Key Arguments

• The modern reversal occurred 'within the fabric of a Christian society whose fundamental belief in the sacredness of life has survived,' so life became the overriding standard.
• Christianity had already reversed the ancient priority of the world by promising personal immortality, thereby preparing the ground for life to overrule other human capacities.
• This continuity explains why the defeat of homo faber ended 'with a victory of the animal laborans' and why laboring life rose to preeminence within the vita activa.

Source Quotes

The defeat of may be explainable in terms of the initial transformation of physics into astrophysics, of natural sciences into a “universal” science. What still remains to be explained is why this defeat ended with a victory of the ; why, with the rise of the , it was precisely the laboring activity that was to be elevated to the highest rank of man’s capacities or, to put it another way, why within the diversity of the human condition with its various human capacities it was precisely life that overruled all other considerations. The reason why life asserted itself as the ultimate point of reference in the modern age and has remained the highest good of mod ern society is that the modern reversal operated within the fabric of a Christian society whose fundamental belief in the sacredness of life has survived, and has even remained completely unshaken by, secularization and the general decline of the Christian faith.

What still remains to be explained is why this defeat ended with a victory of the ; why, with the rise of the , it was precisely the laboring activity that was to be elevated to the highest rank of man’s capacities or, to put it another way, why within the diversity of the human condition with its various human capacities it was precisely life that overruled all other considerations. The reason why life asserted itself as the ultimate point of reference in the modern age and has remained the highest good of mod ern society is that the modern reversal operated within the fabric of a Christian society whose fundamental belief in the sacredness of life has survived, and has even remained completely unshaken by, secularization and the general decline of the Christian faith. In other words, the modern reversal followed and left unchallenged the most important reversal with which Christianity had broken into the ancient world, a reversal that was politically even more far-reaching and, historically at any rate, more enduring than any specific dogmatic content or belief.

In other words, the modern reversal followed and left unchallenged the most important reversal with which Christianity had broken into the ancient world, a reversal that was politically even more far-reaching and, historically at any rate, more enduring than any specific dogmatic content or belief. For the Christian “glad tidings” of the immortality of individual human life had reversed the ancient relationship between man and world and promoted the most mortal thing, human life, to the position of immortality, which up to then the cosmos had held. Historically, it is more than probable that the victory of the Christian faith in the ancient world was largely due to this reversal, which brought hope to those who knew that their world was doomed, indeed a hope beyond hope, since the new message promised an immortality they never had dared to hope for.

Key Concepts

• why within the diversity of the human condition with its various human capacities it was precisely life that overruled all other considerations.
• the modern reversal operated within the fabric of a Christian society whose fundamental belief in the sacredness of life has survived
• For the Christian “glad tidings” of the immortality of individual human life had reversed the ancient relationship between man and world and promoted the most mortal thing, human life, to the position of immortality

Context

Section 44, LIFE AS THE HIGHEST GOOD (lines 6147–6279); causal explanation linking Christian reversal to modern elevation of life and labor.