1 The Phenomenology of Frailty: Existentialism and Old-Age Vulnerability By Fredrik Svenaeus To be published in The Routledge Companion of Contemporary Existentialism Introduction To become old means to become frail. The human body ages in ways that depend on genes, environmental- and chance-factors, so exactly when frailty kicks in depends on the individual’s situation. However, if we do not end our lives as a result of a deadly accident or sudden onset of a lethal disease, we will all face a final phase of frailty before we die. Frailty may be caused by way of disease processes, but it can also consist in feelings of fragility, stiffness, weakness, fatigue, and dizziness without a detected disease. Such frailty makes a person more likely to fall ill and make it harder for her to recover if she does so. Frailty has been recognized by geriatricians for a long time as a significant ingredient of late-stage ageing, but it has also recently – since about 20 years – been medicalized in the definition of what is known as “frailty syndrome” (Gobbens et al. 2010). The condition is given the following description: “a clinically recognizable state of increased vulnerability resulting from aging-associated decline in reserve and function across multiple physiologic systems such that the ability to cope with everyday or acute stressors is comprised”, and it is diagnosed by measuring five factors: unintentional weight loss, exhaustion, low physical activity, slowness, and weakness (Qian-Li 2011). Frailty syndrome means that the patient has an increased risk of suffering injury, as a result of slipping or tripping, and becoming victim of various diseases, including infectious diseases. It also means that the patient will have severe difficulties in recovering from such maladies as a result of the frailty. It is possible to recover from frailty syndrome by way of improved nutrition, discontinuation of unnecessary medications, adequate exercise, and a more active lifestyle, but it gets increasingly hard as the patient grows older. In this chapter, I will consider existentialism as a continuation of the tradition inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, responsive to contemporary critiques from a phenomenological point of view. In this way, my aim is to make existentialist philosophy more relevant and truer to our own time by carrying on its