A PHILOSOPHICAL APPRAISAL OF THE BIOLOGICAL LIMITS OF MALE LONGEVITY AND THE EFFECTS OF EXISTENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES ON THE LIFESPAN OF MEN
Women consistently outlive men across cultures and historical periods, a phenomenon often explained in biomedical or evolutionary terms. This paper argues that such explanations, while necessary, are insufficient. Drawing on existential philosophy, ethics of care, and phenomenological accounts of embodiment, the paper proposes that longevity should be understood not merely as a biological outcome but as an existential achievement shaped by values, self-understanding, and habitual forms of life. The paper contends that women’s longevity advantage is sustained not only by biological factors but by socially cultivated existential orientations toward care, relationality, vulnerability, and temporal responsibility. Conversely, dominant masculine ideals—emphasizing risk-taking, invulnerability, emotional suppression, and instrumentalization of the body—function as life-shortening moral frameworks. The paper then develops a normative account of how men might compensate for biological disadvantage through existential and behavioral reorientation: reconceiving strength as sustainability, embracing vulnerability as a condition of care, and understanding longevity as an ethical responsibility to one’s future self. Rather than moralizing health or denying structural constraints, the paper reframes men’s longevity as a philosophical problem of how life is lived and valued. In doing so, it offers a novel existential-ethical framework for understanding lifespan disparities and for rethinking masculine ideals in light of human finitude.
Keywords: Men’s longevity, Existential responsibility, Human finitude, Lifespan disparity