The historical victory of eternity over immortality in the West resulted not from philosophy but from the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity’s promise of everlasting individual life, which made earthly immortality futile and subordinated work and action to contemplation.

By Hannah Arendt, from The Human Condition

Key Arguments

  • Arendt asserts: 'the eventual victory of the concern with eternity over all kinds of aspirations toward immortality is not due to philosophic thought.'
  • Historically, 'The fall of the Roman Empire plainly demonstrated that no work of mortal hands can be immortal,'
  • Coupled with 'the rise of the Christian gospel of an everlasting individual life... Both together made any striving for an earthly immortality futile and unnecessary.'
  • They 'succeeded so well in making the ... the handmaidens of contemplation' (work and action subordinated) even into the modern age.

Source Quotes

It may be that the philosophers’ discovery of the eternal was helped by their very justified doubt of the chances of the for immortality or even permanence, and it may be that the shock of this discovery was so overwhelming that they could not but look down upon all striving for immortality as vanity and vainglory, certainly placing themselves thereby into open opposition to the ancient city-state and the religion which inspired it. However, the eventual victory of the concern with eternity over all kinds of aspirations toward immortality is not due to philosophic thought. The fall of the Roman Empire plainly demonstrated that no work of mortal hands can be immortal, and it was accompanied by the rise of the Christian gospel of an everlasting individual life to its position as the exclusive religion of Western mankind.
However, the eventual victory of the concern with eternity over all kinds of aspirations toward immortality is not due to philosophic thought. The fall of the Roman Empire plainly demonstrated that no work of mortal hands can be immortal, and it was accompanied by the rise of the Christian gospel of an everlasting individual life to its position as the exclusive religion of Western mankind. Both together made any striving for an earthly immortality futile and unnecessary.
The fall of the Roman Empire plainly demonstrated that no work of mortal hands can be immortal, and it was accompanied by the rise of the Christian gospel of an everlasting individual life to its position as the exclusive religion of Western mankind. Both together made any striving for an earthly immortality futile and unnecessary. And they succeeded so well in making the and the the handmaidens of contemplation that not even the rise of the secular in the modern age and the concomitant reversal of the traditional
Both together made any striving for an earthly immortality futile and unnecessary. And they succeeded so well in making the and the the handmaidens of contemplation that not even the rise of the secular in the modern age and the concomitant reversal of the traditional

Key Concepts

  • the eventual victory of the concern with eternity over all kinds of aspirations toward immortality is not due to philosophic thought.
  • The fall of the Roman Empire plainly demonstrated that no work of mortal hands can be immortal,
  • the rise of the Christian gospel of an everlasting individual life
  • made any striving for an earthly immortality futile and unnecessary.
  • the handmaidens of contemplation

Context

3 ETERNITY VERSUS IMMORTALITY: Causal-historical account of how political-religious transformations entrenched contemplation’s supremacy over civic immortality.