CRISIS: WHERE HUMAN NATURE MEETS CULTURAL CRITIQUE Dr. Susanne Schmidt Postdoctoral Scholar, Freie Unviersität Berlin
O
ne might not have expected the history of the midlife crisis to begin with a feminist bestseller. A favorite gendered cliché, it evokes the image of an affluent, middle-aged man speeding off in a red sports car with a woman half his age at his side. He leaves behind his wife and children; yet he - not they - are in “crisis.” Because most tales and treatises about the midlife crisis centre on men, you might be misled into thinking that they have nothing to do with women’s lives. For example, in his recently published book Midlife (2017), the MIT philosopher Kieran Setiya looks at the topic from a philosophical perspective. He declares gender differences irrelevant and even draws on the work of Simone de Beauvoir. Yet for all intents and purposes, Setiya presents the quest for self-knowledge as an endeavor that concerns primarily men: the author himself (who experienced a crisis at the age of 35) and the great men of philosophy, from John Stuart Mill to Arthur Schopenhauer. When he reads Leo Tolstoy, the moral philosopher is interested in Count Vronsky, not the title heroine Anna Karenina. Others declare the male midlife crisis to be a “myth” and lame excuse for selfish behavior. They ridicule the insignia of reinvention - the expensive car, fancy dress, and adventurous holiday trips. Sometimes, shoring up stereotypes is a means of self-defense, where the symptoms are exaggerated to hold a diagnosis at bay. Yet many a satire testifies to the bitter experience of those left behind, or what Susan Sontag called the “double standard of aging,” according to which the social pathology of midlife afflicts women much more than men. Still, 34
