From the beginning of recorded history, throughout some five millennia until recent times, the idea of the life course was given shape and content by ideas concerning wisdom. Wisdom was generally expected to accumulate during a person's lifetime, though it was not automatically assumed that older people are wiser than those younger (‘Better is a poor but wise youth than an old and foolish king who will no longer take advice’: Ecclesiastes 4:13). But the idea that it is possible to become wiser today than yesterday could offer meaning and purpose to personal survival, to the presence in society of older people in general and to the practice of respecting them. This is not to suggest that wisdom was ever politically dominant in golden ages in the past. But, at least in principle, the notion of wisdom could help to make sense of life after individuals had ceased formal work; it had the capacity to play an important personal and social role in society, reconciling individuals with their own advancing life courses, guiding them in continuous attempts to develop and learn, and providing a rationale for offering the fruits of their insights and deliberations to others. Potential like this makes wisdom just as relevant today. Placing career activities alone at the centre of existence would make it hard to see what significant personal developments or public roles could be expected to remain to people after retirement age.

Exploring the topic of wisdom thus has highly practical implications. Thinking about ageing – our own or other people's – invites us to consider a range of possibilities influenced not only by personal experiences but also by the cultures in which we live. Different cultural surroundings extend varying palettes of expectation to their inhabitants, helping to make particular images of ageing seem plausible or implausible, and bringing it about that those images are easier or harder to adopt. Does growing older hold out prospects of unrelieved decline, or has it benefits to offer?