ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three aspects of finitude as it applies to social policy: the meanings of the concept of "finitude"; how it is being used to set limits on health care; and how the humanities enrich our understandings of finitude. Arguments for rationing based in "finitude" have entered the debate only lately, and more implicitly than explicitly. Applied to the human condition, finitude states the immutable fact of human limitations in time and space. Like the formal and informal philosophical approaches, it presupposes a perspective on aging and its meaning, and it uses the fact of finitude as the starting point of its line of reasoning. The pragmatic conception of a philosophy of finitude is the one most frequently encountered in public and private discussion and the one most dominant in legislative responses to the "problem" of aging. For philosophers, finitude is a concept to be analyzed, clarified, and set into some ontological frame of reference.
