to them, thus becoming, nevertheless, myself.
4 likes
====
Profile Image for Soma Jina.
Read the Name
13 reviews
3 followers
Follow
April 13, 2018
Taking about aging with no whitewash, no self-pity, no self-cheat and deep insight.
2 likes
====
Marta sans-H
275 reviews
Follow
November 12, 2022
A delightful read for the spring that is bursting forth, which can always turn out to be the last one. Analyses that are in-depth, thoughtful and playful. You can read it both for the beauty of the text and the desire to preserve your own. Nothing tightens the skin like thoughts of death and decay!
1 like
====
Lou Fillari
388 reviews
Follow
July 31, 2015
This was either over my head or this guy's a crybaby.
===
acc
47 reviews
Follow
August 30, 2021
A short and fairly dense book, it contains a set of essays that develop the author's ideas such as his conceptualization of time, social age, and various implications of what the process of aging and death is.
The prologue plays its role as both an introduction and a cover letter quite well; I would say that reading it is enough to convince yourself whether to delve into the book or not.
I think that the first essay, "Existence and the passage of time" does a good job of starting the reading with a decisive tone that I only saw falter in one of the essays.
Even so, all the ideas contained in the book seemed interesting to me: it made me think a lot and write a lot, it gave me ample space to experiment with my thoughts.
When I finished it, I immersed myself in a state of deep reflection, as if I could not process what I had finished reading, a state that I find very pleasant. I questioned myself if I was not exaggerating and without answering myself I began to write this short review.
It is likely that I will reread it several times before I have to enter into nullity.
====
Oliver
43 reviews
Follow
July 13, 2022
During its best parts, On Aging was a 4; during its worst, it was a 2.
One of the most intellectually challenging (and stimulating) books I've ever read, it was hard to consume OA in anything but fairly small increments.
The fact that the essays were originally composed and delivered as monologues over radio does not boost comprehension, but I enjoyed the writing's richness: there were plenty of references to philosophical concepts, works of literature/art, and general culture from which I could learn.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u...
non-fic
====
Maurizio Manco
Author
7 books
126 followers
Follow
October 11, 2017
"The author of these lines has no connection with the absurd hope – which can only have any sense in the mediation of mythology – of a life after death. He is in perfect agreement with Jean Rostand, who in simple but persuasive terms said: «When we fall, I believe it will be forever, and that we will not be able to get up again like actors killed on stage.»" (p. 134)
====
Charles Brigand
159 reviews
7 followers
Follow
August 21, 2024
How much lucidity in Amery's words. Lapidary. Cioran and Nietzsche manifest themselves through these pages to describe the devastating process of aging.
At times radical, at others under the cloak of sarcasm, but always in a profound dialogue about a subject that, despite being uncomfortable, almost no one addresses with the clarity that there is in this series of essays.
Like
Comment
Displaying 1 - 10 of 16 reviews
More reviews and ratings
==
