ABSTRACT
Many contemporary bioethical debates rely on implicit conceptions of ageing and the human life course. A life course perspective could provide a suitable starting point for analyzing and discussing such conceptions. It allows to conceptualize human life as a socio-culturally standardized sequence of phases, stages, or steps, each linked to a certain status as well as to specific roles, moral expectations, and life prospects. Considering life course concepts such as age norms and ideals of ageing well could help ethics to appreciate and theoretically accommodate the normative implications of the temporal structure of human existence
