Resumen:
The Brazilian population is increasingly older. Besides this, the demographic
perspectives point to an increasingly accentuated aging of the population with
real possibilities of becoming a country with an elderly population mass greater
than the active one in some decades. Since the country is constituted by an
elderly population contingency it is quite comprehensible that changes in the
way of understanding the significance of being old and of aging begin to appear
and demand greater levels of reflection. For this, we committed ourselves to
carry out a philosophical-theological reflection based on the reality of the elderly
person through the concept of care. We take such a concept from the work of
Martin Heidegger and from Leonardo Boff who transfer it to the realm of
knowledge as an ethical-social competency and assume creation itself as
otherness. This work is organized in three chapters, the first being dedicated to
the theme of the elderly person and the process of aging; the second is related
to the concept of care in the works of Heidegger, Boff and Michel Foucault; and
the third deals with a theological-curative reading of the Statute of the Elderly.
