Middle age, for many, marks a key period for a radical reappraisal of one's life and way of living. The sense of time running out, both from the perspective that one's life has ground to a halt, and from the point of view of the greater closeness of death, and the sense of loneliness engendered by the compromised and wasteful nature of life, become ever clearer in mid-life, and can lead to a period of dramatic self doubt.In this book, the philosopher Christopher Hamilton (early 40s) explores the moods, emotions and experiences of middle age in the contemporary world, seeking to describe and...

This book, taking its point of departure from Stanley Cavell’s claim that philosophy and autobiography are dimensions of each other, aims to explore some of the relations between these forms of reflection, first by seeking to develop an outline of a philosophy of autobiography, and then by exploring the issue from the side of five autobiographical works. Christopher Hamilton argues in the volume that there are good reasons for thinking that philosophical texts can be considered autobiographical, and then turns to discuss the autobiographies of Walter Benjamin, Peter Weiss, Jean-Paul...