A University of Oslo scholar says a moral case could be made for allowing people to legally change their age if their biological and emotional age doesn’t match their chronological age
Last December, 69-year-old Emile Ratelband lost his court battle to make himself legally 20 years younger, partly to make his Tinder profile more appealing. A Dutch court ruled that while the motivational speaker and self-described “young god” was entirely at liberty to feel, and act, 20 years younger than the years he has actually existed, there was no valid argument for recalibrating his birth certificate.
The philosopher argues that legal age shouldn’t be forced to match chronological age. In a recent related blog post, he uses a whisky analogy: Ten years ago someone gave him a bottle of 21-year-old scotch. The scotch is still 21 years old, not 31. In an email interview, Räsänen said his aim is not to defend Ratelband, the Dutchman who sought to legally delete 20 years from his passport.
Räsänen says every age change candidate would need to be tested and evaluated, though he can’t offer definite answers as to exactly, how. “These are questions that I think biologists and medical doctors should consider together with philosophers and bioethicists.” Frozen corpses aside, Räsänen believes that, should legal age change be permitted, it shouldn’t be fluid — people shouldn’t necessarily be allowed to go older. Some might want to “age” in order to drink or drive sooner, collect retirement benefits earlier or get a decade or two of people telling them how fabulous they look for their age. None of those reasons would satisfy his “criterion.
He gets why the law is different in terms of why it cares about age. The law likes “bright lines and ease of application,” Caplan says. Legal age is also less an individual measure and more a social or cultural one, he adds. “It’s why we decide that most people, roughly speaking, are mature enough at 18 to do things like get married.
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