Adult Life

John Russon is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph and the Director of the Toronto Summer Seminar in Philosophy. He is the author of Bearing Witness to Epiphany: Persons, Things, and the Nature of Erotic Life and Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life, both also published by SUNY Press.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionVignette #1: The Generation GapVignette #2: Worldly EngagementVignette #3: Mortality and CharacterThe Plan of the BookPart I: Human Experience and the Meaning of Adulthood 1. Perception and Its NormsPerception and PossibilityReality and MaturityCharacter and AgingPart II: The Form of Adult Life: Maturity and Aging 2. Character and RealityExposure: Outer and InnerHealthy Developments of CharacterResponsibility and Happiness3. AgingTime: Indifferent and PersonalOn AgingThe Spatiality of AdulthoodPart III: The Content of Adult Life: Adult Occupations 4. Domains of Settlement and EngagementIntimacy: The FamilyEconomics: The MarketPolitics: The State5. Bearing Witness: Honesty and WisdomArtReligionPhilosophy: Wonder, Science, and WisdomAppendix: Notes for Further StudyBibliographyIndex

"Russon's strength, in Adult Life, is his unwavering commitment to presenting the challenges of aging and the norms that must be respected if one is to age in a socially healthy manner. He accomplishes this with both conceptual and affective force." — Symposium"John Russon is one of the best phenomenologists in contemporary philosophy. He uses the phenomenological method to cast light on some of the most important issues in our lives. In this book, Russon offers a sensitive description of what it is like to navigate the world as an adult, displaying the ways in which adulthood involves a development of our relations with the world, one another, and ourselves. In doing so, he allows us to see afresh the ways in which our lives unfold over time." — Todd May, author of Kenneth Lonergan: Filmmaker and Philosopher