A Philosophical Autobiography

Robin Wynyard reflects on his philosophical journey, and how this has influenced his thoughts about ageing.

- Robin Wynyard

Youth always has its share of idealism, whereas old age encourages reflection and more than a little guilt for past misdemeanours. Being seventy-four, and a member of a designated vulnerable group during the current Covid-19 pandemic, can be more than a little confusing, given mixed messages from the media. Should I stay at home and self-isolate? And if so, how should I pass my time?

I began by revisiting my profile on LinkedIn, an online platform for professional networking. I had joined LinkedIn around nine years earlier, when coming to the end of my academic career, whereupon I had posted formally, with the aim of promoting my brilliance, fantasizing that no one in the world of education could do without my special skills. Attempting now to update my profile, I was hit by the stark realization of how much my perception of life had changed over the years.

I then rewatched a film that as a sixteen-year old I was much taken with – Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 masterpiece The Seventh Seal, which is not, as you might think, a nature film but is inspired by the Book of Revelation. The film features death, plague, and famine amongst the horsemen of the Apocalypse, and those scenes, shot in black and white, have fascinated me for years. The stakes of the game of chess played throughout the film between Death and the knight are not merely the crusader’s life and soul, but his feelings about God and his general disillusionment with religion and humanity. However, given the Covid situation, the film’s plague setting seemed all-too-familiar, and upon re-watching it, far from being overwhelmed by its brilliance as I was in my youth, it terrified me!