Sub specie aeternitatis

Sub specie aeternitatis (Latin for "under the aspect of eternity"),^[1] is, from Baruch Spinoza onwards, an honorific expression describing what is universally and eternally true, without any reference to or dependence upon the temporal portions of reality.

In clearer English, sub specie aeternitatis roughly means "from the perspective of the eternal". Even more loosely, the phrase is used to describe an alternative or objective point of view.

Spinoza's "eternal" perspective is reflected in his Ethics (Part V, Prop. XXIII, Scholium), where he treats ethics through a geometric investigation that begins with God and nature and then analyzes human emotions and the human intellect. By proceeding sub specie aeternitatis, Spinoza seeks to arrive at an ethical theory that is as precise as Euclid's Elements. In the history of philosophy, this way of proceeding may be most clearly contrasted with Aristotle's manner of proceeding. Aristotle investigates ethics, physics, and metaphysics separately. In his Ethics and Politics, Aristotle begins from common opinions or common sense about human affairs and attempts to arrive at knowledge; throughout, these investigations are guided by an understanding of the limited precision inherent in any study of human affairs. Similarly in his Physics and Metaphysics, Aristotle begins from what is commonly observed and what previous philosophers have written. Aristotle is less than optimistic about the prospect of arriving at geometric precision in any field other than geometry, though his natural philosophy appears to approach precision more closely than does his political philosophy. Aristotle's methodological differences in his "philosophy of human affairs" and his natural philosophy are grounded in the distinction between what is "better known to us" and things "better known in themselves," or what is "first for us" and what is "first by nature" (discussed, among other places, at Metaphysics Z.3, 1029b3–12), a distinction that is deliberately discarded by Spinoza and other modern philosophers.

Usage

Thomas Nagel, in The Absurd, wrote:

Yet humans have the special capacity to step back and survey themselves, and the lives to which they are committed... Without developing the illusion that they are able to escape from their highly specific and idiosyncratic position, they can view it sub specie aeternitatis—and the view is at once sobering and comical.

Later in the article he states:

If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.^[2]

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Notebooks 1914-1916, wrote:

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics.^[3]

Viktor E. Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, wrote:

It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future—sub specie aeternitatis.^[4]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

From all this it now follows that the content of ethical problems can never be discussed in a Christian light; the possibility of erecting generally valid principles simply does not exist, because each moment, lived in God’s sight, can bring an unexpected decision. Thus only one thing can be repeated again and again, also in our time: in ethical decisions a man must consider his action sub specie aeternitatis and then, no matter how it proceeds, it will proceed rightly.^[5]

John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice, wrote in the final paragraph of the book:

Thus to see our place in society from the perspective of this position is to see it sub specie aeternitatis: it is to regard the human situation not only from all social but also from all temporal points of view.^[6]

Bernard Williams, in Utilitarianism: For and Against, wrote:

Philosophers... repeatedly urge us to view the world sub specie aeternitatis, but for most human purposes that is not a good species to view it under.^[7]

Peter L. Berger, in The Sacred Canopy, wrote:

Just as institutions may be relativized and thus humanized when viewed sub specie aeternitatis, so may the roles representing these institutions.^[8]

Luciano Floridi, in The Philosophy of Information, wrote:

First, sub specie aeternitatis, science is still in its puberty, when some hiccups are not necessarily evidence of any serious sickness.^[9]

Christopher Dawson, in The Christian View of History, wrote:

For the Christian view of history is a vision of history sub specie aeternitatis, an interpretation of time in terms of eternity and of human events in the light of divine revelation. And thus Christian history is inevitably apocalyptic, and the apocalypse is the Christian substitute for the secular philosophies of history.^[10]

Carl Jung, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, wrote:

What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth.^[11]

Philip K. Dick, in Galactic Pot-Healer,: wrote:

The stewardess began setting up the SSA machine in a rapid, efficient fashion, meanwhile explaining it. "SSA stands for sub specie aeternitatis; that is, something seen outside of time. Now, many individuals imagine that an SSA machine can see into the future, that it is precognitive. This is not true. The mechanism, basically a computer, is attached via electrodes to both your brains and it swiftly stores up immense quantities of data about each of you. It then synthesizes these data and, on a probability basis, extrapolates as to what would most likely become of you both if you were, for example, joined in marriage, or perhaps living together.^[12]

Ludwig von Mises, in Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, wrote:

It is customary to blame the economists for an alleged disregard of history. The economists, it is contended, consider the market economy as the ideal and eternal pattern of social cooperation. They concentrate their studies upon investigating the conditions of the market economy and neglect everything else. They do not bother about the fact that capitalism emerged only in the last two hundred years and that even today it is restricted to a comparatively small area of the earth's surface and to a minority of peoples. There were and are, say these critics, other civilizations with a different mentality and different modes of conducting economic affairs. Capitalism is, when seen sub specie aeternitatis, a passing phenomenon, an ephemeral stage of historical evolution, just the transition from precapitalistic ages to a postcapitalistic future. All these criticisms are spurious....^[13]

Rebecca Goldstein in Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

We are immortal only to the extent that we allow our own selves to be rationalized by the sublime ontological rationality, ordering our own processes of thinking, desiring, and acting in accordance with the perfect proportions realized in the cosmos. We are then, while in this life, living sub specie aeternitatis, as Spinoza was to put it, expanding our finitude to encapture as much of infinity as we are able.^[14]

In the article on Spinoza from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Sense experience alone could never provide the information conveyed by an adequate idea. The senses present things only as they appear from a given perspective at a given moment in time. An adequate idea, on the other hand, by showing how a thing follows necessarily from one or another of God's attributes, presents it in its “eternal” aspects—sub specie aeternitatis, as Spinoza puts it—without any relation to time. “It is of the nature of Reason to regard things as necessary and not as contingent. And Reason perceives this necessity of things truly, i.e., as it is in itself. But this necessity of things is the very necessity of God's eternal nature. Therefore, it is of the nature of Reason to regard things under this species of eternity” (IIp44). The third kind of knowledge, intuition, takes what is known by Reason and grasps it in a single act of the mind.^[15]

References

1. Philosophical Dictionary: "sub specie aeternitatis".
2. Thomas Nagel. "The Absurd". The Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 68. No. 20. Sixty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division (Oct. 21, 1971). pp. 716–727. Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
3. Notebooks 1914-1916 by Ludwig Wittgenstein, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe 1961. Oxford: Blackwell [83e].
4. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. 1946. p. 94.
5. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English Edition, Volume 10, 2/3, p. 368
6. A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. 2005. Harvard University Press, p. 587
7. Utilitarianism: For and Against by Bernard Williams. Cambridge University Press, 1973.
8. The Sacred Canopy by Peter L. Berger. 1990. Anchor Books, p. 99
9. "The Philosophy of information" by Luciano Floridi. 2011. Oxford University Press, p. 345
10. Dynamics of World History by Christopher Dawson. ISI Books. 2002. p. 248
11. "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" by Carl Jung and Aniela Jaffé. 1989. Vintage, p. 3.
12. Dick, Philip K. (1994) [1969]. Galactic Pot-Healer. Vintage Books. p. 63. ISBN 0-679-75297-8.
13. von Mises, Ludwig (1996 [1966] [1963] [1949]). Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Fourth Revised Edition. Fox & Wilkes. p. 266. ISBN 0-930073-18-5. Check date values in: |date= (help)
14. Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away. p. 317.
15. Nadler, Steven, "Baruch Spinoza", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/spinoza/>.