Abstract
It focuses on the history of Jean Améry’s (1912-1978) reflection on aging and voluntary death. A prisoner and survivor of WWII concentration and extermination camps, Améry had a daily relationship with violence and death. In the 1960s, produced a more organized series of essays that have become a reference in testimonial literature. The hypothesis is that Améry’s reflections on suicide and his decision to be his own executioner in 1978 became a more emphatic part of his intellectual work in 1968, with the publication of the essay Über das Altern. Revolte und Resignation. The article tries not to lose sight of the dialectic subject/collective, individual/society, and considers the historical dimension of Améry’s experiences, which constitute the contemporaneity of his ideas.
Keywords
Jean Améry; voluntary death; aging; testimony; violence and catastrophe