Philosophy of Aging

Student Reflections in Three Dimensions

This gallery presents the culminating creative work of undergraduate students enrolled in ICPH 300: Philosophy of Aging, a humanities course designed and taught by Kate E. O’Hara, Ph.D.. Grounded in philosophical frameworks, this course approaches aging not only as a biological process, but as a social, ethical, and existential phenomenon. Students explore questions related to identity across time, intergenerational relationships, memory, mortality, the ethics of caregiving, and cultural narratives of aging.

This philosophical inquiry is brought into lived experience through a service-learning component in which students engage in sustained, one-on-one relationships with older adults in assisted living, memory care, and community settings. At the semester’s close, students translate their lived experience into original three-dimensional artistic works, using creative expression as a mode of critical synthesis. The pieces presented here sit at the intersection of interdisciplinary inquiry, intergenerational relationship, and humanistic practice.