Current research on second-person relations has often overlooked that this is not a new topic. Addressed mostly under the heading of the “I–thou relation,” second-person relations were discussed by central figures of the phenomenological tradition, including Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, but also quite extensively by much lesser-known authors, such as Karl Löwith, Ludwig Binswanger, and Semyon L. Frank, whose work has been undeservedly neglected in current research. This paper starts off by arguing that, in spite of the rightly acknowledged differences between the Husserlian and the Heideggerian approaches to the investigation of the social world, both approaches converge in the claim that the I–thou relation is founded on more basic forms of sociality. In a second step, against the background of Frank’s and Binswanger’s challenges to that claim, I argue that Löwith’s proposal that the I–thou relation is a primordial form of sociality can be vindicated by con- ceptualizing I–thou relations as close personal relationships (paradigmatically exem- plified by companion friendships and romantic partnerships). After assessing how Löwith’s approach to the I–thou relation stands vis-à-vis Heidegger’s and Husserl’s views, I conclude by suggesting how Löwith’s approach can contribute to current research on second-person relations.

Phenomenological analyses of ageing and old age have examined themes such asalterity, finitude, and time, not seldom from the perspective of “healthy” aging.Phenomenologists have also offered detailed analyses of lived experiences of illnessincluding lived experiences of dementia. This article offers a phenomenological account of what we label as entering the grey zone of aging between “healthy” agingand aging with a disease. This account is developed through a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis of elderly persons’ lived experiences of being testedfor dementia through primary care in Sweden, i.e., within a cultural context wheredementia commonly is understood as a frightening a loss of self even though thisunderstanding also is questioned. To enter this grey zone of aging, we argue, doesnot dissolve dynamic self-becoming but can involve an experience of oneself as being old. Further, in the grey zone, the self experiences itself as neither fully healthynor as having a disease, and as needing to negotiate and live this ambiguity. Toenter this grey zone is to enter an affectively charged, sociocultural and medicalized zone, and while the self can still act in different ways within it, staying in thegrey zone can result in a re-orientation in the self’s mode of being, in ways thatare thoroughly beyond its control. To stay in the grey zone can have detrimentaleffects on the self, even though the self does not have a disease: the self can become“stuck” in a reflective mode of attending to embodiment, aging, health, and disease.