Social work in a gender pleroma of aging, exemplified by a retirement community

Abstract

What this text does, primarily from the positions of philosophical anthropology, is to pose the question of dialectic bases of the unity and struggle, an utterly complex and permanently mystifying phenomenon of human aging. It possesses an array of various existential aspects which social workers need to face daily. Contrary to the common pessimistic attitude about the burden of aging, this text will anticipate the development of epistemological bases of pleroma (totality) of aging, within the boundaries of the social work humanistics. The foundation of this pleroma effectuates human, gender predetermined questioning about the necessity of nature's laws and the transience of life, where old age, despite the finiteness of life and the upcoming death may posses a meaning and the beauty of living. The key axiom of such aging speculation is constructed on the awareness that human inability to reach infinite existence may be overcome by true - full living, with its time constraint, whose creative products hold the quality of living beyond and after its creator into infinity.

Primarno sa pozicija filozofske antropologije, ovaj tekst otvara pitanje dijalektičkih osnova jedinstva i borbe suprotnosti, krajnje složenog i uvek tajnovitog fenomena čovekovog starenja, sa čijim se najrazličitijim egzistencijalnim aspektima stručno suočavaju socijalni radnici. Naspram uobičajenog pesimističkog stava o težini starosti, ovde se u okvirima humanistike socijalnog rada anticipira razvoj epistemoloških osnova plirome (punoće) starenja, čiji fundus tvori čovekovo, rodno predodređeno nagađanje sa nužnošću prirodnih zakona i prolaznosti života, pri čemu pozni dani, uprkos konačnosti i dolazećoj smrti, mogu posedovati smisao i lepotu življenja. Ključni aksiom takvog nagađanja sa starošću sazdan je na svesti da se čovekova nemoć beskonačnog bitisanja može prevazići istinskim-punim življenjem, ograničeno su mu date vremenske konačnosti, čiji stvaralački produkti poseduju kvalitet nadživljavanja svoga tvorca u večnosti.