The aesthetic approach to people with dementia.

The question I wish to consider is: how do we approach people with dementia? I want to suggest that the approach we take should be the aesthetic one. I shall need to say what this is. My question is not an empirical one. I am not asking how we approach people with dementia. My question has an ethical bent to it: how we to approach people with dementia? In asking this question, however, I am not after an explanation suggesting we should act with kindness, compassion, honesty, integrity and so forth. We ought to do all these things, of course, and I hope such virtues will flow from the account I shall give. But I am really after something somewhat deeper, a philosophical understanding of what it is to be a person with dementia and, consequently, how we ought to stand as human beings in relation to this person.