"Ethics generally, both personal and institutional, deontological and virtue-based, presupposes subjects capable of deliberating and deciding [...] on how to behave rightly and live ethically, that is, to be equal citizens in the 'realm of purposes'. Without constituted subjects, that is, without persons, there can be no talk of duties or values.

"The starting point for addressing the issue of the person [...] cannot be anything other than the acceptance that biological, spatiotemporal existence constitutes the indispensable core for the existence of persons [...] This assumption means the rejection of the theory of two worlds. However, it does not automatically imply adherence to exclusively empirical or reductionist theories. The person is not merely what any third party can observe and explain from an external perspective. [...] An element of it is also the self-consciousness, the first-person perspective, which is capable of reflecting as a knowing and acting subject, making it able to take initiatives, diagnose and accept the challenges of reality, and respond authentically to them, anticipating with its imagination the future development of things and contributing, to the extent possible, to shaping it, accepting the relevant risks and responsibilities.

"Aging [...] is the phase of our life that allows us to reflect, that enables us to look back at our life journey and feel proud of the person we have managed to become, provided that we have not squandered or neglected the investments in ourselves that we made and could have made throughout the years that have passed. Without this opportunity that aging provides us, without, that is, the possibility, if not for all, for some people, more fortunate and admirable, to be able to make positive accounts of a whole life, life in general would lack meaning and value. This justifies [...] a profound ethical recognition that human life [...] carries the potential to become, thanks to the efforts of each of us, worthy of being lived."